How Difficult is it to Learn Social Media Marketing?

The answer to this question always depends upon your personality and motivation. Do you love having a passion project? Do you enjoy multitasking and keeping track of data? Is creating content for social media followers your idea of a good time? Then it probably wouldn’t be hard for you to become a Social Media Marketer.

The challenges of learning social media marketing depend on factors likehow much you enjoy reading to learn and process new information, how much time you have to devote to study and practice, and how persistent you are.

No matter your current schedule or comfort level with social media marketing, there are plenty of tools available to help make learning easier than you might think.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing uses platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok to connect with a target audience. According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 report, more than 4.48 billion people use these platforms daily, making social media marketing a smart choice to help drive website traffic, build a widely-known brand, and gain revenue.

There are two types of social media marketing: paid and unpaid. Paid marketing means buying ads on different social media sites, while unpaid marketing relies on high-quality content, clicks, likes, and shares. It’s also called “earned marketing.” While earned marketing is valuable because it doesn’t cost any money, it can take a long time to see results, so Social Media Marketers need to be patient and persistent.

A social media marketing campaign is based on these five essential activities:

• Strategy–setting goals, choosing the best channels, and deciding what type of content will attract your audience.
• Planning and publishing–understanding your audience, knowing what and when to publish, and maintaining consistency.
• Listening and engagement–interacting with your audience and tracking changes in the market.
• Analytics–collecting, tracking, and analyzing data on social media accounts so you can figure out what is working for you.
• Advertising–earned and paid advertising.

Read more about what social media marketing is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a powerful way to get the word out about your product or message, and one of the best things is you can do it for free. It doesn’t cost anything to open accounts on the different social media platforms, and many of the digital marketing tools you need are free to use or have a free version.

Data analytics tools allow you to research the market, identify a target audience, and tailor your message directly to them. Engagement tools let you interact with potential customers, get important feedback, see what your competitors are doing, and change your campaign as you need to. Social media marketing creates and maintains a community through regularly posted, high-quality content.

It can take a bit of time to see organic results, but you can use paid advertising to speed things up. Advertising increases engagement and is a good investment. Social media marketing tools allow you to pinpoint your audience and advertise just to them.

What Are the Most Challenging Parts of Learning Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is not necessarily hard to learn, but it does take time, effort, and persistence. If you are just starting out and know nothing about search engines, data analytics, or content management, you can expect to feel a bit overwhelmed initially, especially if you are trying to learn social media marketing on your own. However, it is important to keep trying. This is where classes can be a real sanity saver.

One challenge for social media marketers is learning to use social media the right way for marketing. Not only do you need to create engaging content, but you need to identify a target audience, schedule the content to publish when your audience is likely to be online, and keep an eye on how your content is being received.

Another challenge is the amount of information you need to read and process. You need to become familiar with powerful tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, Moz, and the analytics tools from the different social media channels. This involves a lot of reading and practice. Once you begin to grasp the basics of social media marketing, it is also a good idea to read blogs and listen to podcasts to discover the latest developments in this ever-changing field.

An advantage of taking classes is that you will have an instructor who is already familiar with the field and can steer you in the right direction. It can be challenging to wade through YouTube videos on social media marketing and figure out the best way to do things when you are just starting out. Having an expert to help you save a lot of time.

How Does Learning Social Media Marketing Compare to Other Fields?

A comparable field to social media marketing might be content marketing. Blog posts, emails, and videos are examples of content created to convince a customer to take action. Content Marketers tell the story of a product or brand and connect with a target audience across a variety of channels, including websites, blogs, apps, and social media platforms. Storytelling ability is crucial in order to build and maintain a community audience.

Content Marketers also need to develop and implement a content schedule. This publishing plan determines the most advantageous timing for publishing content on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or seasonal basis.

Another field similar to social media marketing is web optimization/SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key factor in digital marketing. SEO improves a website’s performance and ensures it ranks high in the organic results without paying for advertising. The ability to choose the right keywords, keep tabs on how the site is performing, and develop strategies for improvement make Web Optimization Specialists an important part of the digital marketing team. To get a job in the field, you will need to learn to use data analysis tools, create marketing strategies, and keep on top of the constantly changing world of SEO.

