Social media and online marketing are among the most effective ways to reach today's audiences. However, many businesses are struggling with how to use these approaches.
The Social Media and Web Marketing diploma program will give you the tools, skills, and knowledge to assist in running campaigns that get results.
In just over a year of study, you'll learn everything you need to know about key areas including content creation, top social media platforms, analytics, and much more.
To solidify what you learn in the classroom, you'll also complete a six-week practicum placement in a real-world setting.
Admission Requirements
High school graduation or equivalent* OR mature student status**.
*From an English language teaching institution.
**19 years of age upon starting classes, and pass college’s admissions test.
This program has been approved by the registrar of the Private Training Institutions Branch (PTIB) of the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training.
Vancouver Career College provides job-ready training that will prepare you for a new career.
The purpose of this course is to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and study techniques to help foster effective learning and a positive educational experience. This course explores many different theories on learning and studying and how these theories can be applied to each student’s individual studying methods in order to develop a method that is both effective and efficient. Effective study habits and productive note-taking are key topics in this course, as well as the importance of values and goals. Through active participation in learner-centred activities, students will explore and practice strategies for setting personal goals, prioritizing tasks, managing time, and managing the stress that arises in school or work situations. This course will also equip students with a sound understanding of matters related to finance, credit, and debt and the critical implications they have on our lives. Students taking this course will complete the Enriched Academy program, which provides comprehensive coverage of financial and money management skills that will allow them to better save, budget, and manage their money and financial situations.
This course presents an introductory look at using a Windows environment computer and the Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). It covers the fundamentals of organizing files and folders, drafting business documents, creating presentations, and reporting data in spreadsheets. Students will have the opportunity to integrate their new skills in office communications tools in assignments related to their program of study. This course relies heavily on practical hands-on activities that allow you to learn the concepts by practicing them on a regular basis.
Students are provided an introduction to marketing practices focusing on problem definition and solution. Topics will include marketing concepts, marketing strategies, and buyer behaviour. The product promotion, distribution, pricing and public relations model are emphasized.
The workplace of the twenty-first century demands excellent communications skills. The focus of this course is on learning writing techniques that ensure effective business communication.
-Achieve an effective style by using precise verbs, concrete nouns, and vivid adjectives
-Write memorandums and e-mail messages that deliver information and make requests
-Write letters and memorandums that request information concisely and promote goodwill
-Apply skillful writing techniques in refusing requests
-Compose carefully planned sales letters
-Write letters of appreciation, congratulation, sympathy, recommendation, and introduction
-Write effective formal and informal reports
-Write a formal report including data, using tables, charts, and graphs
In this course students will be provided the opportunity to review fundamental mathematical skills and apply them in a variety of business context.
This course provides the student with an overview of social media its evolution and how it has come to occupy such an important role in how companies do business and connect with their customers. The course will explore how social media can be integrated into a company’s traditional and online marketing initiatives. Students will learn how to leverage social media and its tools to implement reputation management, customer service, marketing, contests and other strategies. The importance of defining and setting goals as well as identifying the appropriate key performance indicators will be covered. The course will provide an overview of the various social media platforms, examine their similarities and differences and these can be leveraged for different marketing initiatives. Students will learn how to plan a social media persona and explore the fundamental features and functionality of the different platforms such as hashtags, sharing, and tagging.
Content posted to social media platforms is potentially viewed by millions of viewers. It is imperative that the content is appropriate and meets the goals of the posting. This course will explore the different types of content that is posted to social media. Students will learn to write as their online persona and explore the different writing styles. The do’s and don’ts of writing are examined to ensure content has the desired effect. Students will learn to write with the purpose of responding to criticism and manage reputation. Finally students will learn how to write for marketing purposes including sales and lead generation.
In the social media world, going viral is a good thing! The goal of creating content and posting it to social media platforms is to have it go viral. This course focuses on the techniques and methods and strategies used to create content that is shareable with the intent of having it go viral. Students will learn sharing and collaborative strategies, hashtags and the creation of contests specifically to achieve the intended goals.
Knowing what people and competitors are saying about you and your business is crucial information that allows a business to react and respond to trends, public image and ultimately make important decisions that impact the business as a whole. In this course students will discover how to capture what others are saying about you and your business. The course will explore the different social media tools and software available to aggregate and find what others are saying. Students will learn how to capture KPI’s, sentiment, followers, negative content and complaints.
Facebook is without question one of the most recognized and used social media platform. It goes without saying that it is an extremely important if not crucial platform when it comes to social media marketing initiatives. This course will provide a more in depth look at Facebook the platform, its role, its use, tools and its features in particular how these lend themselves well to social media marketing initiatives. Students will discover Facebook blueprint curriculum and certification paths. The course will explore the concept of organic posts versus promoted posts and advertising in relation to Facebook.
This course will provide a more in depth look at the Twitter platform, its role, its use, tools and its features in particular how these can be used for social media marketing initiatives. The course will explore the concept of organic posts versus promoted posts and advertising in relation to Twitter. Students will learn how to implement marketing strategies and initiatives using Twitter as the deployment vehicle, use twitter to reach and maintain a community and reach influencers and other members to grow a community. The course also explores how to create and manage Twitter Ads and build a content creation strategy.
This course provides an overview of the Instagram Platform and its primary function as a mobile photo and video sharing service. Students will learn how marketing initiatives work in the Instagram platform. The course will explore and compare organic posts, promoted posts and advertising in the Instagram platform.
