Develop your social media skills strategy tactics creativity copywriting video storytelling effectiveness
If you work in comms or marketing and you’d like to grow your skills, get inspiration, and achieve BIG social media results every day, the Social Media Expert Programme is for you.
The next live courses –
Summer Cohort: Starts 22nd May 2024
Autumn Cohort: Starts 17th September 2024
(Or watch the replays from our Spring 2024 course now!)
Format: Live online (or catch up on recorded replays)
CPD: 16 hours teaching and study for your records
Award: Professional certificate of completion
The Social Media Expert Programme: increase social media engagement, create better content, & a grow your audience.
The Social Media Expert Programme is a 9-week online course where you learn and implement the techniques used by the world’s best social media managers.
Hours of weekly study: with a 90-minute lesson, group work, and self-study
Percentage of people taking the course report improved social media engagement and increased confidence
Comms and marketing pros have taken the course online since 2018
Even the most talented comms professionals struggle
You want to be happier and more confident, in control of successful social media channels that offer your organisation excellent results and useful insights. However…
Your brand’s social media doesn’t perform as well as you’d like
You feel overwhelmed by a workload that involves a zillion last-minute requests
Sometimes you feel like a broken record as a topic you have to promote all the time feels repetitive
You sometimes feel creatively stuck
You’re not sure how to bring dry content to life
Maybe you even feel a bit lonely, especially if nobody else at work does your job, you are in a tiny comms team, or you have been working from home a lot
of in-house comms team leaders experience regular challenges with content creation. This course teaches you tips & tricks to make it easier.
is the average engagement rate percentage with brand posts on Twitter. You can do SO much better than this!
percent of comms professionals often or always feel their work isn't as creative as they’d like it to be. This course will get your creative mojo back!
You’re not alone. We’ve got this!
This online course helps you:
Feel confident you know just what to do to promote your brand brilliantly on social media
Be able to generate lots of good ideas about how to make fresh content that grabs your audience’s attention
Be skilled in quickly producing creative and effective content
Stop being afraid of saying the wrong thing, using the wrong tone of voice or creating the wrong content
Grow a network of friends from your study group who support and champion you
Get colleagues noticing how your social media posts get amazing reactions
Learn to LOVE your job again
How the Social Media Expert programme works
You join 9 weekly live and interactive video lessons taught by award-winning social media expert, Hel Reynolds.
(Can’t make the live session? Just catch up on replay at a time that works for you.)
Each weekly session lasts two hours: a lesson that lasts around 90 minutes with an added 30 minutes for group discussions and co-working on the tasks and exercises set.
After each lesson you’ll be set some homework to put your learning into practice. You’ll get support in our study group if you get stuck.
At the end of the course you work on a mini-project and submit it to us for feedback.
Online classes on Wednesday mornings
The education and inspiration
Join us live! Or – if work or life gets in the way – catch up any time after on replay.
Group discussions with peers
Deepen your learning and connect
Sit at our online tables to learn and network with other comms pros on the course.
The Social Media Expert Award
Show what you’ve achieved
Complete the programme to earn your Social Media Expert certificate and portfolio.
The skills you need for the job
The programme is designed to give students the best learning experience that is about growing confidence and expertise.
Each module will give you practical skills that can be immediately implemented in your work.
Live lessons take place on Wednesdays from 10.30am – 12.30pm.
Lesson 1: Social media strategy
- How audiences behave online
- Understanding algorithms
- The Comms Creatives social media strategy model
- The secret to creating social media communities and campaigns with impact
Lesson 2: Analyse your brand's social channels
- Why each channel needs different content and tactics
- PESO: How social fits in the rest of the comms and marketing mix
Lesson 3: Your social media audiences
- Why you need to segment and profile your audiences
- Audience empathy skills
- How to research audiences
- Working audience empathy work into the content plan
Lesson 4: Creative content formats
- Understanding what kind of content makes people leave positive comments
- Ten engaging content formats that will get your audiences talking
Lesson 5: Creative content planning
- How to plan in a manageable way
- Creative content idea generation
- Planning tools you can use to make it work seamlessly
- The BE EPIC content model
- Using your content planning template
Lesson 6: Tone & writing tips for social media
- How writing for social differs from writing for other comms channels
- How to write irresistible copy for Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok posts
- Building your tone of voice framework
Lesson 7: Captivating visuals and design for social media posts
- What makes an effective image for social media
- Principles of design for your social media
- How to lay out a visual social media posts
- Make your imagery accessible
Lesson 8: Evaluating and reporting on your social media
- Why you need to make time to evaluate and report
- What to measure and what to ignore
- How and who to report to
- Combining the quantitive with the qualitative
- Exploring the Comms Creatives template report
Lesson 9: Optimise your social media content
- Engagement strategies
- Repurposing and rewriting
- Posting tips and tricks to get the most from your content
“All our engagement has gone up, as have our page likes.”
I was really unsure about how effective online only training would be, and whether a webinars would really be engaging, but I loved it and it worked brilliantly.
2024 Su,mmer course begins May22nd
About your course tutor
Hel Reynolds is an award-winning communications creativity expert, and she runs Comms Creatives with her sister, Lesley.
Each year, she trains hundreds of communications professionals from brands like BBC Studios, Manchester Council and Macmillan Cancer Support to unleash their creativity, with engaging online courses that get people fighting their fears and growing their social media and creativity skills.
She’s worked on strategy and content with brands like Welsh Government, Mind Cymru and thand she’s also led in-house comms teams in the public and private sector.
She draws those cartoons you might see popping up all over your Linkedin and Twitter, and writes the very popular Big Yellow Newsletter, dropping comms inspiration into over 10,000 inboxes each week.
