How to improve your social media skills
Social Media - Self-Education Resources
Welcome to Mandy’s Social Media Self-Education Resources! This is a document I made for my team to learn how to get up-to-date on social media and marketing
📰 News
Newsletters
Lia Haberman’s weekly “ICYMI” is quite literally everything you need to know about what’s going on with creators. This is particularly helpful when you take a vacation!
Social Media Examiner: Both Website, Social and Podcast
Hart and Highland (subscribe at the bottom of the site). More trends.
Smart Brief - This newsletter has remained the best and smartest resource for many industries. Follow the social business one, but also follow your client’s industries.
Other Newsletters
Social Media Examiner
Behind the Influence - A Slack community for managers & agents to share their insights & navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital talent management together. https://behindtheinfluence.beehiiv.com/
News sources
Twitter. Marketing Twitter is fantastic.
The Verge
McKinsey
Deloitte
Edelman
Forrester
GlobalWebIndex
🏆Certificates
LinkedIn Learning - Previously called Lynda, LinkedIn Learning has tons and tons of courses from design to project management to social media to ad buying. Some courses are free. Many library sponsor LinkedIn Learning. Note: The certificates you get from this sync go directly to your LinkedIn. Snazzy!
Hubspot Certificates are widely known and liked (Hubspot is a marketing tool, but their certificates
Grow with Google - I have not personally explored these, but other Google Education options have been great
👯♀️Digital Communities
Facebook Groups!
The Social Media Geekout is phenomenal. There are always high levels of many managers asking and answering questions there. The best way to line up a constantly changing profession and technology is to read modern answers to Modern questions. Don't forget about the search function! Lots of answers to be found that way.
Reddit! Lots of great discussions there.
Growth Marketers on Slack - invite only, DM me
📚Books
Full Book List Here
Hug Your Haters - a compelling book arguing that customer service should be a high priority for your brand
Everybody Writes - A fantastic guide to helping you feel stronger as a writer, as well as some basic skills that will help you look more professional
Contagious - this is one of the original theories of internet virality. It was written in 2016, so there are more relevant books but still worth a read
The Hero’s Journey - Joseph Campbell - For storytelling skills. This was written by a prominent researcher of global storytelling. He was a personal friend of George Lucas and cited this book as inspiration.
The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything - if you read any book on this page, it should be this one. This book very slowly explains exactly what the metaverse is, what its current forms look like, and what it will take to truly create it. This book connected the dots on many aspects of the internet that I didn't fully understand and has given me a very strong base to discuss the metaverse with clients and peers.
This Is Marketing - an overview of marketing by Seth Godin
Internet Culture
AlgoSpeak
Blackpilled
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Gossip Column
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
29 books every marketer should read
via Daniel Murray of Marketing Millennials
(in no particular order)
2. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
3. Influence
5. Alchemy
7. Cashversting
8. Positioning
10. You Have More Influence Than You Think
13. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane
15. Year of Yes
16. Content – The Atomic Particle of Marketing
20. Tested Advertising Methods
22. The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
24. The Content Fuel Framework
26. What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You
27. Hug your Haters
28. Nudge
29. The Ultimate Sales Machine
📚Ads
For Ad design, Sprout Social is the gold standard of updating their Ad Design information. Don’t forget about other phone sizes.
Helpful tool: Headline Analyzer
Facebook - Meta - Instagram
I recommend the ads certification from any platform directly AND an outside certification. I mentioned LinkedIn Learning elsewhere in this doc, that’s a good start.
Facebook / Meta Certification - last I checked, the courses are free, but tests are around $300
Comparables / Competition Research
At first glance it looks like you can only view active ads which isn’t always relevant for comp research. However, just turn on “inactive ads” and stretch out the dates, and voila, you can see more.
You can mock up ads in advance before sending them out. This is a handy tool for previewing an ad before pushing send. Note: always pre-write your ads, headlines, audiences in advance. Pushing out an ad from Creative Hub is not a seamless process and I’ve seen lots of work get lost.
🔧 Tools
Answer the public - This is a very popular SEO tool. It helps you find questions and topics related to any word. If you are looking for Content titles, opportunities, or questions you aren't answering with your current content, this is a great tool that will make you look very smart.
Libby - free audiobooks. It’s audible for free. Stop paying for books.
Airtable - Their Learning Library - this library is quite vast For learning about their tool, and frankly how to organize Marketing in general.
Canva - Canva Design School Is the most approachable design education I know of online. I recommend it to anyone who is hoping to learn the basics. (2025 update - this is not as good as it used to be imo.)
GIPHY Capture Tool - I used to make GIFs for large television companies. I used this relatively unknown tool by GIPHY to make them very quickly.
