Skills that will make you a Expert Digital Marketer

Photo credit: Ideoversity | Digitial Marketing

Digital is a dream job for many people. With the advent of many benefits of tech companies and remote work, digital marketers can earn six figure salaries. If you're looking for a new digital marketer job this year or want to become a digital Marketing expert, quit your office job & travel as a remote digital worker or want to improve your skills in your current digital marketing job. I'm here to help. 

Here are the essential digital marketing skills I learned throughout my career as a digital marketer that helped me advance my digital career and start my own digital marketing agency:

1. Writing and editing

This is perhaps the most important skill a digital marketer should have: I don't think there's a single job in the digital industry that doesn't require me to write and edit. Because of the importance of content marketing, knowing what makes a great blog post, how to find and write great content, and how to turn bad content into good content will go a long way in your digital marketing career. You should also know how to use the help of writing tools like AP Style guide.

2. SEO

organic search results are about 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results, so you MUST understand and use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in your digital marketing career. Today, white hat SEO tactics include content marketing, guest blogging, and link building through social media marketing and quality content. But you also need to know technical SEO tactics like updating title tags, H1 and H2 tags, and enabling keywords.

3. Project Design 

Today's digital marketing relies heavily on graphics. Content from all social media platforms works best when accompanied by great images. As a digital marketer, you need to know how to create and edit your images. When you can create your own banner ad, email banner, or social media graphic in Photoshop, you have one less person to go through, one less digital campaign to launch, and one less person to hire for your client or employer.

4. Paid Social Ads

The days of "free" social media are over - I experienced them, and since I'm only 30, that should tell you they didn't last long. The best way to reach people on social networking sites and ensure content distribution is paid social advertising.

5. Personal Brand

As a digital marketer, you're probably the face of your brand, whether that's through social media, content marketing, or attending conferences. It's important to have a great online digital presence that shows you are active and professional. Additionally, by using the best content sites like Medium to build your personal brand, you will better understand them yourself and learn how to use them for the brands you work for.

6. WordPress

WordPress currently powers 25% of all websites and 50-60% of the global CMS market share, making it the most popular CMS. The New York Post, TED, Thought Catalog, USA Today, CNN, Fortune.com, TIME.com, Spotify, TechCrunch, CBS Local, and NBC use WordPress, so it's not just tool small businesses use to build a website to fix because you don't have a programmer. The brands you work for probably use WordPress or need to switch to it. Understanding WordPress and all of its features and plugins will be a great skill for your digital marketing career.It will also help you create your website and blog for your business.

7. Excel

We've all seen Word apps on every resume in the last decade. But now, with the increase in the amount of data and the importance of data analysis, knowledge of Excel and an understanding of manipulating data quickly and creating charts and graphs from visualized data are more important than ever.

8. Social Media Marketing

Almost a third of the population now uses some form of social media platform, and 97% of global businesses use social marketing. This makes social media marketing an invaluable skill in your digital marketing toolbox. Social media marketing goes well beyond just posting on Facebook. You need to know how to drive user engagement across platforms, writing content, creating ads, creating visuals, and analyzing reach and engagement. You also need to understand all the rapid changes on each platform and when to use different platforms for different internal business purposes.

9. Email Marketing and Newsletters

Many articles on the web ask, "Is email marketing dead?" I'm here to tell you no. Everyone still reads email. It's still a very effective way to reach customers. Every brand you work for has content they want to spread - email newsletters are a great way to reach your email user base to increase the reach of your content.

10. Google AdWords and PPC

Many businesses are able to dramatically expand their reach and generate high revenue and brand awareness through pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC. If you are able to do this for your business, you will land some of the highest paying jobs in digital marketing. To do PPC well you need to be able to think scientifically and strategically and effectively create, optimize and report on campaigns using Google AdWords and Google Analytics alongside.

11. Power Point Design 

How can I, no one has yet created an application that completely replaces PowerPoint. I know I can't believe it either. Throughout my career I have had to create PowerPoint. As presentations become more and more important to my clients, I continue to use PowerPoint.

In digital marketing, it's important to know how to create a PowerPoint that isn't just text on a slide. You need to tie the story together and create a clear strategy so that you can socialize your project and the outcomes of many key stakeholders, be they employees or lower-level managers.