Due to an advising project I’m working at, I reserached the offering in social media education. In particular I focused on USA, Italy and Turkey. Analyzing the informations collected (about 100 training and certification programs) I identified three kind of offerings:
- The Generic one, usually focused on general topics such as “how to build a social media marketing plan” or “the social media management”. The objective of this courses is giving a basic understanding of social media world and contents usually are entry levels. In the description there is a redundancy (spam) of keywords such as strategy, effectiveness, efficiency and go on. This courses are usually targeted on marketing managers and executives, sales managers and sometimes CEO.
- The Technical one, I find out the specialized programs, usually focused on social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN. Here too, descriptions are full of “effectiveness, strategy, efficiency” but add to them the “how to do”. The target are quite the same, but not for the CEO and some developer.
- The Process-Driven one . Not so frequent, these kind of courses and programs are designed on Industry or has a goal-oriented approach, such as: “Social Media in Turism”, “Social Media for Lead Generation” or “Social Media for Chemical”. These programs usually mixes in the right way the strategic and operative approach, giving the basic for both designing and executing a social media plan. [Personal Note: I’m quite proud to find out the Italy as the country using more this approach].
Pointing out to a price-positioning analysis, (no. of hours / price) I found that Generic Courses are the most expensive. The Technical One are the cheapest and the “Goal-Driven” have a wide range of pricing, in relation to specific topic. What all the analyzed trainings are missing is the methodology of teaching, usually avoiding the “Training on the job” and “practical use”.
Is this your perception too ? What would you expect from a training course on social media?
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