Social Media Strategy

Please contact journalismnow@thomsonfoundation.org if you are having difficulties enrolling into this course

 

 

This course carries 6 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits.

 

You can access this course for free if you successfully complete three other courses. You can claim free access using this link

 

COURSE OVERVIEW

It's no good using social media to find stories if you don't have a carefully thought out strategy.  You need to focus and ask yourself, why do you want to use social media.  Set some goals for yourself and your news organisation, learn to use a distinctive 'voice'.  Ask yourself, what do you want to achieve and what audience do you want to reach with your stories

 

"I was inspired by Sue Llewellyn's Social Media Strategy course. I tried out an idea on Twitter to generate some engagement for the science podcast I produce, and got a great result." Pieter from USA

 

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

You will be helped to define a basic social media strategy for yourself by:

• IDENTIFYING your objectives 

• UNDERSTANDING your audience 

• Developing a TONE OF VOICE that suits you 

• Defining your CONTENT STRATEGY 

• PLANNING your resources

• MEASURING your performance 

 

 

MEET YOUR INSTRUCTORS

 

SUE LLEWELLYN is your course instructor.  For the past 10 years, Sue has worked as a trainer for thousands of journalists, teaching them how to use social media. Before that, she was a journalist for 15 years in the BBC Newsroom. 

 

 

Helping Sue is a set of experts in social media (from left to right): 

• Mark Frankel is Social Media Editor of BBC News
• Samantha Barry is head of Social and Emerging Media at CNN
• Esra Dogramaci is senior digital editor at Deutsche Welle
• Fred Mwasa is deputy Editor-in-Chief at Kigali Today. Fred is an experienced journalist with a massive following on Twitter

 

COURSE OUTLINE 

The aim is to help you identify and understand the reasons for using social media and to help you do your job better. The course is divided into two sections:

• Section 1 provides an overview and introduces the course trainer and media experts.
• Section 2 details the five steps of formulating a social media strategy.

You will be asked to work on a strategy document throughout the course.

 

HOW TO PASS:

During the course you will be required to complete various exercises designed to help you build a social media strategy document for yourself or for a media organisation of your choice.

 

TIME COMMITMENT 

You can complete this course within four hours over multiple sessions