Getting Started with Social Media Marketing

One of the best ways to start social media marketing is to create a website and some social media accounts. You can learn a lot on your own and by following tutorials, reading blogs, and listening to podcasts. A great place to practice your social media marketing skills is to create a website for yourself (or help out a friend!) and use it to test out different techniques. Implementing various strategies and comparing what works and what doesn’t will help you when you are applying for a job. A website of your own gives you a chance to work on content marketing skills, drill down on the ins and outs of video marketing, and figure out search engine optimization.

Create some social media accounts and learn how they work. Start an Instagram account and begin creating content. See what resonates, what people respond to, and what they don’t. Create a YouTube account and practice making videos. This might feel difficult at first, but as you learn the ropes, it will become easier, and you will enjoy it more.

Gaining some skills can make learning social media marketing quicker. There are some useful primary and secondary skills that will make the process go faster. If you enjoy using technology, are comfortable working with numbers, and like interacting with people online, you will master social media marketing more quickly than others.

Learn Some Tools

Social Media Marketers use four types of tools to save time and gain valuable information. Analytic tools can help you identify your target audience and understand your followers, planning tools can help determine the right time to post and push your content across multiple platforms at once, social listening tools help keep you engaged with users, and AI tools in the form of chatbots that can help you deliver prompt responses 24/7. Learning to use these tools will make social media marketing much easier.

Analytics

Social media analytics involves collecting, tracking, and analyzing user data on your social media accounts so you can figure out what is working and what isn’t. You’ll glean crucial information on engagement, such as your campaign’s reach, what kinds of positive (and negative) mentions you’re getting online, how many people are seeing your posts and if they’re being shared, if your brand’s hashtag is performing well, and other details to help improve or change your strategy. Having access to this data allows you to better focus on future marketing efforts, ultimately saving you or the company you work for time and money.

Many channels have tools designed especially for their platform, such as LinkedIn Analytics and Facebook’s Business Suite Insights, which are great ways to dig deeper within each platform. Since many social media marketers are working across platforms, it can save time and streamline your strategy to use a social media analytics tool that works across them all. The most well-known and widely-used of these is Google Analytics (or GA). GA collects and tracks user data, compiles it into useful reports, and provides valuable insights to improve performance.

Planning and Publishing

Creating and sharing content is integral to social media marketing, whether you’re a small business just starting or a large company working to attract new followers. Once you’ve figured out the types of content you want to create to help build brand awareness and boost sales within your target audience, you can decide on the best places to share it. But it’s not as simple as sharing spontaneously—use the analytics tools to determine which days of the week and times of the day people visit your social media platforms to plan the optimal time and how often to post to reach the most people. And of course, there are planning and publishing tools available to help you schedule when to post your content.

Making a content marketing calendar and planning to share content when you know your subscribers will be most likely to engage with it will help with brand awareness and boost conversions. Understanding your audience, knowing when and what to publish or send, and being consistent will help keep your followers engaged and drive more traffic your way. To save time and ensure you’re maintaining your brand voice and aesthetic, you can even create a calendar for posting content to help you stay on top of your content marketing strategy. Planning posts ahead of time eliminates the stress of coming up with new content on the fly.

Listening and Engagement

How connected you are with your community helps determine your success. And as a company or brand grows, keeping up with all the messages, mentions, and shares can be hard. That’s when social media listening and engagement tools come in. These tools can help you stay on top of the conversation even when you’re not directly communicating with your followers or customers. You can see what you’re doing right, as well as quickly resolve any problems or issues that arise, identify chances for growth, and even keep an eye on the competition. Listening and engagement tools provide a unique opportunity to receive feedback and make changes. These tools will condense all messages and mentions of your business, product, brand, and/or targeted keywords and hashtags into one place so you can keep a pulse on how your brand is being received. Social listening also provides a way to stay on top of ever-changing social media trends, can help identify new revenue streams, and get important industry tips.

Chatbots

Speaking of staying connected, as we roll into 2022, one of the hottest trends in social media is AI. Whether you realize it or not, you’re likely interacting with some form of Artificial Intelligence or machine learning (ML) every single day, whether it’s clicking on a Netflix recommendation or messaging with a company online. Both of these tasks involve chatbots.