Jenna Drenten PhD’s Qualitative Social Media Resources
🚨Marketing Research
Full disclosure I’m not a researcher. These are resources provided to me previously:
Fully free:
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Not fully free:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
🚨Annual Reports
There’s a roundup of annual social media reports in this thread: https://twitter.com/smc_la/status/1589692735933468672
They’re also downloaded here: SMCLA Resources Hub > 2023 Reports folder: bit.ly/SMCLAResources
Sprout Social
Hootsuite
Later
Insider Intelligence
Pew
🕵️ Professionals Groups (IRL)
While joining groups of your peers can help you learn and commiserate, if you are hoping to truly network, spending time with your peers is spending time with your competitors. If you truly want to find a network of people who can help you grow, it is a good idea to network with adjacent professions or people in the industry you hope to do marketing for.
PRSA - Public Relations Society of America
AMA - American Marketing Association
Social Media Club - Social Media Club International
AIGA - American Institute of Graphic Arts (Graphic Designers)
AAF - American Advertising Federation
Creative Mornings - Breakfast lecture series for the creative community
📁 Others
Public Domain Images - get really comfortable finding images you are allowed to use online. There are tons of places to find them.
Libby - free audible from your Library. Slowly ease yourself into listening to books faster. Life changing.
Other Resources
Social Image Size Guide, always updated by Hootsuite : Cheat Sheet: Social Media Images Sizes
This site makes your screenshots pretty and also instantly generates tweet-screenshot graphics. https://pika.style
Send a cal invite as a link for free: https://www.eventable.com/
Chinese Social Media
It’s worth learning about what’s going on with nearly 20% of the global population
Billy billy
RedNote
Pitch deck repository - we work in tech and I love a good pitch deck. This is inspirational for social content, B2B content, and of course pitching!
AI Learning and Tools
AI Tools
Chat GPT
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
Gamma AI - presentations
Dream Studio
https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/dream
Google research
Stable Diffusion (hugging face port)
https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabilityai/stable-diffusion
Nightcafe
https://creator.nightcafe.studio/create-nft-art
📊 Case Studies
Bing | Decode Jay-Z Case Study - This remains my favorite case study of all time. The creativity of place, content, and Technology integration is so deep. I show this to people all the time.
Google’s Year in Search - It makes me cry every time.I think this may be the best product video series on the internet. They put a lot of cash behind making a lot of people see it, and it's just really good. many many brands have been inspired by the yearly Roundup concept, including Spotify which gave it new life.
Spotify Wrapped - This one is now so legendary it is mean, so I know it will come as no surprise to the folks reading this. It is worth noting, that this is another annual campaign that users and marketers look forward to every year. There is always dialog about the design, the categories, and more.
Pantone's color of the year – does anyone really care about this? I have absolutely no idea why this trends every year, because I do not see it manifest in my world, but perhaps I am aloof. Either way, everyone looks forward to this annual tradition and many people do, in fact, take it to heart.
Templates
Creator Brief
Audit - Social Media Platforms
ETC
GIF Background Remover https://www.unscreen.com/upload
Note: I’ve signed up to be an affiliate for the products you see above (largely books). I get [tiny] compensation when you click on these links, so thank you for contributing to my next coffee! I appreciate it!
Some Really Great Posts
Christina Garnett posted this on LinkedIn - Transferred here in case it ever goes away!
Social listening encompasses a holistic approach to understanding the customer experience (CX) and leveraging audience intelligence.
🧐 Audience Intelligence:
Why It Matters: Social listening is not merely about tracking mentions but understanding the sentiments, preferences, and behaviors of your audience. It's a goldmine of information that helps you decode what your customers truly desire.
Application: Utilize audience intelligence to tailor your marketing strategies, personalize content, and identify emerging trends that resonate with your audience.
🤝 Customer Support:
Why It Matters: Social media has become a primary platform for customers to voice their opinions, seek assistance, or express dissatisfaction. Prompt and empathetic responses build trust and enhance the overall CX.
Application: Integrate social listening into your customer support strategy to identify issues early, address concerns promptly, and turn potential crises into opportunities to showcase stellar service.
🔎 Research and Development:
Why It Matters: Social listening is a direct line to unfiltered customer feedback. By tapping into these insights, businesses can gather valuable data for product development and innovation.
Application: Identify pain points, gather suggestions, and stay ahead of market demands. Your audience can be a wellspring of ideas that shape the future of your products or services.
💕 Brand Perception:
Why It Matters: The way your brand is perceived in the digital realm significantly influences customer loyalty. Social listening provides a real-time gauge of your brand's reputation.
Application: Monitor brand sentiment, address negative feedback proactively, and celebrate positive mentions. Consistent positive interactions can shape a favorable brand image.
🤼 Competitor Analysis:
Why It Matters: Understanding how your competitors are perceived and what strategies resonate with their audience is crucial for staying competitive.
Application: Benchmark your performance against competitors, identify gaps in the market, and fine-tune your strategies based on what works well in your industry.
📈 Product Launches and Campaigns:
Why It Matters: Social listening can provide real-time feedback during product launches or campaigns, helping you make necessary adjustments on the fly.
Application: Gauge audience reactions, identify influencers who align with your brand, and measure the success of your campaigns to refine future initiatives.
🛣 Customer Journey Mapping:
Why It Matters: Understanding the entire customer journey is vital for delivering a seamless and delightful CX.
