Social Media Marketing is adjunct with Digital Marketing. Rated as one of the top skills to learn and it has great growth prospects for the future. Scope of social media marketing includes:

• Conversion of leads
• Building engagement
• Create brand awareness and recognition
• Promotion and Advertising
• Research through audience data
• Brand communication
• Connecting with audience
• Increasing traffic on website
• Networking
• Influencer marketing
• Networking

For both personal and professional prospects in social media marketing, you must attain good knowledge of the following:

SEO and SME

SEO and SME make the core of social media marketing if you have a website to cater to. They are as effective as hashtags and can be a major source of lead conversation.

Digital Marketing

You need to have an adept knowledge of basic marketing principles. You don’t require a marketing degree, but foundational knowledge about how marketing works.

Viral content marketing

Understanding behavioral psychology is essential. Why are people attracted to certain posts? Why do people share certain posts? Content should elicit emotion from your audience.

Content Development and Engagement

You must have the ability to understand your target audience, their requirements and mindset. Developing content aligned with your audience and using various engagement methods can boost your content's viewership.

Brand Communication

A fundamental requirement is to communicate your message properly to the audience. From engaging and interacting with your audience to running campaigns, you need strong communication and branding skills.

In Depth knowledge of different platforms and their tools.

Each social media handle caters to different needs and requirements. You can understand the kind of audience available on the platform by using available tools and judging the purpose of that platform

Social Media Marketing Analytics

Learning how to check insights and deriving conclusions, it will help you make an informed decision about campaign performance.

Planning, Strategizing, Organizing and Management

Successful social media marketing requires strategic approach.

Copywriting

You must learn how to build a captivating story and motivating audience to engage with your social media post. It is difficult without great copywriting skills.

And most importantly, creativity

To keep followers engaged and hooked, and maintain differentiation, you need to consistently come up with new and engaging ideas, creative initiatives, and campaigns.

However, there is no formal education to attain in social media marketing. You may consider following ways to learn:

Courses

- Short term course in above mentioned topics

- Short term course in social media marketing on various online platforms like HubSpot, Google Garage, Cousera, EDX, Udemy, Skill Share

- Courses from institutes like NIIT, DSIM, NIIM, Digi Perform

- Online or Offline course in Digital Marketing for in depth knowledge

You may refer: https://www.careers360.com/articles/15-online-courses-for-social-media-managers

Reading Social Media Blogs & Ebooks

This is one of the cardinal and excellent ways to learn about social media marketing and strategies. Blogs like Social Media Examiner will give you a great amount of insights and tips which can be of great help to learn practical knowledge and running campaigns.

Developing a blog or content and promoting on Social Media

Start content development or blog on a topic of your interest and learn about planning and marketing it on social media. This will give you insights about your performance, knowledge, exposure and areas to improve. Moreover, it will give you a practical exposure of your learnings.

A ttend webinars and workshops conducted by expects or watch their videos

There are many industry specific seminars and trainings conducted regularly. This will help you gain insights and network with people with similar interests. Networking explicitly leads to audience growth too.

Do internships

This is a good way to take up real life challenges, where you will be given targets and your performance will be assessed. Doing internships will provide you diversity of projects and great exposure.

I hope the information helps!

For any further queries, please ask.

All the best!

Social media marketing roles require specific skill and knowledge sets that involve psychology, sociology, statistics, analytics, and a strong understanding of marketing principals.

There are various online courses available for Social media marketing on Internet , you just have to choose any one in which you are interested ,

Good luck.