There’s something for everyone in Meta Blueprint’s online training courses.
Total beginner? Learn how to set up your Facebook Page and the basics of marketing your business across all Meta apps: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
More advanced marketers can dive into media planning and ad buying with detailed courses to get the most out of Facebook ads. There’s even a course for managing brand communities.
Meta Blueprint courses are free — but your time is money, right? So is it worth it? Will these workshops and classes actually help you advance at work or should you invest your time elsewhere?
By the end of this article, you’ll know if Meta Blueprint certification is right for you or where else you can go if it’s not.
Bonus: Download a free guide that shows you how to save time and money on your Facebook ads. Find out how to reach the right customers, lower your cost-per-click, and more.
What is the Facebook (Meta) Blueprint?
Facebook (Meta) Blueprint is a website offering online courses, workshops, and certification programs designed to uplevel your social media skills. The training focuses on Meta platforms, though many of the concepts, such as community management and creative strategy, can apply more broadly to your work.
Meta Blueprint trainings are designed for a mostly beginner to intermediate level audience of marketers looking to learn new skills, or those wanting to break into a marketing role.
How does Meta Blueprint work?
Live events
Meta offers live online classes on most business days across a wide range of time zones and languages. They range from an hour to approximately 90 minutes and are taught by experienced instructors via virtual meetings.
They’re free to attend and you can register for as many as you like. Many of the live classes are adapted from the on-demand courses, with the added benefit of ensuring you’re getting the most up-to-date information.
Source: Meta
On-demand courses
Meta Blueprint offers on-demand video versions of workshops you can watch anytime. You can add classes to your favorites list to watch later, or to your “Plan,” which is a place to build a study path for yourself, whether you’re preparing for a Meta certification or just want to stay organized.
Most classes feature a presentation slide deck with an instructor speaking via voiceover. You can skip back and forth around the video to rewatch sections which is always a nice feature to have in recorded courses.
One drawback is the lack of closed captioning or ASL interpreter options for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing. Hopefully Meta will make their content more accessible in the future.
Source: Meta
Certifications
While the live and on-demand courses are free to register for and watch, Meta Blueprint’s certification programs are a paid offering. You can complete all the classes for each certification for free, but must pay for the exam to obtain your Meta Blueprint certification badge.
Use your certification badge to spruce up your resume or LinkedIn profile and show clients (or potential employers) you know what you’re talking about.
Meta Blueprint currently offers the following certification programs:
Associate:
- Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate Certification
- Meta Certified Community Manager Certification
Professional:
- Meta Certified Media Planning Professional
- Meta Certified Media Buying Professional
- Meta Certified Marketing Science Professional
- Meta Certified Creative Strategy Professional
Source: Meta
So, is Meta certification worth your time? Keep reading to find out.
Who can benefit from Meta Blueprint courses?
Current marketers wanting to learn new skills
Eyeing a promotion at work? Want to offer a new service to clients in your agency or freelance business? Or simply learn skills to promote your own services better, like how to run Facebook ads?
The knowledge you learn from the free classes can be applied right away in your current professional life. Or take a paid certification exam to beef up your resume and demonstrate to your boss why you’re perfect for that new role (and deserve a raise).
People who want to get into marketing
If you’re not already working in marketing, Meta Blueprint offers a quick, free, and easy way to pick up key skills in marketing and social media. While the certifications don’t replace a formal marketing education, they do show prospective employers you’re serious about learning, willing to take initiative to seek out training opportunities, and passionate about marketing.
Speaking from experience, that growth-mindset attitude can take you very far.
Agencies
If you run an agency or marketing team, Meta Blueprint courses are a great free resource to recommend (or require) your employees to take. It can also help new hires feel more confident in their roles and better able to explain concepts to clients.
And… it’s a resource you don’t need to create yourself. Nice.
The top Meta Blueprint courses for 2024
1. Grow Your Audience with Advantage+ App Campaigns
Source: Meta
If you have an app, you need to watch this class. It covers everything you need to learn how to create high-converting Facebook ad campaigns specifically to drive app downloads.
This class is useful whether you have experience with traditional Facebook ads or not as it focuses on the new Advantage+ campaign option. Meta’s new Advantage+ campaigns use AI to improve targeting, reduce costs, and drive smarter results. They’re advanced enough to drive big results but simple enough that anyone can start using them today.
Before you watch, read our primer on how to advertise on Facebook.
