MKT 259 Social Media Marketing

Social media has helped give consumers a voice, connect them with their friends and other like-minded consumers, and given them considerable power over marketers and brands. This course offers an overview of how marketing has (and has not) changed due to the rise of social media. It will equip students with the relevant knowledge, perspectives, and practical skills required to develop marketing strategies that leverage the opportunities inherent in social media and consumer-to-consumer social interactions for achieving business and marketing goals. The emphasis of this course is on understanding consumers' social interactions, the various social media channels available to marketers, how to build social marketing strategies, and how to track their effectiveness. Also, since social media is heavily technology-driven, we will cover relevant aspects of digital marketing more broadly, as well as emerging topics in electronic commerce, mobile marketing, and social media start-ups.

This course will develop students' ability to create, implement, monitor and modify a social media marketing (SMM) campaign and, ultimately, measure its success against target (Key Performance Indicators) KPIs. Intensive skill-building focus on creating, applying, and integrating the appropriate social media tool to enable marketers to build high-value relationships with their target audiences. The course will focus on key skills such as determining and matching social media tactics with the appropriate target market and developing strategies to engage those audiences using relevant social media channels. The course will focus on key elements such as:
a) audience,
b) campaign objectives,
c) strategic plan,
d) tactics,
e) tools, and
f) metrics to measure campaign performance.