How To Get Started With Social Media: 42 Incredible Resources For Beginners
Tackling ‘Social Media’ can feel like an Everest of a challenge. If you are starting from square one, and you want to build up your presence in these crowded, noisy digital spaces: how on earth do you go about it?
How should your social media channels really function as an effective part of your Inbound Marketing strategy? When should you post, what should you say, and how should you engage with others to get them to follow you?
Truth is, figuring out how to crack social media marketing is no easy feat.
That’s why, in this article, we’re going to point you in the direction of everything you need to get started.
Here’s a rundown of the top social media marketing resources in 2020.
Ready? Let’s dive in .
Social Media Blogs
1. Social Media Today
A massive, holistic resource for your SoMe needs, Social Media Today also includes an active community and a library of content to help you with your burning questions. Up-to-date and relevant, this is a great place to check in regularly to be on the cusp of the latest trends and happenings.
2. Duct Tape Marketing
Although an agency, Duct Tape Marketing have a HUGE blog resource that can help with many of the questions and queries relating to social media and beyond. They mainly host listicles on ways to improve performance, and they’re well worth checking out.
3. The Future Buzz
This blog has a wider remit than just looking at social media on its own, taking a broader look at the world of digital marketing. It’s worth a look, as it will help you put your social media efforts in the wider context of all your digital efforts. Their aim is to help you ‘build organic buzz and long-term visibility’.
4. Social Media Explorer
Broken down across ‘Tools & Tips’, ‘News & Noise’, ‘Movers & Makers’ and ‘Cases & Causes’ (I feel someone at Social Media Explorer loves alliteration!) these guys have all aspects covered, from giving you advice on how to perform better, latest industry news, key players and case studies.
5. Rebekah Radice
Rebekah has a business to push — and who can blame her — but it’s still worth checking out her blog as she obviously has some years and experience in the trade. Her blog includes interesting takes on video production and converting to sales, which you can take notes on.
6. The Social Media Hat
What we really like about The Social Media Hat is that you can navigate all their articles by social media channel. So whether you’re focused on LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram, you can head to the navigation bar and filter per channel.
7. Social Media Biz
This website is pretty clunky and not the prettiest, but there’s a lot of content there and it’s regularly updated. If you still haven’t had your fill of SoMe content, you can head here for even more further reading!
Social Media eBooks & Guides
8. The Complete Guide to Social Media for B2B Marketers
This is a light, two page guide that helps you personalize your communications and connect with clients through the buying cycle.
9. The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing
Supported with videos, the production values on this guide are high. It takes you right from the very beginning of getting started with social media, and is extremely thorough — definitely one for those who want to be taken from square one
10. How To Use Instagram for Business
Hubspot have paired up with Iconosquare to bring you this guide about getting to grips with Instagram for your business. It tells you about hashtags, posts vs stories, setting goals and measuring success and also how you can use competitions to grow your followers quickly.
11. How To Get More Twitter Followers
Another collab from Hubspot, this time with ResearchNowUS. This guide gets into the nitty gritty details of how to grow your followers, how to captivate with visual content, how to run campaigns to increase ROI, when to use adverts, and how your followers can become loyal brand advocates.
12. Listen Up! The Definitive Guide to Social Media Listening
Social Media is not just about what you post, it’s about what others are posting too. Knowing what is going on is called social media ‘listening’ — this is important! If that’s a new term for you, take a look at this eBook now.
13. Social Media Marketing GPS
A book of interviews with movers and shakers in social media, all written in the form of tweet communications. This is bite-sized insights from people who know! They’re letting you in on their thoughts about trends, metrics, attitudes and business challenges, amongst many other things.
14. The Perfect Pinterest Formula eBook
Pinterest is an absolute search goldmine, empowering businesses to reach certain demographics in a way that other channels cannot touch. It is skewed female, but is growing in other areas as it evolves. Read up on this guide to getting started with Pinterest if you’re new to it.
15. How To Use Snapchat: A Complete Beginners Guide
Literally everything you could ever want to know about Snapchat. From the basics of sending a snap, to adding all the creative twists, through to the meaning of Snapchat emojis — this guide is everything you were too afraid to ask, written down.
16. Instagram For Business 2019
This guide will take you from zero to hero with Instagram: how to develop a well rounded strategy, how to optimize your profile, growing your account with Stories, and time-saving planning tricks.
17. LinkedIn: The Sophisticated Guide To Content Marketing
Written by LinkedIn itself, this is one of the best guides around to help you succeed on the platform. Download foris everything you need to know about acing content on LinkedIn.
18. The Definitive Guide to Facebook Advertising
Across 6 digestible chapters, this free eBook teaches you how to start your first campaign, keep costs low, and monitor your ROI.
Social Media Videos
19. The AskGaryVee Show
For some, Gary Vaynerchuck can be a little too much to handle. You either love him or you hate him, but there’s no doubt about it: he knows social media. He knows what works, what gains reach and how his hard-hitting style has become a character that’s taken him to the top. If you’ve never come across ‘Gary Vee’ before, take a look at his videos. You may end up inspired!
