Social Media Marketing

Course Description

Social Media Marketing provides a thorough examination of social media's marketing impact, emphasising the development of effective promotional strategies utilising social media platforms.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAR is the Marketing prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered fall, spring and summer, giving approximately 45 contact hours.

Two things make this course unusual, and students routinely misjudge both. The first is that familiarity with a platform as a user is nearly worthless as preparation — the work is strategy, measurement, and content production at a cadence, and it is much closer to publishing than to posting. The second is that this is the most heavily regulated corner of marketing right now. Disclosure of paid partnerships, the treatment of reviews and testimonials, and the handling of consumer data are all subject to active federal enforcement, and the person who publishes the post is frequently the person exposed. Read the regulatory note below carefully.

Daytona State does not publish a lecture and laboratory split for its MAR courses. The prefix is entirely lecture-based and unsuffixed, and its business-family siblings run at the standard 15 contact hours per credit — GEB1011 and MAN2021 are both live at 3 credits and 45 hours. This course is priced at that convention.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the social media landscape and the character of each major platform.
• Match a platform to an audience and an objective rather than to habit.
• Set specific, measurable social media objectives.
• Develop a social media strategy aligned to marketing goals.
• Build an audience persona from evidence.
• Plan a content calendar and maintain a publishing cadence.
• Create content appropriate to each platform's format and norms.
• Write effective copy for short-form and visual formats.
• Describe organic reach and its practical limits.
• Plan and run a paid social campaign.
• Target and segment a paid audience.
• Set and manage a budget, and describe bidding at an introductory level.
• Describe influencer marketing and how partnerships are structured.
• Apply required disclosure of material connections correctly.
• Describe community management and engagement.
• Respond to negative comments and handle a reputational incident.
• Describe social listening and its uses.
• Define and interpret social media metrics.
• Distinguish vanity metrics from metrics tied to objectives.
• Measure conversion and attribution at an introductory level.
• Analyse campaign performance and act on the analysis.
• Report results to a non-specialist audience.
• Describe the legal and ethical constraints on social media marketing.
• Describe privacy and data handling obligations.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe emerging platforms and formats.
• Describe user-generated content strategy.
• Describe social commerce.
• Describe employee advocacy programmes.
• Describe crisis communication planning.
• Obtain a platform marketing certification.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The social media landscape
• Matching platform to audience and objective
• Setting measurable objectives
• Strategy alignment
• Audience personas
• Content calendars and cadence
• Platform-appropriate content
• Copywriting for short form
• Organic reach and its limits
• Paid campaigns
• Audience targeting
• Budget and bidding
• Influencer marketing
• Disclosure of material connections
• Community management
• Handling negative comment and incidents
• Social listening
• Metrics and their definitions
• Vanity metrics versus objectives
• Conversion and attribution
• Performance analysis
• Reporting results
• Legal and ethical constraints
• Privacy and data handling

Optional Topics

• Emerging platforms and formats
• User-generated content
• Social commerce
• Employee advocacy
• Crisis communication
• Platform certification

Resources & Tools

• Federal Trade Commission — Business Guidance (ftc.gov/business-guidance) — free, plainly written, and the authoritative source on advertising law. Its endorsement guides and FAQ are the single most useful reading in this course.
• American Marketing Association (ama.org) — professional body, student membership, and its Statement of Ethics.
• Google Analytics and Google Digital Garage — free tools and certification-bearing training used widely by employers.
• Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certifications — free to study; employers ask for these by name and they cost nothing but time.
• HubSpot Academy — free certifications in inbound, content, email, and social media marketing.
• Florida Attorney General — consumer protection (myfloridalegal.com) — free; Florida's own enforcement guidance under FDUTPA.
• Census Bureau and BLS consumer expenditure data — free primary market data that most students never think to use.
• Build and publish something real — a campaign, a social account with measured results, an analysed A/B test. A portfolio with numbers in it outperforms a transcript in this field.

