Learn how to use social media for business
Take the free course
What is it about?
Want to learn how to make social media work for a business? Then the free online course we have developed for Tech City’s Digital Business Academy is for you.
You’ll learn about the approach and social media platforms that successful businesses use to earn attention, drive sales, deliver exceptional customer service and build loyalty over time. On this practical, inspiring course we focus on the essence of social media for business – building rewarding online relationships with as many people as possible to help a small business prosper and grow.
It’s video-based, with plenty of exercises, templates, tools and ideas to get you started or improve what you’re doing on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
What will I learn?
- Why use social media for business
- From followers to fans – how an online community helps grow your business
- What content to share and how to find your content sweet spot
- Which platforms to use
- How to make the most of your time on social media
- How to measure what you do and improve over time
It takes approximately 5-6 hours, including activities completed at your own pace.
Who is it for?
- You are building a business and want to include social media in your marketing plan
- You already use social media in your business but want better results
- You want to get a job or use your freelance skills in social media marketing
- You want to use your time on social media more effectively
- You’ve never used social media for business and want to know what it’s all about
What’s involved?
- 6 sections, each taking no more than an hour to complete (including activities)
- Learn from 3 successful small businesses in case studies featured throughout the course, plus national businesses too
- Quizzes to check your understanding
- Share your own online experience and learn from other DBA learners
- Apply what you learn to your own business
Included in the course are stories of three fantastic west-country based businesses who are getting social media right – online beer club BeerBods, Clutton Cox Solicitors, and Wriggle (a fabulous discount dining app). These case studies of social media success are really enlightening.
As their stories prove, social media really can make a huge difference to your business, any business, if you get it right.
Take the course and help us spread the word so everyone in the UK gets to learn how to master social media for their businesses. Completely free!!
Take the free online social media course
Valuable Content and the Digital Business Academy
In May 2015 we were set the task of creating an online course in social media skills by the government-backed Digital Business Academy at Tech City. Like the Academy, we recognise that there’s a digital skills gap for small businesses and start ups in the UK, and that the lack of solid social media skills is a missed opportunity for many.
So, alongside Cambridge University and UCL (yup – we’re http://ambienbuy.net pretty pleased with that company!) we created this video-based online training course for the Academy.
“Once businesses embrace and understand how to be a part of the growing digital economy it can be a step change in their business. Social media is a huge part of that, but it is often perceived by time-poor business owners as an ‘add on’ – something people think they ‘have to’ do rather than want to.
We were looking for an organisation that could cut through these ideas and provide real-world savvy and flair when creating the course, while bringing practical business tools to the table. Valuable Content are all that and more – we are very excited to start working with them on building a course fit for today’s entrepreneurs. Also coming from Bristol, one of the Europe’s most digitally aware cities, means we can leverage the expertise of the Bristol cluster and allow us to feed that back into the Digital Business Academy learning community.” -Richard Dennys, Programme Director, Digital Business Academy
All courses are free to all in the UK, and the one we’ve created is to inspire small business owners to get their online social media presence right. Here’s an introduction.
Press coverage
Take the free online social media course
As soon as I arrived at TechCity in the spring of 2015 to the run the Digital Business Academy, I needed to commission an online learning course on Social Media Management from an expert in their field. Luckily I have been aware of Sonja and her company Valuable Content more or less since their inception. Therefore I invited them to join the request for proposal process hoping that they would be keen to become part of our programme by submitting a proposal.
It was a total no-brainer to appoint them. From the quality of their video-based proposal right through the final delivery and ongoing support of their course, working with Sonja and team has been a complete pleasure. The quality of what they have produced is outstanding and even though deep in sometimes technical content and several hours of learning in length, has jumped to being the 2nd most completed course by % of all of the 11 courses we have published and is considered to be a smash-hit of a product by the team here at Tech City UK.
It has been great to have been working with Sonja and Sharon and the rest of the VC team over these past few months and it’s a relationship I hope to continue to build on over the coming months and years.