Social media marketing has become an integral part of any marketing campaign, but it’s also something that’s always changing. What worked 5 years ago doesn’t necessarily work today. That’s why it’s so important to get ongoing training, and online social media marketing courses are a great way to keep your skills up to date.
Of course, the problem lies in choosing the right social media marketing course among thousands of online courses. You need to make sure you’re taking classes that have current, useful information taught by leading experts and professionals.
I’ve reviewed and ranked the best social media marketing courses online, ranking them on cost, curriculum, instructor credentials, student reviews, and other important factors (click here to learn about our entire Editorial Process & Methodology for product reviews).
What are the Best Social Media Marketing Courses Online in 2024?
Here are our picks for the top online social media marketing classes you can take now…
1. Social Media Marketing (Udacity)
Social Media Marketing | Udacity
Explore the major social media platforms, learn how to manage your social media presence, utilize both organic and paid advertising strategies, and develop effective content tailored for each platform in this powerful online course.
Price
$249 a month or $846 for 4-month access (see our Udacity pricing guide to learn more)
Duration
4 weeks
If you’re looking for a primer on organic and paid social media marketing, this course is a fantastic option.
With 6 in-depth modules and a capstone project, the course teaches you everything from the fundamentals of social media marketing to advanced organic and paid campaign strategies to take brands to the next level.
What I love about this course is it ends with a project where you actually go through the process of creating an organic and paid strategy for a skincare brand so you get real world experience you can apply on the job.
What You Will Learn
- The fundamentals of social media marketing
- How to create and adapt content for social media platforms
- How to grow your organic social media reach
- How to effectively manage a paid social media advertising campaign
2. Threads (Udacity)
Price
Duration
45 minutes
Social media is always evolving, and marketers have to be on the forefront to stay ahead of the competition. As new platforms and cannels pop up, it’s important to know how to assess them properly to determine if they’re worth the time and investment.
This short free course takes a look at Threads to determine where it fits (if anywhere) in your social media marketing strategy. While this course isn’t the most in depth out there, it’s worth taking a little time to explore it to learn more about the platform and how to assess other upcoming social media channels.
What You Will Learn
- What Threads is
- How Threads might fit into a company’s social media strategy
- How to determine if a new social media channel is worth investing time and marketing resources in
3. Become a Digital Marketer Nanodegree (Udacity)
Become a Digital Marketer Nanodegree (Udacity)
Learn by doing with hands-on experience in live campaigns, guided by industry experts. Kickstart your career equipped with a comprehensive understanding of digital marketing from all angles.
Price
$249 per month or $846 for 4-month access
Duration
3 months ( 10 hours per week)
This is a complete digital marketing series that’s designed to help you master all aspects of digital marketing, including social media marketing.
Covering everything from social media and SEO-based marketing to email marketing and paid digital advertising, the Nanodegree program from Udacity offers the most in-depth learning experience of any of the courses on this list.
What I really like about this program is its practical focus. Unlike programs that concentrate on theory, this Nanodegree emphasizes real-world application, with each module including a project that allows students to apply what they’ve learned in actual business contexts.
What You Will Learn
- Complete digital marketing competency
- How to collect and analyze digital marketing data
- Digital marketing tech
- Future digital marketing trends to be aware of
4. Social Media Marketing: Top Tips for Growing Your Followers & Going Viral (Skillshare)
Price
Skillshare offers a 1-Month Free Trial. After that, the price is $99 per year or $29 a month. See our Skillshare review for more info.
Duration
1 hr 6 min
For a marketer to grow the followers of any social media page of their business, this social media marketing course can prove to be very fruitful in building a solid brand presence. So entrepreneurs can benefit by taking this course and handling their social media pages with ease without having a manager handle it.
The course is meant for beginners with a total of 11 lessons to go through them and make the correct use of social media to reach the target audience and tap into the large market cost-effectively.
From shares to likes and comments, all the basics are taught through this course, which is essential for social media marketing success.
This social media marketing course has a lot of takeaways that can be implemented by especially a new startup to market their business.
What Will You Learn
- How to grow followers of a business
- How to create a perfect bio for Facebook or Instagram
- Creation of compelling social media posts
- How to decode the analytics of social media data
- Tips for editing images
- Introduction to some of the popular social media platforms
5. Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate (Coursera)
Price
Free to audit, paid upgrades available for full course experience
Duration
7 months (2 hours per week)
When it comes to social media marketing, Meta (or Facebook, as it’s formerly known), is one of the most popular platforms out there. Simply put, you can’t ignore it, and you have to learn how to market on the platform effectively.
The Meta Social Media Marketing Certificate is designed for beginners with almost no experience.
This series of 6 online courses is essential for instilling beginners with basic skills for social media marketing. The curriculum for these courses is industry-relevant and helps prepare you for positions in social media marketing in the industry. Available with different subtitles, the course requires no prior education or experience.
The online marketing certificate program consists of 6 courses with a series of video lectures and readings followed by assignments and projects that are beneficial in developing skill sets.
