Executive Education
Northwestern University in Qatar
Education City, Qatar +974 4454 5100
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Social media platforms are increasing in number and influence, and rapidly evolving due to advances in digital technology. Contemporary developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are triggering a new period of uncertainty, instability, and transformation. Organizations and professionals who understand what’s new and what’s next are better prepared to recognize unique opportunities and better equipped to deal with emerging challenges. The next wave of transformation is rapidly gaining speed and already affecting marketing practices. Handling the shift effectively requires rethinking and reorienting social media strategies and mastering new knowledge and skills to enable private and public sector organizations to efficiently plan and effectively implement approaches that are both innovative and well managed. That is vital for limiting risk in a volatile situation that is fraught with uncertainty.
Social media leadership depends on the quality of professional understandings and capabilities to identify and target key audience segments and manage relations with diverse stakeholders. That is essential for strengthening brands, enhancing networks, and delivering superior services. This Masterclass workshop clarifies effective ways to create social media strategies and analyze results. The instructor covers the basics of essential knowledge need to create social media strategies and use analytic functions available in the most used social media platforms and provides an overview of how AI technology is affecting professional practices in digital marketing.
After completing this Masterclass participants will have the essential knowledge needed to steer and support the development of effective social media strategies and how to employ digital analytics to deepen understandings and generate insights. The Masterclass is designed as a hands-on workshop to ensure learning necessary skills and an efficient learning process. Participants are assigned a project that requires applying what they learn over a break period of about one month. The participants will share their results with the instructor before a final session focused on providing feedback and discussion. Participants are not required to share sensitive internal information about their companies or organizations.
This is a foundational masterclass for professionals wanting to develop essential understandings and learn core competencies that are required to develop, implement, and refine an organization’s social media strategy. The course is equally suitable for individual professionals or several participants from the same organization who need to collaborate as a team. The course accommodates participants from diverse organizations in both public and private sectors and provides a valuable opportunity for professional networking among a cohort of colleagues engaged in similar work. This masterclass is suitable for social media managers and professionals who are responsible for producing and managing social media marketing and brand campaigns. The language of instruction is English.
The course will meet 12 hours in total. The first day is a three-hour seminar for developing essential understandings of what is required for an organization to design a successful and innovative social media strategy. The instructor covers best practices and provides case study examples of successful social media strategies. This session is a survey of the professional field of social media strategy and analysis that lays a foundation for practice.
The next day has two sessions of three-hours each. In the morning session, participants learn methods for segmenting target audiences and how to do that using social media analytics. Cases illustrate innovative ways organizations have expanded their reach and improved engagement with marketing communications.
The afternoon session is devoted to learning essential analytic tools and how to interpret results, as well as what is important to prioritize for reporting to senior management. The instructor introduces the project assignment at the end of session three.
Before the final session three-hour session about one month later (after the Holy Month of Ramadan), participants share their project results with the instructor. The final session provides feedback from the instructor and a discussion among participants about good ideas and potential improvements.
This Masterclass is designed as a workshop. Participants are asked to complete a worksheet in advance as a framework for collaborating with relevant colleagues and managers in their home organizations to do the assigned project, which requires 1) assessing the current social media strategy (or lack thereof in some instances) and 2) propose a strategy the organization could employ with practical steps to produce and implement it, and analyze results.
The course fee is 6,771 QAR ($1,860 USD) per participant. The fee includes lunch on the full day and hospitality service for the other sessions. Individual participation requires payment in full via Eventbrite before the first session. Organizations that enroll multiple participants can be invoiced after the training, in which case payment in full is due not later than 40 days after the last session. Refunds are provided on the following basis:
TBA
Matthias Krug, PhD
Researcher on the role of digital media and artificial intelligence in society
Specialist in Social Media Strategy and Digital Transformations
“Our goals can only be reached through the vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” - Pablo Picasso.
Dr. Matthias is an academic, author and strategic communications professional with years of practical experience working at the intersection of creativity, strategy, communications, and storytelling. He understands similarities and differences across digital publishing platforms. He has conceptualized, developed, and overseen the implementation of award-winning social media strategies for many organizations. He is a recipient of the Best Use of Social Media and Communications and PR Campaign of the Year and has extensive experience teaching for leading universities and presenting at conferences around the world (France, Germany, Lebanon, Qatar, Spain, Portugal, Lebanon, the UK, and the USA).