USF Launches Social Media Marketing Certificate

By Jenikah Michael

With the continued importance of social media for business, Media Studies professors, Nick Poppens and Nancy Sutton in conjunction with the University of Sioux Falls Degree Completion department, have created new coursework in social media training. They saw the need after an EAB research study revealed businesses’ necessity for social media professionals and an increasing number of jobs in social media marketing in this region.

“It will be offered to all students on campus who need to go into a business that needs to market their social media, which is everyone: churches, small businesses, and large businesses. No business runs without social media now. Everyone needs this, and it has married digital media and business marketing as an important addition to traditional marketing for a business,” says Sutton.

The media studies program has recently merged with the art department, creating the Media and Visual Arts program, because art, graphic design, and media are now a vital part of a marketing office. They wrote the new classes and created a Social Media Marketing Certificate and Media Studies Concentration in collaboration with the business department, to make sure the needs of business, marketing, media and degree completion students are being met.

Sutton says these new classes will benefit many different students. “The importance of the new classes means a student who is in video production has the ability to understand how their video goes up on a website, and all the marketing that surrounds promoting a video. The journalism students need to know that because they’ll probably have to manage their own news stories on social media, and the marketing students need to know it so they can use it for a business.”

The social media marketing concentration and DCP Certificate will be offered starting summer, 2019. The first two classes to launch are Introduction to Social Media Management and Social Media for PR and Marketing. Both classes will be offered online and taught by Nancy Sutton. For more information on the new social media coursework, please click this link at the USF website for the Media Studies Social Media & Marketing Concentration.