It's Too Hard To Identify Expertise In Social Media

Jan. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- Palo Alto, CA The Social Media Academy, who was one of the first social media training and education institutes, is engaged in bringing more transparency into the fast growing social media industry. A transparent certification  program shall help understand what people know, what experience they gained during the education and what focus the education had.

In accordance to the Academy founder Axel Schultze (http://xeesm.com/axels), "there are thousands of self proclaimed experts, but nobody knows what the expertise is based on. Then there are even more marketing consultants who just bolt the term 'social media' on their shingle and hope to get some engagement. Many have excellent knowledge and hands on experience - but others don't.

We developed a certification program for both new comers to the scene as well as experienced experts to go through so that a client or employer knows what kind of knowledge those people have".

The certification details for the “Social Media Strategist” are publicly available for anyone who wants to understand what students learn. “Being transparent about what we teach is crucial for fostering trust in our graduates and what they bring to the table when working with companies.  Our graduates are able to demystify the social web for clients, in turn teaching them about social media as they assist them in translating their business into the social media space.  It is the combination of our social media certification with a graduate’s existing professional expertise that provides solid value to clients,” said Adrienne Corn (http://xeesm.com/AdrienneCorn ), one of the founding faculty members

The Social Media Academy does not claim to be the ultimate authority in Social Media, but based on 6 years experience offers one of the most comprehensive social media education through their outlets in the US, Europe and Australia. Most of the former students speak very highly about the education and the learning experience. Co-founder Marita Roebkes  http://xeesm.com/maritar sais "We don't provide any canned student references, instead suggest that anybody talks to any Academy Alumni to get it 'from the horse’s mouth' and as such our Alumni List is publicly available on our site."

The new certification program starts February 10 and is either 4 weeks for highly experienced social media consultants or 3 month for everybody who want to build social media expertise from ground up to either start their social media consulting business or seek a new career as social media manager in the industry.

More information can be found on http://www.socialmedia-academy.com

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The Social Media Academy is an education and research institute providing education for business professionals from all industries on how to best apply social media to their respective businesses. The main emphasis is to help business managers and consultants to get a comprehensive education on Social Media, including strategy development, planning, execution, tools, resources ways to report and analyze development and success and help understand the evolutionary changes in our society. As part of the educational development, the Social Media Academy conducts research exploring the ongoing changes in the field and supports the continuous learning process as well as monitor ongoing changes in the field.
The main course is the institute’s leadership class which focuses on how to plan, implement and engage with social media in all business areas including marketing, sales, product development, service & support, logistics, administration and engineering.