New Class: North Central Introduces New Social Media & Marketing Class​

For the first time in its history, North Central University (NCU) has deployed a Social Media & Marketing course, taught by Dr. Brian Stewart.                   

Professor Mark Skeba and Dr. Stewart worked together to create this new course. Social Media & Marketing (SMM) is 3 credit, level 300 course. Important to note that the course, BUS-265 must be completed prior to taking this course. This class is not meant for freshmen to take. According to NCU’s course catalog:

“This course will teach students to create and maintain a clear, impactful, and authentic social media presence for brands and businesses to connect with potential customers. Students will learn when, where, how, and to whom social marketing content should be targeted and how to create brand-driven content that builds customer connection, community, and advocacy. Students will develop a strategic approach to using modern digital marketing tactics, tools, and social media platforms.”

Course Overview 

Within the course syllabus, the class also includes learning skills like:

• Critical Thinking: Create a social media plan using organic and paid media.
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• Technical Aspects: Build a social media content calendar. Report and calculate key social metrics and RO.
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• Creativity: Create and execute a variety of posts across platforms.
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My Personal Experience

As a current student in this course, I can offer a few insights into what I’ve noticed. Dr. Stewart’s teaching style is called “the flipped classroom” where instead of him lecturing the entire time, the class will spend a great deal of hands-on work time, in class. Some of the in-class projects are listed in chronological order below:

➔   Group project: Create a social media account on Instagram. Post five posts and two reels start and finish during that class period.

➔   Individually, create and post a reel that shows what you learned from your reading that week, and post it.

➔   Individually, create a meme about what you learned from the reading for the week.

➔   Group project: Find a social media ad and recreate it in a way that will perform better.

Other projects include:

➔   Create a Tik Tok dance that explains a section of your textbook and present it.

➔   Create a social media marketing brief

➔   Create a social media marketing plan and present it

The “Simturnship” 

A note-worthy, weekly assignment that students must do outside of class called, “Stukent Social Media Simturnship” is a challenging one. Each student who takes SMM must purchase the textbook and simulator for $130. Every week students must create a weekly content calendar of social media posts for a fake company called Buhi.com. Students then must use their charts and resources to figure out who the target markets are and how to target them. Then use the resources provided to show how many posts per social media platform are needed, what time of day to post them on, how long the captions should be, and what type of digital content works best. Then, the students run their weekly content calendar through the simulator, which tells them their results. Here is the kicker: every student in class will be ranked on this simulator, and in every class Dr. Stewart will show the ranking order. Talk about a challenge!

Are you ready?

This course is not for the faint of heart but students who take this course will learn valuable and useful skills in Social Media Marketing. However, this is a challenging class so be prepared to live out the philosophy, “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again”. This class is a must for students interested in Social Media Marketing and should contact their advisors about taking this class.