In an era of influencers, viral content, and constant connectivity, social media has become one of the most powerful tools in modern marketing. But beyond the likes, shares, and comments is a world of data, that when utilized effectively, can provide insights into consumer behavior, brand performance, and emerging market trends.
At Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, our Master of Science in Marketing program equips students with the skills to become capable and confident marketing professionals who understand the digital economy.
The program’s curriculum concludes with the Social Media Analytics course–a hands-on, project-based course that bridges theory with real-world experience. The course gives students the skills and tools to dive deeper into the current digital landscape and the opportunity to connect with industry leaders.
Real-time impact
Social media platforms capture what traditional marketing often misses: real-time expressions of opinion and engagement, which can offer rich data for analysis. And this course challenges students to transform that data into actionable insights.
“I hope students leave the course equipped with the ability to turn noisy social media data into valuable insights,” said Academic Program Director and Professor Tao Chen. “Social media platforms produce massive volumes of unstructured data, burying insights under layers of noise. It’s critical to navigate and make sense of complex social media data.”
What students learn
Student teams have the opportunity to work with an industry leader to analyze real-world business problems using real-world data. The project begins with two industry advisors presenting a few different project areas based on their current business interests and needs. The projects cover various topics including analyzing the impact of macroeconomic events, evaluating the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns, and exploring new market opportunities.
“The students brought varied perspectives and approaches to the projects, offering additional points of view we might not otherwise have a chance to consider. These fresh perspectives really provide value by expanding our understanding of the social media space,” said industry advisor Jillian Shea (JHU ’11). “I’m continually impressed by how their curiosity leads them in different directions with their analyses, resulting in a wide scale of valuable insights.”
Once the team picks a project area, and with guidance from the advisors, the students refine their research questions, gather relevant data, and conduct an in-depth analysis. The project team then presents their findings and business recommendations to the industry advisors, and receives feedback about their approach and recommendations.
“Our project area was related to the food and beverage industry and tied into broader macroeconomic trends. We had the opportunity to work with industry experts who offered valuable feedback on our ideas and final presentation,” said marketing student Yingeng Li.
“The students were passionate to share their perspective. For several of our brands, our consumer target is Gen Z, which many of the students align with. They shared how they like to consume content on social from brands, and their feedback was invaluable. Their insights continue to help us crack the code on how brands can engage with and add value for Gen Z consumers on social media,” said industry advisor Alex Glaeser (MBA ’22).
To support this learning, the curriculum emphasizes a structured approach to their analysis. Planning their research, selecting the right data analysis tools for specific questions, and interpreting findings to develop strategic insights are all skills the students gain from the course. Technical tools play a major role in the course as well. Students learn to collect data from leading social media monitoring platforms, analyze industry-standard dashboards, and apply advanced text analytics tools in the platform R to conduct in-depth analysis.
“This project allowed us to develop and showcase our technical skills in data collection, cleaning, and analytics. Equally important were our communication skills, because in a real-world business setting, we may present findings to stakeholders without a background in statistics or data, so it was critical to deliver our findings in a clear and impactful way,” said Li.
This course curriculum also covers key areas including:
- Campaign analysis: Learn to assess the effectiveness and return on investment of social media campaigns and the social media strategies behind them.
- Consumer engagement analysis: Explore how an audience interacts with different types of social media messages.
- Sentiment and text analysis: Apply machine learning models and large language models to evaluate consumer sentiment, identify trending topics, and extract insights from unstructured text data.
- Social network analysis: Study the structure of online communities and influence networks.
- Platform data collection: Explore how social platforms capture real-time consumer opinions, sentiments, and engagements, offering rich data for analysis.
Master of Science in Marketing program
The Master of Science in Marketing program at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School blends market theory and analysis with creative strategies to prepare students for the evolving world or modern marketing. With a concentration in marketing analysis, this program prepares students with a deep understanding of the market, the profile of the market on a granular level, and targeted customer experience strategies based on real-time customer feedback.