Professional Social Media Certificate Course

Sonoma State University Extended & International Education

Professional Social Media Certificate Course

August 27 – December 3 on Wednesdays; 6 – 9:30 pm

Course Credit: 52.5 hours of instruction: 5.3 CEU’s

Fee: $1050 for semester Certificate
Fall 2014 Course Syllabus

Register Link

Learning Goals

• Leverage personal social media experience professionally
• Provide a consistent identity across channels
• Identify social media goals by determining what matters most
• Determine which social media channels work best as part of an overall strategy
• Use different channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr, Vine, Instagram, blogs, Google+, Tumblr, industry specific, international channels, etc.) to address goals
• Explore the importance of video, images, memes, & infographics across channels, how to select and create effective images and video, determine bias and managing risk with use of intellectual property and shared material
• Use curation tools for finding, organizing and sharing content
• Understand the value of mobile
• Identify key performance indicators and build reports from them, analyze if an entire social media strategy is effective and demonstrate use of tools for measurement
• Segment and target audiences
• Use measurement, analytics and paid options (Facebook Ads, Sponsored Tweets, LinkedIn Premium)
• Develop a social media campaign
• Think strategically and adjust plans to changes in the community conversation
• Understand risk management, the importance of a social media policy, and how to adopt one
• Explain the benefits of building community online for your organization or company
• Integrate old and new media tools into an overall communications campaign and strategy

Program Features

• Hands-on practice and experimentation with several popular social media platforms
• Hands-on use of monitoring tools and website analytics to listen and measure results
• Case studies of organizations using social media for their benefit
• Completion of a social media project

Prerequisites: Although no academic prerequisites are required to participate in the program, an advanced level of English for non-native English speakers is required. Additionally, participants should be comfortable using at least one social media channel (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.). All participants should bring a laptop. A browser is required and Internet access is provided.

Required Materials: Shared via GoogleDrive. Please be prepared to use GoogleDrive (this means having a Google account and reviewing these tutorials, if necessary).