Application: Use social listening to identify touchpoints, pain points, and moments of delight in the customer journey. This holistic view enables you to enhance every step of the customer experience.
Social listening is a strategic imperative.
Reddit AI recommendations
With all the focus on AI’s applications for text-based tasks like writing and coding, I wanted to see how it’s being used in design and more visual tasks. From UI and full-on website design, to graphics and photo generation, there are a ton of interesting and free tools coming out that are worth trying.
All of them are free to try, but most have some kind of paid plan or limit on the number of free generations. Fair enough given it costs money to run the models, but I've tried to include notes on any that don't have permanent free plans and excluded any that explicitly require a credit card or payment to use.
If nothing else, I found it interesting to see where AI is (and isn't) likely to have a significant impact in design work. For all the hype around AI replacing everyone’s jobs, I see it as much more likely to do what technology has always done: replacing grunt work and shifting human attention to tasks that actually need more human involvement.
AI Website, Graphic and UI Generators:
Framer: Describe the website you want, and Framer will create it for you. Edit and instantly publish your site from their platform. Ironically my favorite thing about Framer isn’t its AI tool. Its real advantage is its website editor which is the best I’ve seen on any platform (and usable for free). It’s like Figma if Figma let you publish directly to the web.
Microsoft Designer: Generates designs based on user input for social media posts, logos, and business graphics. It’s free to use with a Microsoft account, and fairly impressive if not always consistent. If you pay a lot or spend a ton of time on design/social media content, Designer is definitely worth checking out.
UIzard: Transforms text and images into design mockups, wireframes, and full user interfaces. It’s an ambitious concept, but very cool. While Framer was better for generating websites from text prompts, UIZard offers something none of the others did: taking a sketch drawing and turning it into a UI and/or wireframing.
Visualizations, Graphics and Illustrations:
Taskade: AI powered productivity tool to visualize your notes, projects, and tasks. Taskade lets you easily generate mind maps and other visualizations of your work, and makes use of AI in a bunch of cool ways. For example, you can generate a mind map to help you brainstorm and then ask it to expand on a certain point or even research it for you with the internet.
Bing Image Creator: Generate images from natural text descriptions, powered by DALL-E. Whether you’re looking for blog illustrations, images for your site’s pages or any other purpose, it’s worth trying.
AutoDraw: Autodraw is a Google Project that lets you draw something freehand with your cursor, and AutoDraw uses AI to transform it into a refined image with icons and predrawn designs, all for free in your browser.
AI Presentations and Slides:
Plus AI for Google Slides: AI generated slides and full-on presentations, all within Google Slides. I liked how Plus AI worked within Google Slides and made it easy to make changes to the presentation (as lets be real, no AI tool is going to generate exactly the content and formatting you need for a serious presentation).
SlidesGo: Generate slides with illustrations, images, and icons chosen by AI. SlidesGo also has their own editor to let you edit and refine the AI generated presentation.
Tome: Tell Tome what you want to say to your audience, and it will create a presentation that effectively communicates it clearly and effectively. Tome actually goes beyond just presentations and has a few cool formats worth checking out that I could see being useful for salespeople and anyone who needs to pitch an idea or product at work or to clients.
Product Photography:
These are all fairly similar so I’ve kept the descriptions short, but it’s genuinely a pretty useful category if you run any kind of business or side hustle that needs product photos. These photos establish the professionalism of your store/brand, and all the ones I tried had genuinely impressive results that seemed much better than what I could do myself.
Pebblely: AI image generator for product images in various styles and settings. 40 free images, paid after that.
Booth.ai: Generates professional-quality product photos using AI, focused on furniture, fashion, and packaged goods.
Stylized.ai: Generates product photos integrated into ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
Miscellaneous Tools:
Fronty: Converts uploaded images or drawings into HTML and CSS code using AI. It’s a bit clunky, but a cool concept nonetheless.
LetsEnhance: Uses AI to enhance the resolution of images and photographs. Generally works pretty well from my experience, and gives you 10 free credits with signup. Unfortunately beyond that it is a paid product.
Remove.bg: Specializes in recognizing and removing image backgrounds effectively. Doesn’t promise much, but it does the job and doesn’t require you to sign up.
TL;DR/Overall favorites:
These are the ones I've found the most use for in my day-to-day work.
Framer: responsive website design with a full-featured editor to edit and publish your site all in one place. Free + paid plans.
Taskade: visualize and automate your workflows, projects, mind maps, and more with AI powered templates. Free + paid plans.
Microsoft Designer: generate social media and other marketing graphics with AI. Free to use.
Plus AI: plugin for Google Slides to generate slide content, designs, and make tweaks with AI. Free + paid plans.
Pebblely: professional-quality product photos in various settings and backgrounds, free to generate up to 40 images (through you can always sign up for another account…)
Let me know if you know of any tools I’ve missed so I can add them to the list! I’ve grouped them by categories, to make it easier to see what each tool is capable of, then given a bit more detail under each specific tool.