While most social media platforms started out as sharing tools for private purposes and interests, today, they are an important marketing factor in any business’s online presence. Depending on the platform there are different ways for small business to use and benefit from them. In this section we’ll look at the biggest players in the Social Media landscape, what sets them apart from the rest and what tools you can use to achieve optimal results.

The mother of all social media platforms, Facebook has become an excellent tool for business of all sizes. It offers a wide array of media types with the potential to reach a massive audience. In this section we look at how Facebook as evolved its business features over the years, what it offers today (groups, pages and targeted ads) and how it plans to improve in the future.

Despite, or maybe because of, its limitation of 140 characters per tweet, Twitter has taken social media world by storm since its launch in 2006 and is another vital marketing instrument for small businesses. We check out what the birthplace of the hashtag has to offer today, and how you can use it to build brand awareness, gain followers and the current netiquette.

A must-have for any small business with a physical location who wants to appear in search results. We look at a standard Google + profile, communities, add on tools and hangouts.

Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web? In this part of the social media module we look at how the video platform has evolved from simple viewing platform into a massive multi billion dollar enterprise, with over 3 billion searches per month, and how you can use it for your small business, by vlogging, making online tutorials etc.

With over 1 million advertisers, 8 million business accounts and over 400 million active users, Instagram has become a serious player for passion based businesses and their loyal clientele! We look at the story behind its meteoric rise, the tools Instagram provides today (stories, video, live video) and how to successfully use the platform to drive potential customers to your website.

With a predominantly female user base, Pinterest is another fast growing visually based Social Media platform, that added a variety of business tools for its business users. We’ll take a peek at rich pins, widget builders and some of the success stories using Pinterest from brands such as Burberry, Etsy and Maggi.

Even if you are not playing the corporate game, LinkedIn is not a place to sneer at. With over 433 million users spread over 200 countries, company page profiles, business interest groups and the possibility to blog, LinkedIn offers and is used by an increasing amount of professionals world wide and good place to build authority for you and your business. We’ll look at sections of profiles of companies and individuals at the end of part one of the social media platform overview.

Having many different social media platforms at hand can be a blessing and course. Many an entrepreneur found themselves overwhelmed with juggling multiple accounts while trying to establish their business. We kick off the second part of the social media module by creating a strategy for which platforms should be used as a first choice marketing tool for your brand depending on your target audience.

Once you figured out which social media platforms you are going to use, listening “in” to the ongoing conversation in your field is a good place to start. We look into how to check out what your customers and competitors are doing and saying before you launching your social media channels.

You know which channels you are going to use and know what’s already happening in your field, so it’s time to set a few goals and objectives on how to get there. We look at what will be realistic figures for those as well as optimal posting frequencies on different social media channels to reach your audience.

Even if you have a great strategy and did your homework for the social media channels most effective for your business, without great content the best laid plans will go awry. In this section we’ll cover which type of your own content your target audience will love and how to augment it with additional posts from other authorities in your field.

After getting your content live, tracking and analysing your results is just as much part of the marketing process as planning and scheduling it. We check out different social media tracking tools and options in this part of the module and how you can automate the process with those tools, to make your business life easier.

These days sales funnels are all the rage. No matter which digital marketing guru you’ll follow, sales funnels will be high on the list of topics you’ll have to master in order to sell your product or service. We’ll look at the sales funnel process and where your social media presence fits into the mix.

Closing out the social media module, we’ll explore a few tools that will make managing your social media content a lot easier: Buffer, Hootsuite, IFTTT and Rebel Mouse.