Career Pathways

• Advertising, promotions, and marketing managers — SOC 11-2021.
• Market research analysts and marketing specialists — SOC 13-1161; strong projected demand and the most common analytical entry point.
• Public relations specialists — SOC 27-3031.
• Advertising sales agents — SOC 41-3011.
• Social media coordinator and content marketing roles — common entry positions, frequently the first rung.
• Digital marketing, SEO, and paid media specialist roles — the most measurable and among the best paid early.
• Marketing analytics — where marketing meets data work, and where pay rises fastest.
• E-commerce and brand management.
• Florida sectors that hire heavily: tourism and hospitality, healthcare, real estate, financial services, and a substantial small-business economy — and tourism marketing in particular is a distinctive Florida specialisation.
• Self-employment and agency work — a genuinely accessible route in this field, and one where a portfolio matters far more than a credential.
• Transfer to a bachelor's in marketing or business administration — management roles generally expect one.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Disclosure is not optional, and "everyone does it that way" is not a standard

• If there is a material connection between an endorser and a brand, it must be disclosed — payment, free product, discounts, employment, family relationship, or anything else that would affect how a viewer weighs the endorsement.
• ⚠⚠ The disclosure must be clear and conspicuous where the endorsement is. Not in a bio, not behind a "more" link, not the last of thirty hashtags, and not only in a caption when the claim is made in the video. In video it should be in the video; in a live stream it needs repeating.
• Plain words work; codes do not. "Ad", "sponsored", or "paid partnership" are understood; "sp", "collab", "thanks to", and "ambassador" are not sufficient.
• A platform's built-in disclosure tool may not be enough on its own — it is a supplement to a clear disclosure, not a replacement for one.
• ⚠⚠ Reviews and testimonials carry specific exposure. Do not buy reviews, write reviews of your own product, incentivise a review conditional on it being positive, or suppress genuine negative reviews. The FTC has rules aimed squarely at each of these.
• The brand is responsible for what its influencers say. Briefing them on disclosure and on claim limits is part of the job, and failing to monitor is itself a failing.
• Claims made in social content are advertising claims and need the same substantiation as any other — health, earnings, and performance claims especially.
• ⚠ Do not use someone's music, images, or likeness without rights. Platform availability is not a licence for commercial use.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies emphatically — this guidance is actively evolving; check current FTC guidance and platform policy before running anything.

⚠ Measure against objectives — most social media reporting measures nothing useful

• Followers, likes, and impressions are the metrics most reported and the least connected to outcomes. They are easy to raise and easy to buy, which is exactly why they persist.
• Decide the objective first, then the metric. Awareness, engagement, traffic, lead generation, and sales each imply different measures, and a campaign optimised for the wrong one succeeds at nothing.
• ⚠ Bought followers are worse than no followers. They depress engagement rate, corrupt targeting, and are visible to anyone who looks.
• Track through to the action — tagged links, conversion tracking, and, where possible, revenue.
• Understand attribution's limits. Most conversions touch several channels, and any single-channel claim of credit is a simplification — say so rather than overclaiming, which is a professionalism point as much as an analytical one.
• Test deliberately. Vary one thing, run long enough to mean something, and record what you learned.
• Report honestly, including what did not work. A report showing a failed test and a decision from it is more valuable than one showing only growth.
• Keep a portfolio with real numbers in it. In this field it is worth more to an employer than the transcript.

⚠⚠ Marketing is regulated — the rules bind the marketer, not only the company's lawyers

• The Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising and marketing practice nationally, and enforcement reaches individuals and small businesses, not only large advertisers.
• Claims must be truthful, not misleading, and substantiated before they are made. ⚠ Substantiation must exist at the time of the claim — producing evidence afterwards is not a defence.
• ⚠⚠ Material connections must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Where an endorser is paid, given free product, employed by the brand, or otherwise connected, the connection must be disclosed in a way an ordinary viewer will actually notice — not buried, not below a "more" fold, and not in a wall of hashtags.
• ⚠⚠ Fake and incentivised reviews carry federal exposure. The FTC has rules addressing fake reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, and suppressed negative reviews. Buying reviews, writing your own, or conditioning an incentive on a positive rating are all unsafe.
• Florida adds its own layer: the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, Chapter 501, Part II, Florida Statutes, which reaches unfair or deceptive practices independently of federal law and allows private actions.
• ⚠ Florida's Digital Bill of Rights adds consumer data obligations for businesses meeting its thresholds — relevant to any marketer handling personal data.
• Email marketing is governed by the CAN-SPAM Act (accurate headers, identifiable advertising, a working opt-out, honoured promptly), and ⚠ text message marketing is far more tightly regulated than email under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, where per-message statutory damages have produced very large settlements.
• Children's marketing is separately restricted, and online data collection from children is governed by COPPA.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies emphatically. This is one of the fastest-moving regulatory areas covered anywhere in this repository — FTC guidance, state privacy statutes, and platform policies all change frequently. Verify current requirements with primary sources and with counsel before relying on any of this.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

MAR2101 is 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, offered fall, spring and summer at Daytona State.

The free platform certifications — Google, Meta, HubSpot — are worth taking alongside this course; employers ask for them by name and they cost nothing.