MKTG 388: Social Media and Content Marketing
Prerequisites: MKTG 340
Credit Hours: (3)
A hands-on introduction to the principles and application of inbound marketing strategy
facilitated by such social media platforms as blogs, forums, professional and social
network services, media sharing, social bookmarking and others.
Note(s): Applied Learning designated course.
Detailed Description of Course
Despite major commitments to social media marketing (SMM) from Business-to-Consumer
(B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) businesses and nonprofits (Coca-Cola 20% of marketing
budget; Kollmorgen 50%), best practices and even success measures are still largely
undefined. Key topics include:
1. Types of social media: blogs, microblogs, networking, media sharing, special interest
2. Mobile Marketing and location-based social media
3. Word of mouth (WOM) marketing and theory and niche marketing (long tail)
4. Principles of Inbound marketing vs. traditional marketing
5. Engagement: Building a community
6. Creating content – materials that entice prospects and customers to a site.
7. Organizational applications such as product innovation, intra-organizational communication
and collaboration, selling and sales pipeline management, customer service, brand
narrative, storytelling, brand community and/or others.
8. Successful and unsuccessful firm use of SMM – attempts at benchmarking
9. Measures / metrics of influence and social media marketing success
10. Developing an organizational social media plan
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
The descriptive and theoretical content will be guided by books and selected readings
on the web to provide the theory of inbound marketing and word of mouth promotion.
SMM will require a fair amount of reading but will largely be an application-oriented
course. There will also be readings and hands-on assignments to understand workings
of key social media platforms.
Mastery of the theory of WOM and inbound marketing and the key SM platforms will be
reinforced and measured in class discussion, quizzes, and individual and group projects.
An individual social media campaign will provide structure and hands-on experience
throughout the semester. The individual campaigns may be augmented by group projects
as well. Students will have experienced personally creating content, seeking engagement
with others, and online community building and networking.
Student Goals and Objectives of the Course
The objective of SMM class is for each student to be able to:
• Apply the principles of SMM,
• Identify the use of the key social media platforms by organizations,
• Explain how SMM differs from standard marketing and internet marketing,
• Recognize key issues and changes in social media,
• Demonstrate the capability to use social media to advance a personal campaign,
• Discuss the principles of WOM marketing,
• Describe inbound and permission-based marketing.
Assessment Measures
Students will demonstrate their mastery of the principles of WOM and inbound marketing,
strategy development, success measures and use of social medias application through
their individual social media campaigns and sometimes group projects. There will be
quizzes and class discussion to access understanding of theory and selected readings.
Review and Approval
2013, reviewed and approved by the Dept. of Marketing faculty
March 16, 2020 Revised
March 01, 2021