This is our first course in the social media marketing professional certification program. This course is an introduction to social media. Of course, I'm sure that to most of you, social media needs little introduction. But if you're like me, you probably use some platforms on a daily basis, but don't have frequent exposure to other platforms. I, for instance, have always been a heavy user of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter, but when it comes to TikTok or Snapchat, I'm a more recent user and I use YouTube, but less frequently. What's more, I use all these platforms in my personal life, but I use some of them more than others when it comes to their business and marketing applications, and I know there's always something new to discover. That's why I think it's always a good idea to take a few steps back before diving deep into social media marketing. It helps to understand the landscape a bit, to know how the main platforms work, and how you can use them for marketing even if you have some experience already. Since there are different frameworks and ways to approach marketing, it's a good idea to all get on the same page and look at the building blocks I believe are essential to a good marketing approach, which is the focus of this course. We'll start at the beginning. If you have some experience already, then this course will be a nice refresher with some of the latest trends and applications. If you don't have experience yet, then you'll be all set by the end of this course to start your social media marketing journey. What will we cover? The first week is all about understanding the social media landscape. You'll get a better understanding of what we mean by marketing, digital marketing, and social media marketing. Then you'll learn how businesses can participate in social media. You'll also get an overview of the social media landscape and learn how to categorize different types of social media platforms. We'll look at how Facebook evolved, and which products it offers for businesses. In the second week, we'll start digging into the main social media platforms. You'll learn how they function and what opportunities they offer for marketing. As you know, there are many platforms and we will go through the most important ones. We'll cover Facebook, YouTube, Messenger from Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, and some networks that focus on niche interests. Then in the third week, you'll start getting ready for your social media marketing. You'll first learn to set your marketing goals. Then you'll define what success will look like for you and how you will measure it. In the fourth week, we continue with the core building blocks, and you'll define who you will target with your marketing and explore what a typical journey of your customer looks like. You'll also complete a project where you will define a customer persona and map out the journey of that customer. That may sound somewhat abstract now, but we'll provide you with the blueprints for what will become a detailed description of a target audience. Finally, in Week 5, you'll learn how to choose social media channels for your marketing. First, you'll learn how to identify the channels that best fit your goals and your audience, and then you'll learn how to put policies in place to help manage your company blogs and social media interactions. This introduction will give you the foundation you need to start your social media marketing journey. All that is left for me is to wish you good luck. I'm excited to get started and I'll see you in our first lesson.