How to Create Engaging Social Media Marketing Content
Liz Azyan · Digital Consultant
Solid, idea-dense list of shareable content types, but heavy on Canva promotion and light on strategy or metrics.
Liz Azyan's course sets out to answer the question every small business owner eventually asks: what do I actually post? It does that job reasonably well, organizing content into three buckets, created by you, shared by you, and created to engage, then spending most of its runtime walking through examples of each. The structure is simple and repeats itself deliberately, with each lesson closing on a reminder to jot down favorite ideas for a worksheet due at the end.
The strongest stretch is the "Created By You" lesson, which runs through close to twenty specific post types: branded quote images, behind-the-scenes shots, Throwback Thursday posts, guest post reposts, product photos modeled after Nordstrom's Instagram feed, and crowd-sourced input posts like the subscription box company that lets members vote on what ships each month. It is closer to a swipe file than a strategy lesson, but as a swipe file it is genuinely useful, especially for someone staring at a blank content calendar.
Where the course adds real value
The case studies scattered through the "Shining Example" lessons go further than most beginner courses bother to. One breaks down how a tea brand built several spin-off Instagram accounts, an aesthetic lifestyle feed, a meme account, a results and testimonial page, each pulling in tens of thousands of followers without ever looking like a sales page, before funneling that attention back to the core product. It is a legitimate lesson in audience-building that does not require an influencer budget, and it is the one segment that feels like it came from real experience rather than a checklist.
The engagement lesson is similarly concrete: fill-in-the-blank prompts, this-or-that comparisons, AMA sessions, and requests for advice or stories, all framed with a caution about knowing when a controversial or political prompt is worth the risk.
Where it falls short
A large share of the runtime, several full lessons among the bonus material, is a walkthrough of Canva's interface: signing up, choosing a template category, using search modifiers like NOT and plus-sign combinations, and publishing a finished design. That is useful onboarding for someone who has never opened a design tool, but it inflates the course length without adding social media strategy, and it will feel redundant to anyone who has used Canva before.
The course also never touches platform mechanics that matter in practice: no discussion of algorithms, posting frequency data, analytics interpretation, or paid promotion beyond a passing mention of running ads. The advice to aim for roughly equal thirds across the three content types is presented as a starting point, but there is no framework for adjusting it based on actual results beyond "watch what performs and adjust."
The final project, filling out an idea-generator worksheet and emailing the instructor for a bonus pack of conversation starters, is a light way to close things out rather than a real capstone. It works fine as a way to make students act on the lists they've compiled, but it does not test whether a student can build a posting plan on their own.
For a true beginner who needs a stocked idea bank and a nudge to start posting consistently, this delivers. For anyone past that stage, the Canva tutorials and repeated lists will feel like padding around a smaller strategic core.
The standout
The case study on building separate interest-based Instagram accounts around a niche topic, then funneling engaged followers toward a branded product, offers a genuinely transferable growth tactic beyond generic posting advice.
What you will learn
- How to sort social posts into three content buckets: created, shared, and engagement-focused
- A running list of nearly 20 concrete post ideas you can create yourself, from branded quote images to Throwback Thursday posts
- Where to source shareable content, including IFTTT automation, Reddit's trending page, Google Alerts, and SlideShare
- How to build fill-in-the-blank, poll, and AMA-style posts that prompt replies
- How to use Canva's search operators (NOT, plus signs, cutout filters) to find the right template fast
- How to build a spin-off interest based Instagram account instead of pushing everything through one branded page
Best for: A solo business owner or freelancer with no marketing background who needs a starter list of what to actually post this week.
Skip it if: Anyone who already runs social campaigns and needs analytics, paid ad strategy, or platform-specific algorithm guidance, since none of that is covered.