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5 Tips to Jump-Start Your Digital Marketing Career
As a relatively new individual to the industry of digital marketing, I was lucky enough to find not only a great mentor (thank you Simpson) to guide me in the right direction, but also to land an internship at Blue Ion in which all the team members rendered bits of expertise.
Not everyone will be as lucky as I once was, so this post is intended to start those soon to be ‘ninja’ digital marketers off in the right direction.
Below are 5 tips to jump-start your digital marketing career:
1.) Setup a Netvibes Page
Netvibes is a personal dashboard that can be filled with multiple RSS feeds in order to stay up-to-date on current happenings. Some of the tabs that I’ve created & feeds that I’m following are:
Fresh (my overview tab)
Inside AdWords
SEOmoz
SearchEngine Land
AdWords
The Click Equation Blog
PPC Blog
SEO
SEO by the Sea
Search Engine Roundtable
Search Engine Journal
2.) Keyboard Shortcuts
Painless to setup, and as a result, what used to take me minutes to complete now takes seconds because of the numerous shortcuts I’ve familiarized myself with (Mac functions):
Screen Grabs – Command+Shift+4
This is a great way to take ‘snapshots’ of examples directly from websites. (If you tap the ‘spacebar’ afterwards, it will automatically take a snapshot of the entire screen)
Copy / Paste – Command+C / Command+V
As simple as this sounds, I know I was using the mouse during my pre-digital marketing days to perform these two functions. This has saved countless hours!
Highlight – Alt+Shift or Command+Shift
This function works great with copy / paste. Again, it eliminates the need for the mouse.
Switch Applications – Command+Tab
Another great feature which allows you to quickly transition between applications. Great to use when working with multiple applications.
3.) Master Your Tools & Applications
Each & every digital marketing ninja is proficient on any number of applications or tools. Ensure that you master the 2-3 that you work with on a daily basis. In my case, my diurnal duties weigh heavily on search marketing as well as managing pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
The Keyword Tool allows you to build extensive, relevant keyword lists for your clients. Keyword research is essential when building both PPC campaigns and search engine optimization strategies.
AdWords Editor is a free, downloadable application for managing your account. The application offers a wide array of features, but the basic process is simple – download your account, make your changes, then upload your revised campaigns when the changes are finalized.
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Essential for any digital campaign in order to track its success or sometimes its failure!
4.) Basics of HTML & Graphic Design
Upon entering this industry, you will quickly ascertain that you never know enough. However, learning the basic fundamentals of the various departments that you work with will assist tremendously by making your job & their job easier.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is a web development application that allows users to preview websites in HTML code. Again, my skills are barely novice in this area, however understanding the basic functions allows me to edit & update HTML code.
Photoshop
Photoshop is a graphics editing program that I currently use to resize & crop images. Although this program is a much more powerful tool than that, knowing how to complete these simple tasks goes a long ways.
A great resource for learning HTML essentials.
5.) Find an Internship
Lastly, put yourself in the arena. I was determined to find an internship, paid or unpaid in the digital marketing industry. This is by far the best way to hone your skills as well as to flourish as a digital marketer.
Although this is by no means an in-depth digital marketing success guide, I hope those new to the industry find bits and pieces useful!