The purpose of this course is to provide the students with an overview of additional social media platforms. Students will be provided with an overview of the function role and tools associated with a variety of newer or more specialized social media platforms including SnapChat, Reddit, LinkedIn and others. By gaining an understanding of the target audiences for these platforms, students will learn when to use these platforms and what types of marketing initiatives can be supported by them. Students will discover and explore the advertising opportunities within each platform.
YouTube is the most popular video sharing platform. This offers a multitude of possibilities for businesses to efficiently expose and display their products directly to potential customers globally. This course will explore in greater depth the marketing potential attached to YouTube. Students will explore the platform, its function, role, its features and tools and in particular how these can be leveraged for marketing strategies. Students will discover Google YouTube curriculum for YouTube ads and how it is used. Finally, the course will explore organic videos versus promoted videos versus advertising in relation to YouTube.
This course is intended as a wrap-up course to explore future trends in social media and how the future trends may impact social media marketing. After a firm understanding of the present status of social media in the marketing landscape, students will gain insight into where social media is headed and its evolving role in marketing. Students will discover not only full integration of social media marketing strategies into one’s online profile but also how they tie into one’s offline marketing initiatives.
Digital data analytics is used to gain insights into consumer behaviors with data being collected from all forms of digital internet traffic. By analyzing data, students will gain insights into marketing effectiveness and assess potential business opportunities in the internet space. Students will study measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of digital data to understand and optimize marketing channels. In this course, students will utilize digital data tracking systems for data usage and marketing metrics, interpreting results so that they can create, convert and enhance customer relationships.
In this course students will be able to create a search engine-friendly website. Students will be introduced to the website planning process, and discover the web design tools, principles and strategies that will allow them to design create and publish a fully functional web site. Students will become familiar with web hosting principles and integrate social media effectively on their websites. Topics include publishing fundamentals, graphic design principles and the creative aspect of web design, website security and analytics, Integration of e-commerce components such as shopping carts, Customer Relationship Management and loyalty programs. Finally, students will learn to integrate multimedia, online advertising and streaming channels to their websites.
This course will introduce students to the content and skills needed to build effective search engine marketing campaigns including Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In this course students will learn how to use SEO best practices by examining how to build a website and mobile websites, to take advantage of key words, category hierarchies that have great and appropriate Google friendly contents, and use methods that make ranking effective.
In this course students will learn the importance of proper keyword research and related tools. The course will explore how to effectively nitrate keywords into content and pages within a site. Students will gain an understanding of the limitations of search engine optimization and how to tie into search engine marketing through buying keywords and planning an SEM strategy for highly competitive keywords that you want to show up for.
This course will explore the use of keyword research and trends to help strategize a search engine marketing plan as part of a digital marketing strategy. Students will learn how a robust competitor analysis is a key component to understanding the competition that you know versus those competing on your keywords that may not even be in the same vertical as you are. The course will examine the different types of bidding strategies and how to define and set goals and key performance indicators. Students will learn to plan a search engine marketing strategy and track its success using budgets and return on investment approaches. Various search engine marketing platforms will be presented to discover their similarities and differences and students will explore the different targeting options including demographics, location and remarketing. Finally, the course will provide an overview of automated bidding software tools and Google AdWords certification curriculum.
This course focuses on content and display marketing and its relation to Search Engine Marketing. Content / display marketing will be examined in comparison to Search Engine Marketing to identify similarities and differences. Students will learn how to integrate a content / display plan as part of a digital marketing strategy. Different content / display platforms will be presented, compared and contrasted. The course will continue to explore Google AdWords curriculum and certifications.
This course continues to explore marketing initiatives with a focus on Video and multi-media marketing. Video/multi-media marketing will be presented and compared to content and display marketing highlighting the similarities and differences. Students will learn how to integrate a Video/multi-media plan as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. The common video and multimedia platforms will be reviewed, compared and contrasted. The use of Google and YouTube AdWords will continue to be explored.
This course focuses on the importance of tracking search engine marketing initiatives and the tools and processes used to properly track them. Goal setting and defining the appropriate KPI’s will be reinforced. Students will learn the importance of tracking ROI and how to properly do this. Customer Relationship Management software, what they do, how they are used and the various CRM tools will be presented. Students will gain a more detailed perspective of Web Analytics, what Web Analytics do and the different Web Analytics tools that are available. Finally, students will learn how to tie all the analytics and reporting tools together through API’s and dashboard software.
This course will provide the student with the know-how to effectively plan, budget and resource social media marketing campaigns. Students will develop the skills to create a social media marketing strategy. Everything from budgeting, personnel selection and analytics, to reputation management and social customer service is covered in this course.
This course will provide the students with the opportunity to integrate their acquired knowledge and skills to create a social media strategy for a company of choice. Students will be required to create a variety of social media profiles and integrate them into an online/offline strategy.
This field placement will prepare students for their transition to the workforce. The practicum will be completed in a social media marketing environment working under the supervision of experienced personnel. Students are provided with a description of duties he/she will perform on the job. At the end of the placement, the practicum host will provide an evaluation on the student and the student will provide the college with an evaluation on the placement.
This course builds on the skills learned in the Student Success Strategies course or its equivalent. It provides information on how to use the communication skills learned in order to make a successful presentation to a prospective employer. Students also learn how to uncover the hidden job market and identifyemployment opportunities. Self-assessment during this course allows students to identify their personal skills that are transferable to the work place and to describe these skills to a prospective employer. Students may be videotaped during a mock interview and will participate in the analysis of their performance in the “interview”.