20. Think Media TV
With nearly 1 millions Youtube subscribers, Sean Cannell must be doing something right in the world of video production for business. His YouTube channels promises to guide you through everything you need to know to build influence with online video.
21. iNinja Digital Marketing Tutorial for Beginners
The efforts here are granular! Including one five hour video on Instagram marketing, iNinja leaves no stone left unturned. You might find the computerized voice a little off-putting, and the length, but if you have the attention span, you can be sure you will know the ins and outs of social media channels after absorbing iNinja’s content.
22. TED Talks: Social Media Marketing
TED is now a global brand in knowledge sharing, so it’s safe to say that those who do TED talks are experts in their field. What you learn here, you know will be relevant.
23. Social Media Marketing Training and Tutorials
A huge amount of video learning, brought to you previously by Lynda.com, which has now been purchased by LinkedIn and become ‘LinkedIn Learning’. This is the place to become a LinkedIn expert, a community of now 610 million members worldwide.
24. Jordan Platten
Jordan is a rapid speaking Brit whose channel aims to give you the most up-to-date strategies to grow your followers and reach. He has separate videos for 2018, 2019 and 2020 around the same topic, showing just how fast the rules for the game can change. Follow this guy to make sure you’re getting all the latest information.
Social Media Marketing Courses
25. What Is Social
Brought to you by Northwestern University, this free course is 100% online with flexible deadlines and takes about 9 hours to complete. After 685 reviews, it has a star rating of 4.6 — pretty good for something that you don’t have to dig into your pocket for.
26. Social Media Analytics Course
This takes you from the ground up with analytics on social media. It’s really important to remember that if you are in charge of managing social media channels for your business, knowing how the analytics run is y our most important role, as it will be the key thing that determines performance and ROI on social.
27. Putting Social Media to Work For Your Coaching Business
A short program with a simple aim: helping you create an ‘easy-to-manage social marketing program’ for your coaching business. If you have a coaching business, it may be worth an hour of your time.
28. Free Social Media Certification
A completely free course with tests and even a certificate at the end. Whilst the certification might not make it on to your CV, the course provides a depth and breadth of content and learning that will ensure you have a strong base knowledge of all aspects of social media account management.
Social Media Marketing Podcasts
29. Social Media Marketing With Michael Stelzner
Michael is a real pro when it comes to SoMe. Follow his podcast for insights and tips for all your channels, but also interviews with other key figures in the space.
30. Snapchat: A podcast all about Snapchat
If the deep-dive eBook all on Snap wasn’t enough, here’s a podcast detailing the key features, functions and developments that are affecting Snapchat right now.
31. The Social Media Marketing Talk Show
A talk-show format that keeps you tuned in to the latest developments in the world of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter… and all the other social titans that we use every day.
32. The Gold Digger
This eye-catchingly named podcast is run by Jenna Kutcher, who is digital marketing obsessive. Her podcast has over 25 millions downloads — figures you don’t reach by being average at what you do. It may or may not be for you, but she’s certainly hitting the right spot with many people out there!
33. The Social Toolkit
This podcast focuses on the tools, software, apps, and services that actually help you execute your SoMe strategy. Each episode is structured around an interview with a digital marketing expert about which tools and tactics they like most.
34. LinkedInformed: The LinkedIn Podcast Show
Self proclaimed ‘Mr LinkedIn’ gives you hour-long episodes to help you perform your best on the social network for executives.
35. The Social Pros Podcast
Hearing it from the people who make a difference, each podcast is an interview with a different high-profile individual in the world of social media.
Social Media Tools
36. Canva
Aesthetics are everything in the world of visual social media. You cannot afford to look amateur, especially when there are so many cheap (if not free) solutions to give you a professional polish. Canva is one such tool.
37. Google Trends
We’ve told you how important it is to keep on top of trends, and this is the tool that can help you do it. Be prepared to get lost in the addictive nature of seeing what the world is searching for, broken down by geographical area and time.
38. Unsplash
Beautiful pictures need not come at a huge price. Unsplash is an amazing resource of completely free images that you can use to help give your content and SoMe efforts a touch of class and quality.
39. Unum
This easy to use app helps you plan you Instagram posts. With Unum, not only can you post exactly when you want, but you can also curate the perfect aesthetic for your page. Great content, at the right time = lots of engaged followers.
40. Crello
This is the tool you need to create those funky animations that make businesses stand out from the crowd. Start for free, no design skills needed.
41. Hootsuite
This digital to-do list will help you keep your strategy on track so that you never forget a SoMe posting again!
42. Social Media Holiday Calendar
We love this little trick! It adds an email address to your Gmail, that updates with every single holiday and occasion, so that you always know what to post about. A simple, functional tool that will fill you with ideas about what your next posting should be about.
So there you have it! A 42 resources to get you up to speed on all things social.
Ready to plan your social media strategy? Here’s our pick of 5 of the best Social Media Calendars to help you get started.
Originally published at https://www.scribly.io.
