Social Media has become a powerful tool in this day and age. Different industries have invested in Social Media as part of their marketing strategies. For this reason, hiring social media experts has become a growing trend in a lot of business companies. And these experts are not just anybody. Since excellence in every area is what businesses aim for, these professionals have gone through special trainings before they acquired their current skills and knowledge.
Studies have found out that the deciding factor in why digitally savvy companies outperform the non-digitally savvy counterparts is that the former companies train in social media. The researchers also found out that the companies with a stronger digital intensity drive more revenue. That being said, policy alone would not educate enough the employees about social media marketing. A proper training is the best option if they want to intensify the company’s presence online.
Social media as a marketing platform is not as simple as engaging with their customers and getting more people to know about the company. It is also a powerful tool in which the company can measure their return on investment (ROI). This way, they can demonstrate valid use of the company money.
The primary way of calculating the ROI is through analytics. Here you can measure the number of clicks on certain initiatives, the number of leads generated from those clicks, etc. Once you have the statistics, use this as a way to determine the success of your strategies and how to improve them. Policies do not cover this concept; training, however, comprehensively informs the whole team about the different social networking strategies. Giving guidelines is the first step to training but companies should have a formal social media literacy program which offers certification. This gives their employees more confidence that what they are sharing online is effective and efficient for the company.
On the other hand, for those who plan to land a social media position, there are now a lot of service providers that offer courses in social media. Their programs are not exclusive to a single company but they train people to work as a social media expert on whatever company they wish, and legitimately so because they provide certificates of completion. Courses in social media commonly discuss the basics, tactics on how to reach social media goals, defining strategies, advertising, metrics and measurements, and a whole lot more.
Some companies might be satisfied with knowing the basics of social media, and that they could not trouble themselves by investing in a training program. But nowadays, educating the employees on how to enhance their social media strategies has become less and less of a problem. There are so many tools that can inform you about social networking. You can either apply in an online social media course or read related books and articles. Settling for less is not an option now. So if you want to measure your success online, the company should know how to properly utilize and understand their social networking accounts. And this is effectively achieved through gaining professional literacy on social media.
