Enrich your social media analytics knowledge with free online courses

According to the Guardian, there has been a surge in enrollments on online learning platforms such as edX, Udemy, and Coursera, which offer free courses. People are definitely using this opportunity! Coursera alone has observed an eightfold (607%) increase in enrollments for social media science, personal development, marketing and humanities courses since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

Udemy saw a jump in courses focused on soft skills and technical training in the last 30 days, according to an April 15 blog post.

Another online education platform, Udacity, is offering a "quarantine special" free access for one month to its programs, which focus on developing job skills and normally value at $399 per month. Udacity observed a 44.8% increase in active users in the period from March 9 to April 6; the platform saw a 73.3% increase in new enrollments.

People are grateful for the online courses initiatives and share their completion certificates or advise others to take free online courses.

YouScan’s word cloud in the self-education topic during the coronavirus outbreak from the end of March till the end of April shows that Coursera is the most frequently used word.

Online courses have been mentioned 184 000 times in the period from March 24 to April 29. It proves that people do spend a lot of time learning online.

In this article, we collected free online courses on marketing, social media analytics, digital marketing, and customer behavior. All of them would help you understand the power of social media analytics and create a strategy for effective customer journeys.

Time to hone your existing skills and learn new things. But don’t forget to practice them using social media intelligence software to get the ultimate advantage of the online world.

We have used YouScan to listen to what people read and listen to during the coronavirus pandemic to enhance their knowledge in marketing and social media analytics. Thanks to the stay-at-home regulations, people all around the world have free access to platforms such as Skillshare, Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and Google Academy. These online courses can boost your career skills while staying at home and drinking a cup of coffee.

If you’re looking to enhance your marketing and research skills in social media analytics or branding, try these courses which collectively offer the full picture of social media data analysis, storytelling, and successful brand reputation management. Once you have an overview and strategy in your notes, you can apply YouScan social media intelligence software to practice your acquired skills.

1. Social Media Marketing Specialization. This course will give you the knowledge of social media analytics tools and focus more on the importance of identifying and tracking influencers on social media. The course also gives you the resources to build a complete social media marketing strategy – from consumer insights to final metrics.

2. Marketing Analytics. And again Coursera offers a marketing analytics course that enables marketers to measure, manage and analyze marketing performance to maximize its effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI). Get insights into customer preferences and trends, which can be further utilized for future marketing and business decisions.

3. The Strategy of Content Marketing. Learn how to develop, organize and implement a content marketing strategy, analyze and measure the effectiveness of content marketing, write compelling copy, use a strategic framework when writing, and build your professional brand and authority through content marketing.

4. Introduction to Personal Branding - learn how to create a personal brand that authentically and effectively communicates your values and professional gifts.

5. Google Analytics Academy. Analytics Academy helps you learn about Google’s measurement tools so that you can boost your business through intelligent data collection and analysis.

6. Understand customer needs and online behaviors. The course helps marketers and researchers to understand their target audiences and learn how to break down data into actionable insights.

7. Learn how to communicate ideas through storytelling and design.You will learn how to communicate your brand positioning statement in an engaging way. Customers like interactive content. They are more engaged when you reach them with storyboards, mind maps, images, and storytelling.

A lot of digital specialists are offering free webinars and podcasts on how to use storytelling.

8. Blogging for business. Ahrefs Academy offers a free course on how to drive not only traffic but customers to your blog. Get insights about an effective SEO strategy along with actionable, clear, and helpful information for your business blog.

If you have managed to dedicate some time to learn free courses, you definitely need to practice these brand new skills. Apart from the theory, social media analytics requires the practical application of knowledge to get the most benefit from learning. And that's where YouScan comes in!

Summing up the skills and knowledge you have acquired, you have learned about how to conduct social marketing research, create a social media marketing strategy along with the importance of exploring influencers and tracking the engagement rate of your content across social media channels. You also learned how to communicate with customers through interactive content. Also, you found out about the importance of understanding customer behavior, interests, and pain points. Finally, you now know how to track the brand’s health and how to manage its reputation successfully.

When you start working with a social media intelligence solution, begin with general analytics such as total mentions, engagement rate, trends detections, location, age, gender, sentiment analysis, and aspect-based analysis. The AI-powered analytics will reveal several insights, and they will be your starting point that would help with setting the goals and building a marketing strategy.

Now, let’s see how YouScan can help you reveal the influencers and track top authors by engagement, influence or the number of mentions. The graph below shows the top authors by engagement in the Starbucks topic from April 1 to April 30. This information allows you to see who mentioned your brand without being paid. You can also see the top authors by mentions and influence.

If you took the course on customer behavior and the importance of revealing users’ interests and the situation where they interact with your brand, now you can apply AI-powered Visual Insights to reveal customers' interests in real-time. The visual analytics detects the scenes where your product is detected, the person who is using it, what objects surround the product, and the action in which the customer is engaged in.

The photo below shows that YouScan has recognized the logo of Starbucks along with the persona, objects, and the scene.

Practice in revealing actionable insights and analyze the users photos to understand when and why they use your product. For McDonald's, YouScan's tools have revealed the following objects, scenes, people, and actions where the brand was mentioned or noticed. Once you have this data, it’s much easier to build a customer profile and understand what drives people to buy your product.

We have shown you only a sneak peek into how social media analytics can work to boost your brand. It reveals many more insights and information if you explore its full potential.

Learning is great, but putting your newly acquired skills into practice is even better. Collect real-time data, get AI-powered analytics and engage with your audience across social media networks with YouScan. Try it free today.