Maybe you are one of those people that do not have formal knowledge or experience about marketing, you may have been getting the idea that learning how to use digital tools to promote yourself (personal branding) or business is very important in this digital era.
Or maybe you have just finished a graduate study on marketing but you want to learn how to use digital tools and resources to implement marketing.
If any of these is you, one question you might be asking is, what is the best way to learn digital marketing?
The thing is there are many ways to learn digital marketing, you can sign up for a course on Udemy or coursera to learn digital marketing, you can search the keyword “digital marketing course” on Google and follow through with any link that pops out to sign up for a digital marketing course or you might be lucky like me to get access to free digital marketing course from a mentor.
You can also enrol for a marketing course in a formal institutions, of which cost a lot of money.
Through any of these ways, anyone can start learning digital marketing, but the challenge with this method is that you might not get real experience needed to understand and implement effective digital marketing activities.
You don’t want to repeat the process of our formal school system, where they teach us to “know” but not to understand or be able to implement. Understanding and implementing are essential to becoming skilled in any kind of studies.
I believe learning digital marketing through the aforementioned sources can only help you to gain knowledge about the act of marketing with digital tools and through digital channels, but it won’t help you gain the experience needed to become an effective digital marketer.
To be an effective digital marketer you don’t only need theories or concept, you need to be able to implement the theories or concept you learn, you need to be able to produce marketing results by implementation.
To me, 40:60 is the ratio you have to balance theories and practice to become results producing digital marketer, 40 per cent theories 60 per cent practical.
You need to balance knowledge and implementation to become an effective online digital marketer.
What’s the way to Learn Digital Marketing
The best way to learn Digital Marketing is to start your own blog and start blogging, yeah you had me right.
When I became interested in digital marketing one of my mentors told me the same thing I’m sharing with you here and with my experience, I can say that this is the best way to learn digital marketing.
Here are 3 reasons why I think blogging is the best way to learning digital marketing:
1. You will be able to implement all the theories you will be learning
Blog is one digital marketing tools that have relationship with almost all major components of digital marketing.
There are different components that makeup online digital marketing, I have written about these components in another post, they include Content marketing, Social media marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing) Email marketing, Analytics, Paid Advertising, Mobile marketing etc.
Blog is one digital tool that has relationships with almost all of these other components and tools of digital marketing.
For instance, when you write and publish a post on a blog you are practising part of an online digital marketing component called Content Marketing, to make your posts available to people through search engine you will be practising SEO or SEM, which are also major component in digital marketing, you may want your friends and families to read your post, so you share it on social media by that you will be practising social media marketing, another major component of online digital marketing.
You may also want to know where your web visitors are coming from and their behaviour on your blog so that you can optimise your designs and content to suit them, that will lead you to practise Web analytics, another component of digital marketing.
By also wanting to maintain personal contact with your readers you may begin email communications, email marketing, do you see how they all relate.
The thing is, when it comes to online digital marketing, anyone can learn the theoretical aspect of it through blogs, videos, audio, books or ebook some of these resources can be accessed for free today, but being able to implement those skills is a big deal and that is one thing running your blog can help you achieve.
The ability to implement is what will validate digital marketing skills.
Running your blog will allow you to learn more about various digital marketing tools and channels, thereby making you a digital marketer who can implement marketing strategies using different digital marketing tools and resources.
One of the good things with learning digital marketing with your blog is that it’s cheaper, you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money on courses and training that are mostly focused on theories that you can easily find on Google or YouTube, with as little as $40 you can build a professional looking blog with wordpress.org and use your blog as a learning ground for digital Marketing.
2. To build experience
Becoming good in digital marketing, just like in every other dealing, is not about knowing, it’s also not all about implementing, it’s more about experiencing and adapting.
By working with different tools and strategies you will able to gain experience and determine in any given situation what will work and what won’t work, it will help you cut down on mistakes that might lead to unnecessary cost which might affect ROI (Return On Investment), these are the things that make you more of an effective digital marketer.
3. To become an entrepreneur
You can build something tangible In the process of learning digital marketing through a blog.
For example, if you start a blog to learn digital marketing and in the process decided to share contents about cooking and spices, by applying some digital marketing tips you are learning, your blog might start gaining traction and probably grow to become something that can be optimized for entrepreneurial activities.
Learning digital marketing can help you create something tangible, just like it has helped me create this blog.
Learning digital marketing with my first blog is what gave birth to digitaltopnotch.com by implementing in my first blog the digital marketing skills I was learning I was able to build the knowledge, skills and experience that I need to run this blog.
I believe starting a blog is the best way to learn digital marketing.
I know some digital marketing activities are done outside a blog platform, but blog will help you gain an in-depth understanding of the concept of digital marketing especially online digital marketing which is the most viable type of digital marketing in this digital era.
If you start a blog and by running a blog you will gain knowledge about some major components of digital marketing, it will be easier for you to deal with every other aspect of digital marketing.
I hope this post helps you see how blogging can help you learn digital marketing?
What do you think? How do you prefer to learning digital marketing? please share in the comment section.
