Adult Ed

Digital Promise and Facebook Team on Social Media Marketing Training for Adults

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/01/17

Digital Promise and Facebook are working together to create a face-to-face training program to help adults learn digital skills. The program, "Digital Skills from Facebook," won't be training students in coding or computer science, but giving them social media marketing skills. In return for their efforts, participants will earn microcredentials — digital badges to set them apart from others in the job market.

The program is starting in Michigan, where Facebook has pledged to train 3,000 individuals over the next two years.

The first set of workshops rolls out this week with Michigan IT bootcamp trainer Grand Circus. Digital Promise will train other Michigan organizations to deliver the same workshops to their local communities starting in November.

The courses cover social media marketing basics, marketing with Facebook pages and ads and marketing with Instagram. Courses will take between two and six hours in class with an additional one to three hours of work outside of the class. Over four weeks, participants will develop a Facebook page and Instagram account for a local community organization or business they've chosen; use that page to build awareness, attract visitors and boost business; and create advertising campaigns in support of the page. If they complete them successfully, they'll have earned four microcredentials from Digital Promise.