Marketing training options have expanded as digital skill-building becomes critical under COVID-19. Millions of Canadians who have been laid off and worried about their long-term job prospects have chosen to focus on updating their marketing skills. Whether it’s looking to return to formal study or updating their knowledge of the latest digital platforms, many now realize its key to be well-rounded – with fresh skills on creative problem-solving to deliverable a sustainable ROI. Many platforms have responded by making a wider range of training and tutorials available at no cost to learners.
- Coursera is offering a free course on Growth Strategies for Entrepreneurs.
- On June 30th for example, Microsoft launched its new Microsoft Learn platform enabling employers to integrate learning from Linkedin Learning and Microsoft Learn.
5 additional online learning resources to consider
While we offer a wide variety of customized workshops, there are also some really terrific online resources and tutorials.
- YouTube – not only terrific when you need to learn how to do a home repair, but YouTube is also often our first stop at looking for terrific training supports. For example, we link to Google Analytics Academy below, but HubSpot and other post-training video’s on YouTube as well, making it easy to find quickly the specific reference you may need.
• Getting Started with Google Analytics (30 min.)
• Google Analytics Site Content Reports (1: 33 min.) via Google Small Business
• TEDx talks offer a variety of channels you can subscribe to
• HubSpot offers a great channel offering business and marketing topics such as social media, searching engine marketing etc.
2. Google Analytics Academy now re-branded to “Skillshop” – so since we mentioned this I’ll flag next that Google offers a comprehensive self-tutorial to learning how to use their products. To take the certified courses as they are designed, visit https://skillshop.withgoogle.com
3. The next place we recommend is to check out all of the online training and/or blogs that the software service provider(s) you are using is offering. The list is almost endless. If you don’t find anything immediately you can also search for the “developer” b-to-b website which often has many resources. Some of the most popular sites (in no particular order) our clients use or that we’ve come across include :
• Facebook Blueprint
• Hootsuite
• Microsoft Office or Microsoft Dynamics
• Shopify
• Google Products Learning
• Salesforce or check out their blog
• Blackbaud
• WordPress
• Adobe or check out their Marketo blog
• MailChimp
• Campaign Monitor
• Constant Contact
• Yoast SEO blog
• Sprout Social
• Oracle
• Cision or check out their blog
• Buzzsumo
• Sysomos blog
• PayPal
Another more general example would be CodeAcademy – it offers free programming sessions to help you learn programming languages such as HTML and PHP. Use their free account to learn the basics as even if you won’t be building your own website or products (e.g. apps) as you will have a much better idea of how to discuss ideas with your developer.
4. Dedicated learning sites – Lynda.com was purchased in 2015 by Linkedin and rebranded as www.linkedin.com/learning. It lets users learn business, technology, software and creative skills through video training courses. They charge a monthly fee to access the content but a company-wide account might make this worth considering. Much like Lynda, Coursera and edX are learning sites offering courses with verified certificates as a paid option and MIT OpenCourseWare offers some of the MIT course curricula for free. Local libraries such as the Toronto Library offer online lectures. Also check out the websites of your local universities and colleges to see what online learning options they provide.
Example: MIT offers a business course on the “Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans” and “Advanced Communications for Leaders“
5. Set up a free subscription feed like Feedly to follow popular blogs and subscribe to Marketing “Topics” on most platforms. Some diverse marketing related blogs to get you started:
a. https://neilpatel.com/blog/
b. https://www.kaushik.net
c. https://blog.hubspot.com
d. https://www.marketingprofs.com
e. https://seths.blog
f. https://ahrefs.com/blog/
g. https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog#
Again you can search for marketing blogs specific to your industry and of course check out more of our blog posts @ brandrewire.ca/blog