Hel lives in Wales, and when people call her childish, she takes it as a compliment, & she is usually attached to a mug of coffee and a cat or two.
Join learners from:
Enrolment requirements
This programme isn’t designed for social media beginners. If you’re not sure you meet the requirements, please get in touch to discuss if this training is suitable for you.
You work in a communications and/or marketing job (in-house or agency)
You already have some experience working alone or part of a team in a paid comms or marketing role.
OR
You have created content that is posted to a brand's social media accounts
You may volunteer or be an intern, or have some other experience in using social media professionally. This will be a challenge, but as long as you’re happy to learn alongside more experienced comms professionals, we’ll give you the support you need to take you to your next level
Book your place now - max 30 places available on each cohort
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Individual enrolment
- Live online training session with award-winning social media expert Hel Reynolds
- One year access to all Social Media Expert Programme training resources
- 10% discount for non-profit orgs
Comms team enrolment
- Live online training sessions with award-winning social media expert Hel Reynolds
- One year access to all Social Media Expert Programme training resources
- 10% discount for non-profit orgs
Premium team upgrade
- Live online training sessions with award-winning social media expert Hel Reynolds
- One year access to all Social Media Expert Programme training resources
- One day consultancy with Hel, conducted via Teams/Zoom
- Annual team membership of Comms Creatives Academy
- 10% discount for non-profit orgs
Or you can arrange registration and payment by invoice
What we do that’s different
In a nutshell: it’s not just learning, we get you creating real work that you can be proud of.
We are on your side each week, helping you overcome obstacles and cheering you on each week.
Everything we teach works in the real world – no boring and irrelevant theory or endless case-studies.
It’s not formal and solemn, or packed with jargon.- we have fun while we learn, and keep it real.
Learn by doing
True professional development needs education, inspiration and implementation.
That’s why we pace the course over nine weeks. Each week we teach you a short lesson, then:
- Help you think of cool ideas for your brand
- Set you tasks to try a new technique out for real
- And next week we’re there for you to analyse, celebrate and improve on what you did
Build your portfolio
You’ll be doing some of your best work on this course!
There are a hundred good reasons for you to document your best work – this is why as part of the course, we’ll get you building an impressive social media portfolio.
You’ll get a clear sense of achievement and reminder of your value, and you can show employers just how strategic and creative your work is.
Achieve your goals
Work hard and this course will get you those results!
You’ll see your performance on social media be measurably more successful.
And you’ll be happier in your work and life, because you feel confident and waste less time on tactics that don’t work.You’ll be able to demonstrate your strategic and creative skills effectively in all your work.
FAQs
Here are some of the most common questions we get about the Social Media Expert programme.
Get in touch if you have a question we haven’t answered here.
Is this training suitable for my industry (B2B, public sector, charity, retail, corporate, etc.)?
We make sure that the principles and techniques you learn apply to communications professionals working in any industry. We use case studies and examples from a wide range of organisations and we also ensure you have time to discuss how you can make the lessons work for your brand.
I feel like I should know this stuff already.
We all start somewhere. This course will quickly build your confidence and skills. Don’t worry about what you should know and get excited about what you’re about to learn!
I’m not in the UK, can I still join?
You are most welcome! We’ve had plenty of comms professionals from the Republic of Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand join us. Just let us know when you book so we can make sure you have everything you need and time zones correct in your diary. And you just have to ask for clarification if we say something that sounds weird to you, or if your tutor Hel’s Welsh accent sounds funny.
What if it’s not advanced enough? Or too basic?
Will it be too much work? My job is already WAY too busy as it is!
Oh, we know the feeling! That’s why we have created this online course to be flexible and bitesized.
Making 2.5 hours free per week for 9 weeks is no easy task. But it will pay off in the improvements and tips you learn to create better content in a shorter amount of time.
You get access to all the training materials for a whole year, so if for some reason you can’t study, or join us for live sessions, it’s all there for you when you have time to catch up.
We’re on your side, and will support you as best we can to fit this around your work and life so it feels like it is saving you time in the long run.
What if I can’t make live sessions?
No worries. You can catch up on the replays any time you want – for a whole year!
How can I convince my boss to approve me taking this programme?
Show them how investing in you and your company will resut in huge imporvements to the results you get from social media.
We have an email template that you can use to send your boss or traning manager that will outline why it’s a worthy investment.
This is more than we would expect to spend on training - is it worth the investment?
This course is the best value programme available and is an investment, not a cost. As well as being lower price than equivalent courses, nowhere else can you learn highly effective techniques and proven methods to massively increase your social media effectiveness. You’ll get world-class and innovative teaching, personal attention, as well as templates, tips and tricks that will save you time and make you more productive. Some courses will be cheaper, but none will get you the same boost to your social media engagement and reach.
We’re a charity/public sector organisation - can we get a discount?
The cost reflects the quality of training, expertise and attention you receive. However we offer a 10% non-profit discount to make this more affordable for charity and public sector organisations, enter the promo code ‘nonprofit10’ at checkout or mention it when arranging enrolment by invoice.
Want to run this course in-house just for your team?
Get in touch to arrange your:
Live and interactive online course, delivered via Zoom or Teams* exclusively for your organisation.
Two-day version: £4,999+ VAT for a group of up to 10 people. Extra delegates £100+VAT per person.
Face-to-face onsite course with Hel at your offices in any UK location, subject to availability
Two-day version: £6,799+VAT for a group of up to 10 people. Extra delegates £100+VAT per person.
Ready to get started?
Get in touch, or create an account