Facebook is far more than a place for recipes, family pictures, and kitten videos. It’s also an excellent platform for advertising where even small businesses, with limited budgets, can efficiently reach customers. Even when winging it, Facebook is structured so anyone with minimal skills can navigate without training. However, if you’re really interested in reaching a targeted audience, a precise demographic, and the perfect customer, consider Facebook Blueprint. Facebook Blueprint includes over 50 online training courses covering various topics about online advertising, content, and metrics. By investing time into the eLearning courses, you’ll learn how to use Facebook to its full capacity. After reviewing all the courses, Facebook offers a certification program to show your expertise.
What is Facebook Blueprint?
Facebook Blueprint eLearning is a series of free, self-paced online courses available that teach about marketing on Facebook and Instagram. Adweek’s article recently stated that after Facebook introduced the Blueprint eLearning program in March 2018, within 18 months, it had reached 1 million course enrollments! The only investment for becoming a social media expert on two of the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, is time. All the eLearning courses are free. However, if you are interested in becoming certified, it costs is $150 dollars per exam. But, be prepared, all Facebook certification test are administered by a proxy.
What Does That Mean for Advertising?
In another article, I talked about the rise of mobile traffic. With an increase in mobile traffic, it’s only logical that social media traffic is on the rise too. As of June 2018, there are 1.47 billion daily active users and 2.23 billion monthly active users on Facebook. The intro to one of the Blueprint eLearning courses mentions that at least 1 billion people are using Facebook on mobile every day. According to Facebook second quarter 2018 reports, mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 91% of total advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2018. This is an increase from the 87% of advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2017. With a society more connected than ever on mobile devices, it’s easy to understand why Facebook is actively encouraging marketers to advertise on mobile.
What Does That Mean for Your Business?
One can see what Facebook Blueprint can do for advertisers, but what does that mean for your business? In the Blueprint eLearning course, ‘Creating a Facebook Page,’ this stat stood out: There are over 60 million active business Pages on Facebook.
Some advantages of advertising on Facebook include:
- Spreading your business to the right people
- Bringing people to your store or website
- Selling more
When advertising on Facebook, you have the ability to direct ads based on location, gender/age, interests, and your business objectives. If your competitor has a large enough following, you can also target people who like them. The courses explain how groups become custom segments, ripe for advertising to.
Facebook Blueprint eLearning Courses
The Facebook courses are divided into sections. Your course options are basic and defined by how familiar you are with Facebook. If you have no experience, you can start from scratch and learn how to create a Facebook business page. There are fundamental courses if you need a little understanding of ads and want to know where they can be placed. What if you want to ensure your creative is always approved? There are courses that explain allowable content and creative. In short, there are courses on how to setup, create, edit, and manage Facebook ads. If you have been working in ads for some time, there are courses on advanced buying options, generating leads, measuring ad performance, and using Facebook tools like power editor.
For someone new to Facebook advertising, there’s a section called “Get Started with Advertising” with the course named “Create Facebook Ads.” This section, in general, can help you understand why and how to send people to your website or raise an event awareness. For a more experienced user, the “Managed Ads” section has a “Business Manager” course that describes the Business Manager structure in detail and how the tool can help businesses and agencies manage Facebook Pages, ad accounts, and apps in one place.
Another great feature from the eLearning courses is their “Learning Paths” section. This section allows you to hone your skills through courses that are customized to your job role. You can select all content to be enrolled in every course available, or focus on a specific category such as Digital Buyer Learning Path which is more customized to agencies and advertisers who are interested in learning about the basics of buying advertising on Facebook; like tools, advertising objectives, targeting options, campaign optimization best practices, and reporting.
Blueprint Certification
Blueprint Certification is an advanced-level aptitude for specific job roles. Exams are created by using job analysis to create a list of information and techniques for the role selected. These exams are updated twice a year so Facebook stays relevant in the ever changing digital and social world. If you’re just getting into paid social media and are unsure of what your future role will be, Facebook Blueprint eLearning may help you better drill this down, by exposing you to multiple options. Once you are sure of the social media role you want, the digital laurel, Blueprint Certification, may help your future.
Blueprint Certification Exams
The real difference between the eLearning courses and the certification is pricing and appellation. The courses offer tutelage about paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The Certification offers a title. There are two types of certification. Each exam has an average of 50-60 questions and a passing score of 700 or higher is required. There is a limit of 75 minutes to answer everything on the test and, as mentioned previously, there is a proxy. Passing the exams is proof that you know everything that Facebook deems necessary to be an expert in paid advertising. Facebook takes these tests seriously, and so should you. Here are details about the two certifications and what it takes to earn a digital badge.
Facebook Certified Planning Professional has the following exams:
Exam 310-101: Facebook Advertising Core Competencies
Exam 322-101: Facebook Certified Planning Professional
Certified Planning tests you on implementing planning strategies, managing Pages, targeting audiences, and optimizing reach and frequency.
Facebook Certified Buying Professional has the following exams:
Exam 310-101: Facebook Advertising Core Competencies
Exam 321-101: Facebook Certified Buying Professional
Certified Buying will test you on managing, creating and purchasing ads, improving performance and delivery, and ad buying types.
Conclusion
And the end of the day, every business has different needs. Some businesses may want to focus on brand awareness or bringing traffic to their offsite store for shopping. Other businesses may have an ecommerce business objective. Whatever your desire or skills level, Facebook Blueprint eLearning has a course that assist you in reaching your goals.