How to Become a Social Media Strategist At Home

This article covers the basics of how to become a Social Media Strategist from home. Learning from home is easy with the variety of digital resources available to you to learn about social media advertising and marketing. From this article, you will become familiar with the benefits and limitations of free sources, on-demand classes, and live online classes or boot camps so that you can make an informed decision about which option will work best for your needs. 

What is a Social Media Strategist?

A Social Media Strategist is someone in charge of the social media accounts and online presence of a brand or company. This includes managing a brand’s posts to various online platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter/X, developing or implementing social media marketing campaigns, tracking and increasing audience engagement, and working to raise awareness of a brand and its products. Social Media Strategists need to have a firm grasp on what content is appealing on different platforms, how users meaningfully engage with content and brands on these platforms, and what the important trends brands can tap into across platforms are. Not only do Social Media Strategists post and manage content on social media, but they also work with audience analytics, paying attention to how users react to and engage with a brand’s content to determine the success of specific campaigns and future strategies for further engagement.

Can I Learn to be a Social Media Strategist from Home?

Yes, the skills necessary to become a Social Media Strategist can easily be learned from home. To learn the basics of social media marketing, you do not need to commit to an expensive or time-consuming four-year degree program. Instead, you can pursue learning about this career through free resources online as well as a variety of online classes and boot camps. When thinking about what will work best for your own needs, consider how much time and money you are willing to commit to learning the skills necessary to becoming a Social Media Strategist as well as what environment you learn most effectively in, whether that is a quiet, self-paced environment or a supportive online environment with live, expert guidance from instructors. 

What are the Advantages of Learning from Home?

The advantages of learning about social media strategy and marketing from home are many. The biggest reasons many choose this option are cost and flexibility. It can be much cheaper to find resources online or take a class from home than it is to attend an in-person class or pursue a full program of study at a college or university. Given the amount of information one can find online about how to become a Social Media Strategist, there are many skills you can gain just from reading through free online resources created by digital training programs or by other practicing Social Media Strategists. 

Learning from home also offers a high degree of flexibility. At-home learning can be a great option for someone who is busy and does not have hours, weeks, or months to singularly devote to learning how to become a Social Media Strategist. When you learn from home, often, you set your own hours and you decide which classes will work best for your schedule. Additionally, when you learn about this topic from home, you have the flexibility to choose which topics you need to become familiar with and skip those you already know about. Many classes, including live online certificate programs and boot camps, have a set structure they follow, so, if you already know the basics of a specific social media platform, search engine optimization, or pay-per-click advertising, you might not need to attend a full course over a certain number of weeks or months. 

What are the Disadvantages of Learning from Home?

Learning from home does come with some potential disadvantages and distractions. At home, your attention might be divided between household chores, entertainment options, childcare, pets, or other issues that come up. If you can find a space and set time aside to focus on your studies, these distractions should not be too much of an issue. Another potential challenge of at-home learning is the lack of interaction with others. If you are not taking a live, synchronous class you might miss the interaction and supportive community of others learning the same topic, and, depending on the class, you might not have an expert instructor available to help guide your learning process or answer your questions. This is especially a concern with many free resources and some on-demand classes; if you are looking for more social interaction or you need a real person to address your questions, you should consider a live online class or boot camp as these are often run by experts in the field who will offer practical guidance and feedback as part of the instruction. 

What Resources are Available to Help Me Become a Social Media Strategist at Home?

There are a variety of free and paid resources for someone seeking to become a Social Media Strategist from home. There are free, digital resources that anyone can access as well as free and paid on-demand, self-paced online courses that can be taken. In addition, for more structure and in-depth learning, you can sign up for a live online course or boot camp from a reputable online education provider. Which option/s you pursue should ultimately depend upon how much time and money you are interested in devoting to learning the skills to become a Social Media Strategist as well as the type of education and support you are looking to receive. 

Free Resources

To learn the basics of marketing on social media, there are many free resources online that someone can access. There are guides, videos, blogs, ebooks, limited training programs, and other explanatory materials that you can easily find online to learn what a Social Media Strategist is and does and to learn the basics of posting content and engaging with audiences on the major social media platforms. It is free to join most social media platforms you will need to be familiar with and some key tools, like Google Analytics, are also free to use. Some companies, like Facebook and Google, also offer free resources to help you learn about their platforms and services. This is especially true for those looking to learn more about advertising on certain social media platforms as companies want you to advertise with them and some have created free training programs, videos, and explanatory resources to help facilitate this process. 

