Certificate in Social Media Marketing?
Is this for Real?

by Willy Lim
(NetProfitQuest, Singapore)

Our press release on Certificate in Social Media Marketing has generated quite a bit of buzz in the social media sphere.

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In The News

ZDNet Asia: S'pore offers certification for social marketing

938 Live: More SMEs turning to online marketing but not effectively

Capital 95.8 FM: 通过网际网络宣传和行销的中小企业增加

Marketing Interactive: Social Media Course on Offer

MyPaper: More companies using social media, says poll

Omy.sg: Companies using social media should not just feed consumers with information

Straits Times: Asian firms go big on Twitter and Facebook

MIS Asia: First regional certification in social media marketing is launched in Malaysia

TechWeb: 调查发现亚洲企业倾向利用社交媒体进行营销

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First Processes, Then Technicalities

Social media marketing goes way beyond setting up a facebook page or youtube channel. It has to start with a proper process of formulating a marketing strategy and market positioning, BEFORE even getting onto social media platforms.

"Social Media" is the adjective. "Marketing" is the verb.
Social media marketing is essentially marketing at the core but done on social media platforms.

The problem is: Most people that dive into social media marketing now, DON'T realize this. They ask questions like "Should our company be on Facebook or Youtube?" when instead they should ask "WHY" they should be on it in the first place.

The key is solving this gap is "Education". And not just on the technicalities of social media implementation but also on the processes and "rules of engagement" involved in interacting and responding to social media fans and followers. Social media marketing is more about processes, than technicalities.


Self-taught vs Formal Certification

While businesses and individuals can opt to "trial and error" to get this education and formulate their social media marketing framework, our Certificate in Social Media Marketing course is intended to short-cut this learning curve for participants.

From our survey results, we noticed that although 6 in 10 of the companies surveyed are on Facebook, 3 in 10 said that they did not receive any sales enquiries through online channels, and almost 60 per cent said that less than half of their sales enquiries came via online channels. That's 90 per cent of companies that's not getting much ROI from their social media efforts.

Of course, just like you can self-study for your degree programme without attending any formal classes and still pass the exams, you can self-learn social media marketing and do well with it. However, as with self-studying for degree, it would take much more discipline, determination and research work, to achieve satisfying results in social media marketing.


First Professional, then Expert

No, you don't become an "expert" or "guru" after the course.
You become a professional.

Meaning, you will learn a structured approach to designing, implementing, monitoring, and improving social media marketing campaigns. You only become an "expert" or "guru" after you have applied what you have learned in this course into many real life business scenarios.

In somewhat the same way as when you get a degree in an area of specialization, that doesn't make you an "expert" or "guru" in that field, although the degree does equip you with the knowledge and skills to solve real world challenges in that particular field. Only through many applications of your knowledge into real world scenarios, do you become an "expert" in that particular field.