A guide to social media marketing certificates and certifications

Professionals looking to become social media marketers or digital marketers (with a specialization in social media marketing) may want to consider becoming certified in the use of one or more social media platforms. These certificates and certifications will demonstrate your proficiency in a given set of skills so that prospective clients and employers know that you have practical and hands-on experience working with the marketing tools offered by companies like Meta and X (formerly Twitter). There are many different approaches you can take to become certified, and this article aims to help prospective students and professionals determine which path will be best for them.

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Social media marketing certificates and certifications

The first thing you’ll want to consider is whether you’ll be pursuing a certificate or a certification. While the two may seem similar, and they are both ways to demonstrate your proficiency in a given aspect of social media marketing, they demonstrate this proficiency through distinct means. A certification is awarded to students who complete a first-party proctored, timed skills exam that covers a variety of topics related to the certification subject at hand. By contrast, a certificate is awarded to a student who completes a skills training program, and it is more akin to a diploma than anything else. 

Certifications are offered through first-party developers and tend to be aimed at existing professionals who have experience working on the digital marketing side of the field. For example, Meta offers a range of different social media marketing certifications, including certifications for relatively early-career marketers and for marketers with years of experience working with their platforms (which include Facebook and Instagram). There are also exams offered for other platforms, such as the LinkedIn Ads certification, and more generalized exams offered by platforms like Hootsuite. Passing these exams awards you an authorized certification that you can add to your job materials and portfolio of work, though it should be noted that some of the certifications will eventually expire, thus requiring users to renew their certification by taking an updated version of the exam or demonstrating regular professional use of the application (the process will vary from certification to certification).

By contrast, a certificate is awarded to students who complete professional skills development courses, like those offered by third-party training providers like Noble Desktop, in a field or specific platform, often through rigorous, hands-on learning exercises taken under professional instructors. These training programs are aimed at novices and digital marketing professionals without a lot of prior social media marketing experience, hoping to have them career-ready by the end of the course. They can focus on individual platforms, such as a Facebook marketing bootcamp, or they can be more broadly focused, such as a social media marketing certificate program. Since these training courses focus on the skills development aspect of the process, they are going to be far more in-depth than the content covered in a study guide or a practice exam that you might take in anticipation of a certification exam. For the same reasons, however, they will also be significantly more expensive and time-consuming.

What is covered in certification courses and exams?

When preparing for a certification exam or enrolling in a certification course, you’ll want to consider what skills you are being tested on or trained in, and since there are so many different options available to you, you’ll want to look to ensure that you are enrolling in the right program to meet your goals. For example, the Meta digital advertising certification will focus on the professional tools offered to marketers for the major social media platforms that they own, while a Facebook marketing certificate program will only encompass the tools being leveraged on Facebook.

These exams will be focused on the specific tools and features that make utilizing the platform unique. For example, a Facebook certification is going to emphasize how Facebook marketplace helps direct sellers on the platform and how the groups and business features make it easier to generate organic support and engagement for your business or product. By contrast, a certification in Instagram marketing will be more focused on the ways in which the platform allows you to directly connect to audiences and build a brand identity using content strategies that are unique to the ways that users interface with the platform. 

By contrast, a social media marketing certificate program, like the one offered by Noble Desktop, is likely to encompass practical training in tools related to every major social media platform and, in general, best practices for working on social media advertising campaigns. This kind of training expands the scope of your studies and increases the length and value of the course. These courses are also aimed at students with less prior experience (oftentimes no prior experience), so they cover significantly more content than focused certification exams or certificate-granting programs.

Which path should you pursue?

The choice of whether to pursue a social media marketing certification or a certificate is largely going to come down to two major questions: how much experience do you have with social media marketing skills, and how broad are the skills you are looking to become certified in? Since certification exams are narrow and aimed at professionals who already have significant experience with a given platform, they are the best choice for anyone who simply wants to demonstrate their existing proficiency with a given social media advertising platform. By contrast, certificate-granting programs are primarily valuable for the training and support they provide students, making them the best option for novice marketers and anyone looking for a career change. Learning social media marketing skills in these programs can also be easily parlayed into certification later on since you will be getting the hands-on training you need to feel confident approaching your exam.