There are important limitations to using only free resources to learn how to become a Social Media Strategist. For someone just getting started with social media marketing, you might not know exactly what topics are important to cover, making it difficult to learn everything from free resources online. Indeed, this might even lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there, the lack of structure in this mode of learning, and the potential to receive conflicting information from multiple sources about the same topic. Additionally, some free resources might not go into detail with the level of specificity you could find in an online class and there might not be someone you can contact for further information about a topic or with any follow-up questions you need answered. 

On-Demand Classes

An on-demand class is a class that is self-paced and tailored to the learner’s needs. You can find many such classes online, either as part of Social Media Strategist certificate programs or as standalone classes offered by a variety of education providers. These classes are generally module-based and allow you to move from topic to topic at a pace that works for you. One of the main benefits of this style of learning is that you can speed through sections that contain information you already know and slow down, focus, and even repeat sections and topics that are particularly important or that contain difficult subject matter to master. In addition, you can find many of these classes for free, making them a very cost-effective option to consider. 

There are a couple of important drawbacks to consider, especially when thinking about whether you want to start with an on-demand class and then supplement it with another mode of learning. A challenge to consider is that this style of learning works best for those who are self-motivated as there is no one forcing you to continue through the sections and complete the course. Along with this challenge, a drawback to taking an on-demand class is that there is no live instructor to guide you through the material or answer any questions that might arise should you not understand something or should you receive conflicting information from multiple sources. Many of these classes do offer some form of limited feedback mechanism, like prompting you to take an end-of-unit quiz, though they are unlikely to offer substantive feedback to your questions, allow you to submit a project of your own for evaluation, or give you direction on how to build a work portfolio to show to potential employers. 

Live Online Classes and Bootcamps

A live online class, certificate program, or boot camp is flexible enough to take remotely from home while providing you with access to expert guidance and a supportive environment to act as a motivational factor to complete the course of study. These classes will be well-structured and because they are taught by expert instructors you will not have to deal with receiving contradictory or conflicting information from multiple sources. Indeed, misunderstandings and confusions that arise can be addressed by the instructor or even other students in the course, who can also add their own experiences with marketing brands and businesses on social media platforms. 

The content and requirements for these classes will more closely mirror the type of educational experience you would receive from a live, in-person class at a university or technology institute. As such, you are more likely to receive contemporary examples of successful social media marketing campaigns, information about current marketing trends on different social media platforms, and be tasked with completing projects of your own during the course. These courses are more likely to aid you in building or continuing to develop your work portfolio, as well. What this means is these classes offer you the benefit of receiving feedback and allowing you to improve and grow your skills and abilities during the class itself. 

With live online classes and boot camps, there are a few limitations. The cost of this mode of learning usually is not free and the price can vary from hundreds to thousands of dollars per class. You will want to choose the program that will work best for your schedule and provide you with the best return on investment. Additionally, you will need to attend classes as regularly scheduled along with other students, so this mode of learning is slightly less flexible for those whose schedules are already full with other work and life commitments. 

Learn the Skills to Become a Social Media Strategist at Noble Desktop

For those looking to become a Social Media Strategist, Noble Desktop offers a Social Media Marketing Certificate program that can be taken in person in New York City or live online from any location. This program teaches useful marketing strategies, how to tap into popular trends, and how paid advertising works across major social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. In this program, you will learn the strategies to create compelling visual and written content that will raise a profile to the top of a platform and be seen by the right audiences. Additionally, this Noble Desktop certificate program includes one-on-one mentoring from experts in the field and allows students to create a portfolio of work they can show to potential employers. 

Students might also be interested in Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Certificate, which can be taken in person in New York City or live online. Not only will one learn the skills necessary to become a Social Media Strategist in this certificate program, but students will also learn a wider array of skills necessary for the digital marketplace. In addition to social media marketing, this program teaches students about search engine optimization (SEO), marketing across email and other forms of content, and how to track and analyze key performance data and analytics. This program also offers expert mentoring as you work on real projects to improve your digital marketing skills. 

Noble Desktop also offers shorter programs of study, such as a six-hour class on Digital Market Strategy & Web Fundamentals. This shorter class allows students to develop a successful digital marketing strategy to reach a desired audience as well as learn about everything that goes into what makes a great website, who makes up the target audience, and how to reach that audience. In addition, Noble Desktop has targeted boot camps for individual social media platforms (TikTok Marketing, Instagram Marketing, Facebook Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing, and Social Media Marketing: Blogs and Twitter) and skills such as Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization that may interest those looking to upskill or quickly learn the basics of a specific form of digital marketing.