• Ravensbourne University London logo
  • Wilderness Agency logo

Strategic Design for Social Media

Learn how to build social media strategies for the entire pipeline, from creative content design to audience-led optimisation.

  • Duration

    3 weeks
  • Weekly study

    4 hours

Learn how to plan and deliver coherent and purposeful social media content

Creating a cohesive strategy for the creation of social media content is a complex and challenging task by itself. But in social media marketing, you also need to effectively engineer the conversation that this content stimulates.

On this three-week course, you’ll discover the thinking frameworks that an agency like Wilderness uses to create conversations that enhance the values and purpose of a brand.

Discover immersive marketing and how to develop immersion strategies

Data is extremely important in marketing, even more so in social media marketing. But you also need context to add meaning to the data and make it useful for conversation design.

You’ll learn about research and immersion strategies and how to create a full 360-degree view of your target audience through social media.

Explore the importance of user testing and optimising your content

Reviewing content is one of the biggest contributors to evolving what you produce. It’s important to review, optimise, listen, and refine content to better understand the impact of your strategy.

This course will guide you through the process of evolving and refining content across all platforms, using case studies from NOW TV and Discovery Channel.

Learn from the experts at Wildnerness

This course features expertise and insights from Wilderness, one of Europe’s fastest-growing independent agencies.

With clients including HBO, Universal, Direct Line, Sky, and Warner Brothers, and having been awarded the 2020 Drum Social Agency of the Year award, Wilderness are uniquely positioned to guide you through this course.

Download video: standard or HD

Skip to 0 minutes and 9 seconds The strategy, the think, and all of those things were where the real value lay within the future of design and branding.

Skip to 0 minutes and 22 seconds Consistency is important, but consistency is kind of quite rigid. The clients were going, ah, interesting. We should be thinking about these things. It’s about teasing it out from the client. Our approach at Wilderness is to think like a fan. I think it’s important that you’re always experimenting; you’re always trying new things. You can pull the data together you want. It’s then about telling the story from it. This term influencer is actually now kind of a bit of a buzz word. It’s not just a case of saying, come and buy my stuff. It’s how are you going to make them care? What are you offering them in return?

Skip to 0 minutes and 56 seconds If your brand is about helping them communicate or struggling with an audience. Because the thing with social is that is it immediate. You know if something’s worked or it hasn’t. The algorithm purely picks up on what your audience are responding to. When brands can kind of see that community is very active and engaged, brands will then work with creators that obviously gives brand exposure.

Skip to 1 minute and 21 seconds Everything you see in VR is artificially created, so it’s an illusions. I think a virtual reality often is about being transported to somewhere else.

Skip to 1 minute and 31 seconds There will be a place which will be a world of connected experiences that will have dynamic situations. Fact is definitely following fiction.

Syllabus

  • Week 1

    People NOT Technology

    • Introduction

      Welcome. A bit about us, a bit about you and a bit about the course.

    • Introduction to week 01

      In the first week we will meet Zahra Hasan, head of insights at the Wilderness Agency and examine why a human centred approach is so important to achieving engagement within social media.

    • People not technology

      Central to Wilderness’ approach is to look beyond technology and focus their strategic decisions around an understanding of people and behaviour.

    • Think Like a Fan

      The Wilderness Agency knows that the best way to connect with an audience is to think and act like one of them.

    • Platform Dynamics

      According to Wilderness, ‘every platform has its own language’ and learning to be fluent in this language is one of the keys to gaining engagement.

    • Authenticity

      Fans crave ‘authenticity’ and one of the keys to engagement is talking in a way that feels honest, informed and committed.

    • Conclusions

      Time to think about what we've learnt over the last week.

  • Week 2

    Research & Immersion

    • Introduction

      Let's recap on last week and look at what are going to learn next.

    • Research & Immersion

      Wilderness’ success is based on an approach that embraces detailed research, listening to feedback and the strategic evolution of appropriate content.

    • From Strategy to Media Platform

      Agencies like Wilderness need to provide evidence to support their creative decisions, but they also need to make sure that these creative decisions are implemented to the highest standard.

    • Conclusions

      Let's recap and consider what we've learnt.

  • Week 3

    Trusting & Learning

    • Introduction to the final week

      Let's recap on what we learnt last week and look at what the final week of this ExpertTrack' has in store!

    • User optimisation & audience led refinement

      In the world of social media conversation we need to test, learn, refine and adopt a mindset that embraces iterative development.

    • Confirmation & Revision

      Wilderness work with two kinds of development loops. We have already explained how they continuously test, learn and refine, but it is equally

    • Conclusion

      Time to consolidate what you have learnt and define some key takeaways from the course.

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Discuss the principles that underpin successful engagement within the new media landscape.
  • Apply strategic planning to inform the creative use of branding, social media and interaction design.
  • Synthesise industry standard thinking frameworks to develop relevant concepts and ideas.
  • Explore industry standard methodologies for the creative use of branding, social media and interactive design.
  • Investigate strategic and systematic research methodologies to understand audience response.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for anyone looking to improve their digital marketing skills, especially social media and brand conversation design.

Who will you learn with?

An educator and design writer. The author of ‘Communication Design, Insights from the Creative Industries’, published by Bloomsbury. Initiator of collaborations with the likes of Apple, Sky & Barclays

Who developed the course?

Ravensbourne University London

Champions of creativity and collaboration, Ravensbourne is the definitive destination for study in digital media and design courses. Situated in the heart of London, Ravensbourne is a top-ranking university for graduate salaries in art and design.

The Wilderness Agency

Wilderness are one of Europe’s fastest-growing independent agencies. They have a growing team of close to 40 specialists across London and Amsterdam delivering work with a global reach. Their work has been recognised by The Webbys, Marketing Week, Digiday, The Drum, eConsultancy and other leading awards and publications and they were the 2020 Drum Social Agency of the Year. Their clients include HBO, Universal, Dream Works, Direct Line, Sky and Warner Brothers.

Endorsers and supporters

endorsed by

Kairos Media Logo

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn