Chevron Left
Back to What is Social?

Learner Reviews & Feedback for What is Social? by Northwestern University

4.6
stars
4,100 ratings

About the Course

The “What Is Social?" MOOC is for business owners, executives, and marketing professionals who want to significantly improve their abilities to grow their social strategy using effective, proven methodologies. This hands on, "how to" program won’t just tell you how to grow your professional persona using social – you will actually do it! This course is the first in the six-course specialization, Social Media Marketing: How to Profit in a Digital World. While the course can be audited for free, paid learners will receive additional content beyond the course basics. For MOOC 1, the toolkit includes a special video from Alessandro Acquisti on Big Data and a set of studies done by IBM on engagement and social marketing strategies with bottom-line profits. This course has been designed to give you the tools, insights, knowledge, and skills to immediately impact your organization. In addition, we will help you network with thought leaders in social. After completing this course, you and your organization’s staff will be able to position, engage, and grow relationships with the consumers of highest value to you. Today, we are living in a period of massive disruption. New technologies are changing the way people engage with each other and with the organizations that interest them. This course will start you on the path to growing your own social strategy using effective, proven methodologies. Additional MOOC 1 faculty include: * Judy Ungar Franks (President, The Marketing Democracy, Ltd. & Lecturer, Medill Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern)...

Top reviews

FF

Oct 6, 2016

Great course. Looking forward completing whole specialization.

Additionally, the course shares and recommends tools which are helpful if you are doing social media marketing or eager to become one.

CC

May 12, 2016

A really great introduction to Social Media Marketing and an opportunity to gain access to really useful tools that make me competitive in the job market. Very excited to begin MOOC 2 of this program.

Filter by:

801 - 825 of 1,057 Reviews for What is Social?

By Carter L K

•

Oct 9, 2020

I learned a lot and the course seemed to be designed to make learning interesting and enjoyable again. I was really looking forward to completing the rest of the specialization but my financial aide that I thought covered all of the courses in the specialization was only applied to the first of 6 courses. Unfortunately my position hasn't changed and I still can't afford to pay for the courses. I was hoping to finish the entire specialization and use my newly acquired knowledge to create some opportunities as a social marketing consultant and earn enough money to continue to learn and earn as many different certifications in the social/digital marketing world as I am able. It will only add to the professional persona I've been actively creating for some time now. I hope it will create the pillars of the well respected, profitable firm I hope to create that will be praised by my peers. This course has made me even more confident and motivated to excel and eventually even surpass the professional persona that I will have positioned at the highest level. I hate my fate being placed in the hands of anyone other than my own. Unfortunately the affects of Covid-19 has done that to many people. I am putting my faith in the hands of the folks controlling the financial aide and pray that they feel the drive and passion radiating from me and give me enough to totally drown myself in knowledge that I'll share with the people and companies that make up the market and industry I hope to serve well. I strongly believe that the people who created the criteria and crafted the lessons for these courses have delivered something so special for their students that it commands attention and motivates them to want to learn, but what they will do when the course is finished is anyones guess. I hope they give it back to the people writing the checks...

By Deleted A

•

Feb 15, 2016

This section is great for absolute beginners, and I would highly recommend it to anyone new to social media and social marketing. It seems necessary for it to be this straightforward to set everyone up for the more advanced material. Most of this was review for me, but I learned some interesting, fun facts about social media usage and data.

The project was peer graded, which normally I enjoy, however, one of my peer assessments said my assignment was missing elements that I specifically made sure to include and address. There was no way to really dispute this, so I feel like my grade on the assignment wasn't fair. That said, I didn't have a bad grade, but I put a great deal of effort into my proposal and making sure it addressed all of the necessary points.

Otherwise, very informative and enjoyable, and the class participation in social media is great.

By Alysia B

•

Sep 21, 2016

The content in this course was invaluable and I learned a lot from the instructor videos, guest lectures and assignments. It's already changed the way I am doing business.

My one complaint is with the grading system - and this is on Coursera and not on the course. I can't understand first why a peer graded assignment is considered late when I submitted it on time, and it's not my fault that others hadn't reviewed it yet. Similarly on a quiz, there were points given for answers that were supposed to be skipped if you had done the assignment. Therefore, the highest grade you could get on that quiz was a 57%. While passing was a 1%, it's still averaged into my final grade as a 57%. That doesn't make any sense at all.

By Angela M H

•

Feb 25, 2017

The content of this course was pitched well for a beginner in social media and marketing and provided a great overview of what to expect from the rest of the specialisation. The resources were varied and interesting, and came in a variety of formats to be accessible to as many students as possible. The quizzes were well-set-up. Some of the wording of the assignment was difficult to understand (and this from a native English speaker), and the range of answers I reviewed for my peers reflected that this was not just the case for me. It was fascinating reading what others were using social media and digital marketing strategies to leverage - the variety of industries and subsectors represented in the cohort was amazing!

By Lisa L

•

Jun 20, 2017

Compared to other Coursera classes I've experienced, this one was very thinly moderated. I sensed a lot of frustration from participants who didn't understand or were uncertain about the peer reviewed assignment. From reviewing 6 classmates' assignments, I feel the confusion was genuine in some cases (others simply didn't put in much effort). For those trying to achieve and understand, the lack of support is disheartening. Keep in mind that for many of us this is completely new territory.

By Laura S

•

Jan 22, 2018

This is a brief intro course where it basically tells what you *will* learn in future classes in this series. There's not much learning in this class itself, but I found value in that one assignment encouraged you to specifically define your professional target markets - who, in which digital communities, consuming what type of media, concerned with which topics, etc. The course also makes you sign up for some useful social medial tools (to be used in later classes).

By Amanda P

•

May 7, 2020

Good, however I felt that a lot of information was repeated a little too much throughout the four weeks. I think for companies looking to update the way they market towards their customers/audience this is a good course to take. For individuals wanting to learn how to market themselves on Social Media this really isn't catered towards that. All in all, good course to take and really interesting to see how companies can grow into Social Media influencers.

By Stephanie C

•

Feb 4, 2021

Overall a solid course, although some of the information felt a tad outdated - I realize that the course is constantly evolving and being amended though and with that in mind, overall it was good. The one other thing that I would note is that the assignments here and the focus feels put on entrepreneurs, and as someone trying to learn more for my day job, I didn't feel like there was a lot that I could do that was hands-on and bring over to that.

By Sabrina K

•

Jun 16, 2022

obviously social media is a fast changing area. Therefor i was quite impressed how they kept the course docs and infos up to date. I am quite experienced in this field, but i have chosen this course because i want to to the whole package and to get into the mood of online learning and courses (first timer here). The content wasnt challenging but if you are new in this field i think it covers certain basics and understandings.

By Polina A

•

Oct 5, 2020

This course contains a lot of great information and insights regarding social media and marketing on an introductory level, but it does sometimes feel very stiff in a way one might not expect when discussing the fluid and ever-changing world of social media. Because much of the information is conceptual, rather than specific to current platforms, it doesn't seem entirely outdated, but could use some freshening up.

By Kim W

•

Oct 20, 2015

This is a great course for novices, but even as someone with a couple of years of experience managing social media, there are still gems in this course. There are some amazing statistics about the importance of social media (very helpful for anyone that needs to demonstrate how critical it is for your organization) and I also loved the class assignment and thought that it was very practical.

By Monica M

•

Oct 8, 2016

Great course. I would like more on how to use Hootsuite and Klout. Also which one is better?? I am finding them a challenge to use. I like to search for my own content as I find the suggested content boring...and often not relevant to what I am looking for. I can't understand why I cannot cut and past links. So, like I said a primer on how to use these sites would be good.

By Brittany S

•

Oct 2, 2016

This course was definitely introductory. I felt that most of the class just brushed over some general topics while letting us know that what he had just mentioned was going to be covered in the next MOOC. It was very helpful, however, and got me started on using the basic tools for Social Media Marketing so I'm excited to really dig in during the next courses.

By Peter W

•

Jul 17, 2017

On the plus side the videos are short and so it feel like things keep moving in this course without bogging down. On the other hand I feel like there are a lot of "buzz words" being thrown around and sometimes it makes it hard for me to get the point. I wish the talking heads would stick to plain and simple English instead of trying to sound clever.

By Sherry D L

•

Apr 16, 2020

The course was great! Very informative and more educational that my actual in person classes at my local Community College. Love the option of being able to re-watch the videos. The certificate was a disappointment though, it should reflect what the course is about Social Medial Marketing not ask a question What is Social?...on a certificate.

By Nguyen P T

•

Sep 28, 2015

this is very basic and clear about social. it helps me understand about the fielf of social marketing, some concepts, such as social network, virtual community and characteristics of these are essential for making social plan.

the exercise seems easy but practical, it is good first step for leaning social marketing. hope to learn next course

By Anita H

•

Jan 21, 2016

I love this course and the instructors. I am learning so much. The only thing i would change is to make sure papers from peers are marked in a timely manner. I have marked three papers, and have not had a single person mark mine. I hope this will not affect my ability to certify for your specialty, as i am really enjoying my time here.

By Jean-Pierre d

•

Feb 16, 2017

Very clear introduction describing the different layers of the Social Pyramid . Starting at the top with Social Networks with their shallow discussions of everything to the bottom layers of though leaders & virtual communities with their focused discussions of specific topics and their "Passion" or "Trigger events" main focus.

By Anaïs N

•

Mar 13, 2016

I really enjoyed this course but it really is more of an introduction to the rest of the specialisation.

A lot was repeated over and over which seemed a little tedious at times but in actuality, it made sure I really understood and clearly processed the most important information.

Looking forward to the next course!

By KELLY P F

•

Dec 4, 2019

Thanks for all the quality information we receive in this MOOC. I find it really helpful to develop my own career goals. The only suggest i have is include more multimedia material, like the videos in the first week because see the teacher all the time talking and just some slideshares can be monotonous sometimes

By Jill M

•

Feb 11, 2019

This overview of social along with some hands-on practice was very helpful to me. I like to understand broad concepts before drilling down into specifics. I did notice some statistics and factoids that were out of date, from 2014/15. Fortunately, the final assignment was current.

By Mike I

•

Nov 4, 2018

Great course that changes the perception of how we view social and just how much impact it has on a personal and professional level. I do however wish there was a little more direct communication and interaction aside from what we have, but that may change in the following Moocs.

By Kayley K

•

Sep 24, 2016

I really liked this course and learned a lot, but can't help but wonder why there isn't more emphasis placed on two of today's most popular social media networking sites, Instagram and Snapchat. I would really like to learn how to better use both of these networks for marketing.

By Iliana L

•

Jan 17, 2017

It's good, is the beginning to understand social media in a simple way.

I learned interesting information and sites in this world of social media, however I think the should introduce you in a more personal way, give differences between taking this as persona or as company

By Royhan F A

•

Jan 18, 2019

This course give a good introduction into social media marketing. We can made a good network from practicing the lesson in every video. And we can upgrade our knowledge as this course also provide career targeting assignment and will be reviewed by another applicants.