Time commitment: 50 minutes
Best for: Brands and/or developers looking to drive app downloads
2. Build a Business Presence on Social Media
Source: Meta
This short and sweet workshop covers the basics of portraying your brand on social media in an authentic way that feels good to you while also attracting the audience you want to reach.
Many marketers will already know these tips but for beginners, it’s a perfect quick intro to social media marketing you can watch during a coffee break.
Time commitment: Less than 20 minutes
Best for: Beginners, or small business owners looking to do their own social media marketing
3. Engage an Audience on Social Media
Source: Meta
Building on the basics of social media marketing in the course above, this video covers the basics of fostering engagement. It includes examples of how to make your content more interactive and use tools like auto-replies in Messenger to set expectations about when a customer service rep will reply to a message.
Additionally, this offers a good summary of how to measure your engagement from month to month with basic analytics.
Time commitment: About 20 minutes
Best for: New social media managers, or small business owners wanting to do their own social media marketing
4. Good Brief to Great Creative
Source: Meta
This class may not sound as exciting as the others — there’s no promise of increasing ROI with ads or driving engagement with organic social content — but it will have the most impact on the success of your marketing efforts.
That’s because every campaign starts (or should start) with a creative brief… and the quality of that brief will directly correlate with the quality of the campaign it produces.
I liked the specific examples in this class. It gives advice on how to rewrite goals to be more specific and actionable, such as “create customer awareness” instead of a generic “increase engagement.” Plus it covers how to tie those goals to measurable KPIs, or “key performance indicators,” to track your progress and be able to report that progress to your boss(es).
Time commitment: About 30 minutes
Best for: Marketers of all skill levels, especially strategists and project managers
5. Measure Creative Impact
Source: Meta
Knowing how to make great ads is important, but it’s equally as important to know how to measure their performance. More than reading analytics, that means having a repeatable process to test new ads, track performance, and be able to speak to both the ROI and brand awareness impact of the creative design of your ads.
I liked the simple approach of the “Ask, Make, Learn, Adapt, Repeat” cycle used in this class. It’s a solid reminder that ads need to be creative and inspiring, but most of all, they still need to resonate with your audience to actually be effective.
Often, asking your audience what they want more of is a great place to start any creative project, including what to promote with ads. You can start there and ask for feedback and iterate with future versions to get the highest performance possible from your creative content.
Time commitment: About 30 minutes
Best for: Beginner to intermediate marketers who already, or want to, create a Facebook ads strategy
Alternatives to Meta Blueprint
Hootsuite Academy
Source: Hootsuite Academy
Our very own Hootsuite Academy is a great place to learn everything about social media marketing in one place. We’ve designed our classes to focus on hands-on learning and each is taught by experienced, real social media experts who know what your day-to-day tasks really look like.
Unlike Meta Blueprint, Hootsuite Academy classes aren’t restricted to only what works on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger). The strategies in our classes cover all social media platforms, including Meta’s, and are constantly updated to reflect algorithm changes and social media trends.
Similar to Meta Blueprint, Hootsuite Academy also offers certifications in various social media marketing topics. These certifications are great for boosting your resume or to use as training materials as part of onboarding new team members.
For larger organizations or anyone needing a custom curriculum, Hootsuite Academy offers a custom education program and materials designed specifically for your employees. This can be a valuable training asset for years to come.
Looking for a more informal, free option for social media tips? Check out our Hootsuite Labs YouTube channel.
HubSpot Academy
Source: HubSpot Academy
HubSpot Academy is a well-known learning platform for marketing skills ranging from email marketing to social media. All classes are free, including over 30 certification courses on topics including SEO, sales, inbound marketing, and HubSpot platform specific training.
HubSpot Academy tends to be on the more technical side of things with courses like SEO and CRM data migration, making it a great place to learn about these more niche topics.
Additionally, since HubSpot is a widely recognized company, adding a HubSpot certification to your resume or LinkedIn profile can help boost your credibility with current or potential employers.
LinkedIn Learning
Source: LinkedIn
LinkedIn Learning offers many classes on business, marketing, and creative topics, as well as over 175 certifications for popular professional applications such as Zendesk, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and many more. The only drawback of LinkedIn Learning is it’s not free: you need a LinkedIn Premium membership to access all courses, or you can purchase individual courses. However, the price per course is reasonable with many being under $50.
Being the world’s largest professional social network, LinkedIn is often perceived as a place of serious business. Their courses share in this brand sentiment, conveying capability and trust thanks to their association with LinkedIn. Some classes even count for academic credits at universities around the world or CEU credits for many professional organizations, such as the Project Management Institute.
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