What Will You Learn
- How to create effective advertising campaigns
- How to analyze advertising campaigns
- How to create paid ads
- How to formulate a compelling brief for paid ads
- How to create ads using Meta Ads Manager
- How to edit ads
- How to identify problems in ads in Meta Ads Manager
- How to create an impactful social media presence
- How to manage social media profiles/platforms
- How to develop marketing content
- How to perform Instagram marketing, and ad management
6. Social Media Marketing Specialization from Northwestern University (Coursera)
Price
Free to audit, paid upgrades available for full course experience
Duration
7 months (2 hours per week)
This Specialization course on Coursera consists of 6 powerful, in-depth courses that help you build foundational social media marketing skills.
Each social media marketing course in this series has hands-on projects to test the skills learned via readings and lectures.
These courses are designed to give insights into social analytics and the relevant tools for analysis.
The courses will provide you with practical examples and the proper methodologies and tools needed for social media marketing.
What Will You Learn
- How to analyze the big data in the social media world
- How to become a paid influencer
- What infographics are and how they can be used
- How to demonstrate real-time social media marketing results
- How to connect to a target market
- How to viral a content
7. Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content from University of Pennsylvania (Coursera)
Price
Free to audit, paid upgrades available for full course experience
Duration
4 hours
Ever thought about how different ideas take off or why they flop?
This social media marketing course has been designed to teach the strategies for delivering and implementing successful ideas that spread like wildfire online. It gives tips to teach effective marketing techniques for products or ideas.
Some well-known professors teach this popular course at the University of Pennsylvania. The online course is free of cost, or you can pay to earn a shareable certificate upon completion.
What Will You Learn
- How to make sticky ideas
- How to use word of mouth for effective marketing
- How to use social influence for formulating behavior
- How to create online viral content
- How to promote ideas on social media platforms and other digital channels
- How to shape products and services using the power of people
- How to use influence for success
8. Social Marketing Certification (Hootsuite)
Price
$199
Duration
6 hours
The course consists of videos and quizzes to cover a wide range of social media profile optimization topics. The course is for beginners to develop the fundamentals of social media advertising and implement the right strategies with deep insights.
What Will You Learn
- How to optimize social media profiles
- How to do social advertising
- Introduction to social networks
- How to set goals and KPIs
- How to create an effective content strategy
- How to do paid social media advertisements
9. Social Media Marketing Mastery (Udemy)
Price
Regularly $174.99 (often goes on sale)
Duration
The course can be completed in 10-hours.
The course has a total of 33 articles and other 32 resources that can be downloaded. The course has been taken by 5000 students up till now. Right now, the course is relatively cheap.
For beginners, this course can be an excellent resource to teach them about social media marketing from scratch. If you are looking to market your own business across different social media platforms, perhaps this course is the right fit for you!
What Will You Learn
- Introduction to several social media platforms for marketing such as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
- How to do blogging to promote content
- Creation of SEO-optimized content and tools
- How to manage social media advertising
- Tips for SEO optimizing the Facebook page
- How to get reviews on Google Business
- How to create a LinkedIn page for a business or a company
- How to use Google Ads for promotion
- How to publish videos on youtube and growth of the youtube channel
- Tips to get a video ranked #1
- How to make an SEO optimized YouTube channel
10. Social Media Marketing Certification (Hubspot)
Price
Free
Duration
4 hours
This is yet another valuable course for the new age marketers to use technology to take their businesses to new heights.
The course is designed to teach you to break away from the clutter of TVCs and traditional media platforms and switch to social media platforms to deliver eye-catching content to attract an audience.
What Will You Learn
- How to develop an effective social media strategy
- How to monitor social media metrics
- How to measure ROI on social media
- How to create appealing content for social media
- How to increase reach
- How to develop a good customer base
- How to create ads on social media
- How to gauge customers’ perception of the content published
- What is the right time to air ads
- How to market a new business on the social media platform
11. Social Media Content Strategy (Fiverr)
Price
$46
Duration
1.4 hrs
The course offered by Fiverr takes you through the world of social media to introduce the main components through which content strategy can be created and delivered on social media platforms.
Individuals looking to earn extra cash through marketing gigs on Fiverr should enroll in this course to learn social media marketing basics and have clarity.
What Will You Learn
- How to use empathy mapping to get customer insights
- How to create a social media strategy on your own
- How to gain gigs on Fiverr
- How to identify and define your audience
- How to set proposals for the proper gigs
- The pricing strategy
- The right skills that clients look for in a social media content creator
- How to gain reviews on content created
A Final Word
Whether you want to build your own business or you’re a freelancer looking to offer marketing services, becoming knowledgeable and skilled at social media marketing is absolutely essential for success in today’s marketplace.
Thankfully, learning social media marketing has become pretty easy thanks to some of the great courses that are now available online.
An online social media course lets you to learn on your own time, at your own pace, and from wherever you want in the world.
Remember, most of these course platforms let you either audit the classes for free or enroll in free trials to check things out before committing, so make sure to take advantage of that!
Have any questions about our guide to the best social media marketing courses online? Let us know by commenting below.
