7 Important Resource to Improve Your Digital Marketing Learning

This piece should help. We’ve curated seven of the most important resources you can use to boost your digital marketing skills.

For many businesses, Facebook becomes their flagship social media platform. Because of this, it only makes sense to learn as much as possible about marketing via Facebook. The best place to do this is Facebook Blueprint. This is a set of online courses focused on using all of the digital marketing features available on this social media site. There are currently more than 75 courses available. Each offers a unique opportunity to develop the skillset required to use Facebook to create business growth.

The courses here cover a wide variety of topics for mastering Facebook as well as its sister platform, Instagram. Even better, you’ll get great help with course selection. Choose the skills that you want to master. Facebook Blueprint has a recommendation engine that will tell you which courses you should take. You can also simply select the courses you want.

If you’re interested in obtaining a certification, you can do that here as well. These are available if you want to master Facebook Planning and Facebook Advertising. Courses are split into two overall categories for those getting started, and for anyone seeking professional level courses.

Social Media Examiner is a massive resource of all things relating to marketing via social media. If you want to learn how to use social platforms to connect with your audience, boost traffic, and grow your brand, this is the site to bookmark.

Social Media Examiner brings you original source material that includes:

• Articles
• ExpertInterviews, Q&A Sessions, And Roundups
• Research
• How to Videos

To get started with a real, in-depth look at social media marketing, start with one of the sites many reports. Next, move on to their social media marketing podcast. This features 45 minute long interviews with industry experts. That’s not all, there are weekly video series and more. You can even access great content via your Alexa devices thanks to the Alexa flash briefing. If live events are your thing, they host an annual event in San Diego that is widely regarded as a must-attend among marketing professionals.

Don’t forget to sign up for SME’s newsletter to receive great educational content in your inbox. Overall, you would be hard pressed to find another social media marketing blog that has content that’s this detailed.

Google Analytics is a tool that is used to track a variety of metrics relating to website traffic and user behavior. It collects data and provides users with information on bounce rates, time on site, traffic, number of pages visited, etc. Google Analytics can be integrated with Google Adwords as well. This provides Adwords customers with a means to track the success of their Adwords campaigns as they relate to traffic and site behavior metrics. The tool also provides useful reports along with other advanced features.

This is clearly a useful tool, but its value is directed correlated to your mastery of it. In other words, the better you understand Google Analytics, the more you can do with it. The best place to master Google Analytics is at the source itself. Google Analytics Academy contains a set of courses on Google Analytics that range from beginner level to advanced.

If you’re interested in a super fast, primer on Google Analytics, check out the mini-courses. These are a set of instructional videos, all offered on YouTube. Remember that Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring the success of your content, whether you create it in house or rely on a service provider like Studicus.com. Master it, and you’ll be more likely to get a good ROI from your content efforts.

Hubspot Academy is one of the most popular, online resources for learning the ins and outs of digital marketing. There’s a good reason for this. They offer a wide variety of courses to help you grow your business, master important skills for a career in marketing and collect the kinds of certificates that are guaranteed to impress potential clients and employers.

Folks who are interested in mastering a comprehensive set of digital marketing skills should consider one of Hubspot’s certification courses. These include content marketing, inbound marketing, inbound sales, email marketing, and more.

If you’d rather build your skillset with a variety of courses of your own choosing, you can do that as well. You can find 20 plus pages of short courses and single lessons that cover virtually every topic that falls under the ‘digital marketing’ topic umbrella. Even better, many of these can be completed in well under an hour.

In addition to their online courses, Hubspot also offers other resources. Check out their YouTube channel to start, then join the Hubspot user community.

There are many digital marketing blogs that are worth following. Jeff Bullas, Content Marketing Institute, Moz, and Convince and Convert are just a few of these. However, if you decide to just follow one, Neil Patel should definitely be on your short list.

The first thing you’ll see when you scroll down the main page of Patel’s site is a series of four steps that you can take to begin to master digital marketing. These include startup instructions for your blog, links to a suite of SEO tools, a link to Neil’s blog, and a link to his marketing school podcast. It’s also worth subscribing to his newsletter.

Neil Patel does an excellent job of producing a prolific amount of educational content without sacrificing quality. He also has a real gift for communicating online marketing concepts in a way that is easy for beginners to understand and apply.

Internet Marketing For Smart People was created for audience members who are interested in cutting through the noise of digital marketing. There are so many digital marketing gurus that tout magic tricks, instant solutions, and black hat methods designed to get immediate results. Internet Marketing For Smart People ignores all of that in favor of teaching proven methods that work over the long term.

The course is built around the four pillars of digital marketing. These are, relationships, direct response copywriting, content marketing, and having something worth selling. The latter pillar is more important than many people realize. Unfortunately, there are many digital marketing ‘experts’ who would have you believe that marketing techniques are more important than product quality. Simply put, that’s not true.

To get free access to this course, all you have to do is register. Once you do, you’ll be privy to this 20 part course and accompanying newsletter. The content is delivered weekly via email with each new piece of content covering a lesson that is related to one of the four pillars of digital marketing.

This course contains a mixture of archived content along with insights that allow you to develop the insights you need to apply the principles of marketing to your business. Even better, the course creators modify the offerings to reflect the changing internet marketing landscape.

If you’re looking for a boot camp style introduction to digital marketing, look no further. This course crams 12 courses into one online offering. When you take this course, you’ll obtain a certificate of completion as well as a great education in the following topics:

• Building YourWebsite Via WordPress
• CopywritingFor Creating Lead Generating Content
• MarketingWith YouTube by Creating How-To Videos
• DevelopingConnections And Thought Leadership Via LinkedIn
• MasteringGoogle Adwords to Build Campaigns That Make Money
• Using GoogleAnalytics to Understand And Improve Your Campaigns
• Search EngineOptimization to Drive Website Traffic
• MarketResearch For Learning to Ask The Right Questions of Your Audience
• App Marketingto Learn 43 Strategies For Promoting Your App
• Facebook Adsto Turn a Profit Without Overspending
• EmailMarketing to Build an Organic Email List Quickly
• Social MediaMarketing to Maximize Your Effectiveness on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, AndMore

sign up for this course, you also gain access to support and assistance. You can also return for course updates. Even better, all of the resources recommended through this 20-hour course are either free or have a very low cost.

Whether you are an emerging marketing professional, entrepreneur, or a freelancer, it’s imperative to development your digital marketing skills. Not only that, but this isn’t a one-time endeavor. As social media platforms evolve, and customer preferences do as well, digital marketing is going to change over time. The resources listed here are proven resources of information and education that you can use now and in the future.