You’re keen on changing your career path and want to get into Digital marketing? But you don’t have any experience and you don’t know where to start to gain skills that a great digital marketer will need. I will share with you 5 tips to gain confidence in Digital marketing skills and to become ready to apply for jobs.
Part of the tips I’m sharing is mostly free. There may be some that require a subscription or a one-off fee to receive certification. All these tips are my own, and how I am currently preparing myself to be ready to apply for various digital marketing jobs. I’m not saying these are necessarily the only way, I’ve just found out that I’ve gained more confidence with these tips. I am hoping to be able to help someone else who is in the same situation.
Not to forget, not every person will learn in the same way. So if you feel like the way I am learning is not working for you, you can always change it.
Education
This may be a very simple one. For me, the best way to learn and gain the confidence that I have the knowledge is really to go back to school. There is something in me that I will be more prepared and I fully trust myself if someone is teaching me, rather than me learning everything by myself. It makes me feel better, more confident and more professionally ready. Not that I don’t keep learning after that, but it is an assurance for me I have the right knowledge.
Some of you may feel like you don’t have the time to go back to school and in some cases it can be quite expensive, and that is all fine. It is not really necessary to have an education if you’re able to demonstrate and showcase that you have the skills and are able to do projects to highlight this.
However, this is my recommendation, based on my own experience. Even to be able to do a diploma course rather than a degree is a brilliant start. Also, education can add a way to get your foot into the industry by applying to internships and learn on the job experiences that can be a huge advantage in the end.
Start a Blog to gain confidence
I started this blog for several reasons, to gain knowledge of blogging, be able to be creative with writing, and also to work on some kind of project that I can show I am able to manage a website and create content.
Blogging is a great way to improve your digital marketing skills, you will need to use many skills that are required in digital marketing. Blogging will help you to get familiar with content marketing and also it will help to improve your writing skills if you feel like there is more to improve.
Also, I have noticed that I needed to jump into many topics I knew only very little. I needed to start to learn everything much more fast phased than I thought. It became very clear that I needed to understand at least the basics of SEO when I started my blog. SEO is a wide area, and I still keep learning more about it while I expand my blog further. And doing so has been the best way to boost my confidence, I actually feel like I need the skills already and I’m keen on learning more and more.
Yet it can be done completely free. There are so many platforms where you can create an account and start blogging at the moment. There are some restrictions, however, getting started as soon as possible is the best way, and later in time, you can expand to paid hosting if you feel like it.
Online certificates
The more knowledge I get, the more confident I become. So I started to do different online courses, some of are completely free, such as Google Digital Garage. On Google digital garage you can do “Learn fundamentals of digital marketing” course and “Google Analytics” course which I highly recommend doing.
Another great place to achieve online certificates in Digital marketing is Coursera. I used to do a few courses on SEO. Keep in mind, Coursera is not free. However, I planned my schedule in a way that I was able to take advantage of its one-week free trial. I cleared my calendar for that week and I dedicated it to learning which allowed me to complete two courses during that time. I spent my days off studying and I made sure to have at least a few hours of time to study after work. Make sure to cancel the subscription on time so you won’t be charged the £39.99 monthly fee.
Coursera is such a great platform to learn new skills. If you have the money and you find some time I highly recommend it. Although this time I only wanted to take advantage of the free trial.
Reading books for Digital Marketing
As I’ve said we learn in different ways. Some people learn better being within a group and someone is holding the lecture. Some learn better by themselves at their own pace, and some enjoy alone time by book. If that’s you, I highly recommend reading books on Digital marketing. There are so many books out there to look for. You can find books about every aspect of digital marketing, whether it is the basics, or how to put a marketing plan together.
If you don’t want to buy all the books by yourself, go to a local library and search for all the books available there. You’re in a quiet space, and you don’t need to pay anything for the books. The best is if you’re a member of the library, then you can even take the books home without any fee.
SEO
I left this one last one, but not to give it the least importance. SEO, Search engine optimization. It is crucial to have a knowledge of SEO as a great digital marketer. I put more importance on it for me, because that’s the area where I am hoping to go within my digital marketing career. Yet this skill is highly needed even if you wish to go another path of expertise.
Understanding the importance of keyword search and how to properly execute keyword search are essential, especially if you are writing a blog post or any other article. Since our goal is to gain more traffic and engagement in whatever we are doing. In the end, we want to turn this traffic into customers. Therefore having the right keywords to bring people to your page is crucial.
SEO is not only about keywords and keyword searches, it is a wide area of several aspects into it. Online is the key to everything, there is a great blog dedicated to digital marketing and SEO. I have learned much about it from Ahrefs. I found it to be a great starting place for search engine optimization. It is very well written and I was able to understand it perfectly.
Conclusion
So these are the ways I have been building my knowledge of digital marketing. While gaining knowledge I’ve noticed also my confidence become much better. At the same time, it is helping me to prepare for the moment that I am ready to apply for jobs.
I’m always taking advantage of free sources. Never underestimate what skills you are able to gain free of charge. Even if I’m at the point of starting to apply for jobs, this does not mean I won’t keep learning. The digital age is moving forward quite fast-paced, there is always something to learn. Also, many digital areas get updates and algorithm changes frequently.
I hope you will find these tips helpful to improve your skills in digital marketing. There are so many areas in digital marketing, it may help a little to start thinking about what path you’re trying to head. That way you can scale down the most important skills you’ll need and place importance on those.
