Marketing has always been a faced-paced industry, but technological advancements have propelled it forward like never before. Since digital marketing is a vast, ever-changing landscape, it may be difficult for professionals to keep up with the latest trends.

Instead of falling behind or sticking to more traditional campaigns, seasoned professionals in this space can find ways to master these skills and add them to their arsenal. With their existing expertise combined with these new tools, they’ll be near unstoppable.

So how does one acquire these skills, especially if their traditional school years are far behind them? Well, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution here; people have different resources and learn in various ways. Even so, we’ve done our best to provide a few different strategies for learning some vital digital marketing skills.

Social Media

Social media can seem like a behemoth to the untrained eye. There are a lot of platforms to understand, and no one strategy works across all of them. There’s also a very large difference between organic social and paid social.

To learn more, you can check out these online courses or this TED Talk.

Video

From interactive projects to virtual reality, video does not show any signs of slowing down. But if you’re not sure what makes a video effective, or how to go about producing one, you may end up investing a lot of money on a strategy that is flawed from the jump.

This affordable class can teach you how to choose the right thumbnail image, what equipment suits your needs, which video formats are best to promote your business, and more.

SEO

You want to ensure that people are able to find the content you put online. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. Without a decent SEO strategy, all of your hard work could go unnoticed. It’s very easy for things to get lost in the noise of the internet.

This platform can guide you through your SEO strategy, and has a great beginner’s guide to show you how it’s done.

Mobile Marketing

More and more, people are consuming content on mobile. On commutes or sitting on their couch, people are attached to their smartphones and tablets. So take advantage of that constant stimulation and ensure that your site is mobile friendly.

To figure out how to do this, and otherwise adopt a mobile strategy, start with this article.

Analytics

Data and analytics are key to almost any business these days. You need to understand your content’s performance, your customers’ behaviors, and which parts of your site drive more traffic than others. There are many ways to measure performance – most social platforms have their own analytics hub – but one tool that is widely regarded is Google Analytics.

Google has its own Analytics Academy that shows you how to use the platform and can take you from “beginner” to “power user.”

Design

Quite simply, if something isn’t visually appealing people will not click. It’s notoriously hard to grab people’s attention. Even videos have a 3-5 second window to grab someone before they just keep scrolling down their feed. So to ensure that you’re making visually compelling content, you’ll need a little knowledge of design.

There are entire degrees around design, so to just learn the basics you can use this article. There are also tutorials for specific tools, such as Photoshop and InDesign.

Basic Code

Some people may be intimidated by coding, but you can go a long way with a few simple commands. Code drives a lot of websites and content management systems (CMS). Therefore, if something is wrong with the code behind a webpage many people can see it while you’re waiting for someone else on your team to fix the problem.

To make sure that you can remain in control of your web presence and reputation, it’s important for any marketing professional to know some basic HTML code. If you can make line breaks, format titles, and insert hyperlinks, you have a pretty good arsenal of coding skills to fall back on. Here’s just one of the many online classes that can help you develop this skill.

If you’re searching for more career advice, you can peruse some more of our content here. If you’re looking for your next opportunity, or are searching for professionals to join your team, reach out to the expert recruitment consultants here at Michael Page today.