Chatbots are automated response tools available round the clock. Chatbots use AI to greet interested customers, make appointments, answer basic questions, and perform tasks. Best of all, you can program your bot to help you in the ways you need—so you are more available to apply the human touch to other areas of your business. Chatbots also help collect, track, and measure data, synthesize information, and provide notifications. Interacting live online through a Q&A session, responding thoughtfully to a customer’s problem, promptly answering a follower’s question, or simply engaging on a human level is crucial to growing and maintaining a brand.

Familiarize Yourself with Social Media Channels

Learning the different social media channels and how they differ will make social media marketing easier. Different platforms appeal to and attract different types of users, and this information can help you decide where to post content. For example, Facebook has around 3 billion monthly active users, and the majority of users on Facebook are male and aged 25 to 45. On Instagram, on the other hand, the majority of users are females under 35. Knowing the most effective channel for your content is at the heart of social media marketing.

Enroll in Training Classes

Certificate programs are designed to give you the skill set you need to succeed as a Social Media Marketer. Many schools offer online courses in social media marketing, some of them as asynchronous classes that you can take in your spare time. Certificate programs are intensive courses focusing exclusively on social marketing subjects and take two to four months to complete.

Noble Desktop offers a Social Media Marketing Bootcamp covering the tools and techniques you need to succeed in social media marketing. This course covers the social media giants, including Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and introduces students to the optimal social media strategies for brand building to enhance a business. Topics include social media strategy development, content creation, brand building, analytics, and conversion optimization. This program also includes a free retake option so you can come back within a year to refresh the material.

You can also take a Social Media Marketing Certificate through Noble Desktop. The course curriculum includes a LinkedIn Marketing Bootcamp, YouTube Marketing, TikTok Marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs and Twitter, Instagram Marketing Bootcamp, Facebook Marketing Bootcamp, Streaming for Social Media, and Social Media Industry and Portfolio. This class will give you the tools and techniques you need to succeed in social media marketing. In addition to the interactive training, you get four 1-on-1 mentoring sessions that you can use for a portfolio review, review challenging concepts, polish your resume and LinkedIn profile, get advice from a marketing professional about applying for jobs, and ensure you are on track with your learning goals.

You can take live online classes from anywhere in the world with a set-up similar to in-person instruction. A real-time, remote instructor can answer questions and has the ability to share your screen to show you how to do things. You get the same level of attention as in in-person classes. When you complete the course, you will receive a verified digital certificate of completion licensed by the New York State Department of Education.

Other options for online social media marketing classes include Facebook Ads and Facebook Marketing from Coursenvy, Powerful Social Media Marketing for Beginners from Skillshare, and Social Media Marketing for Small Business from LinkedIn Learning.

Play a Long Game

While the field of social media marketing is always changing, it can take a while to see results from your efforts. Don’t get discouraged! Keep going. It might feel difficult at first, but if you stay with it, it will get easier.

Learn Social Media Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop’s social media marketing courses teach skills that can help you start a career in the industry. Classes are small, with expert instructors, and you can retake a course for free up to a year after you take it. Those ready to dive into the field can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or attend live online social media courses from anywhere in the world.

In Noble Desktop’s Social Media Marketing Certificate, you can master successful social media marketing tools and techniques. You will learn about strategy development, content creation, brand building, analytics, and conversion optimization.

Noble Desktop also offers more detailed courses for those looking to hone their skills on specific channels, such as Facebook Marketing, email marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube, or go for a Social Media Marketing Certificate. Other Noble Desktop resources that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing include its digital marketing blog, which has detailed articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers. Further resources include Noble’s seminar on YouTube entitled The Pillars of Digital Marketing Success.

Key Insights

• How difficult it is to learn social media marketing depends upon your level of interest and commitment.
• Learning some marketing tools can help make acquiring social marketing skills easier. Four types of tools are:
• Analytics
• Planning and Publishing
• Listening and Engagement
• Chatbots
• Develop an understanding of social media channels and their demographics.
• Enroll in classes.
• Be patient!
• You can receive comprehensive Social Media Marketing training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.