Social Media Takeover: Using Experiential Learning to Teach Social Media Marketing

The opportunities in social media management and digital marketing strategy continue to expand as the profession evolves. Social media has become central for communication around the globe, but social marketers struggle with strategy and planning skills. The client-based activity outlined in this study facilitates the development of skills related to social media content creation and social media strategy with the aim of promoting transformative learning using experiential learning activities. Courses: This semester-long activity can be implemented in media communication, strategic communication, and social/digital marketing courses. The assignment could be adapted to courses in other areas that would benefit from students learning social media content creation and social management tools. For example, this assignment would be apropos for an advertising course where students learn about the art of helping a company stay "on brand" through social media. Likewise, professors teaching public relations courses could adapt this assignment to teach students relationship-building techniques with a company's stakeholders and publics through the use of social media. Additionally, with slight modifications, this assignment can be used by student media advisors to train student media staff. For example, a student newspaper can use this approach to share published stories and promote readership using social media by creating graphics that follow branding guidelines and have a specific goal, such as sharing news. Objectives: With this assignment, students will (1) apply the elements of a social media strategy to create social media content for a brand, and (2) use a social media scheduler to plan a social media strategy.