Foundations of Social Media Strategy

This unit introduces the core components of a digital marketing and social media strategy, including brand versus business model distinctions, audience and persona development, content strategy, platform fundamentals, basic analytics, and emerging tools such as AI and chatbots. Learners will build foundational artifacts—strategic briefs, buyer personas, customer journey maps, KPI frameworks, and integrated content recommendations—that prepare them to design and execute campaigns in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze the components of a digital marketing strategy and differentiate brand versus business model to produce a concise strategic brief for a target organization
• Apply persona development and customer experience mapping to construct at least three detailed buyer personas and corresponding customer journey maps
• Demonstrate the ability to set marketing objectives and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) and use basic big data and analytics concepts to justify targets for reach, engagement, and conversion
• Evaluate content types, platform characteristics (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest), influencer roles, and conversational AI options to recommend an integrated content and platform mix for a hypothetical campaign