Our top 5 online social media courses
During the last three Covid 19 lockdowns a lot of us have been completing online courses or promoting our staff to do the same. But how do we know which ones are the best? Recently a friend of mine from Cork contacted me and asked me if I knew the best social media courses out there that don’t cost an arm and a leg. I got back to her straight away and decided that this was going to be the topic for the Back Office Marketing weekly blog post. The top 5 online social media courses that don’t cost a penny.
If you follow Back office Marketing on social media you will already know that we are a big fan of Hubspot. They offer great sales and marketing tools and advice. Hubspot academy have lots of marketing courses that you can take and some of them are certified. Their certified social media marketing course shows you how to: build an effective social media strategy, set up social listening and moderation, create social content, extend your reach, excel in digital advertising, measure ROI, and more. Its completely free and you are certified at the end.
There are over 75 courses on Facebook Blueprint. Certification is possible but at a cost. Every cert will cost approx. €100 and you are examined live by a third party. You must ensure that there is no one in the room you are taking the examination and you must be present for the entire exam. These courses are great to learn the ins and outs of Business manager, audiences, ad formats etc.
The Shaw academy provide online learning for a whole host of subjects. They offer a diploma in Social media marketing with the first 4 weeks free. You can download the recordings then for the rest of the course, you just can’t listen in live. Certification is possible here too, but, you’ve guessed it, at a cost.
Google garage offers over 151 free courses (many certified). Some of these courses are specifically for social media and are worth checking out.
Your local enterprise office will always have a list of upcoming training programmes for all businesses. More often than not, they will have social media programmes for all levels. Most of the time theses courses are free or have a small fee.
The July stimulus package also provides reduced costs post graduate and modular programmes for many people in the industry. You can find details of courses here– many may be reoccurring. Pre Covid the IHF were always great for providing training courses for their members. Make sure to keep up to date with training courses that they will be providing in the coming months. Failte Ireland also announced a suite of e-learning supports for the industry at their Survive to thrive webinar a few weeks ago.
Continuous professional development should be part of all HR policies in the Hospitality and Tourism industry. Not only will you benefit from a workforce that is up to date on all social media and marketing practices, but your staff will be loyal to a manager who takes interest in their development.
For any further information on where to start on building a social media marketing strategy just email Helen on info@backofficems.ie
