Digital Marketing Career Growth: 4 Steps for Success
With the rise of social media and the widespread nature of smart devices, digital marketing has boomed. That means that more folks than ever before are considering digital marketing careers. Whether you are a stay-at-home freelancer or work a stable day job, there are ample opportunities for digital marketing career growth.
According to Torque Mag, 88% of advertisement businesses aim to increase their digital marketing spending in 2019 and beyond. The need for fresh and creative minds in digital marketing is there – all one needs to do is reach out and try their luck in the plethora of digital marketing niches.
However, finding your footing in an ever-expanding digital landscape can be tricky, especially if you don't have prior experience in the industry. Let's take a look at how you can achieve just that by kick-starting your digital marketing career and building a professional persona that you can be proud of.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Before we delve deeper, let's talk about some digital marketing basics to clear the proverbial air. Digital marketing is an advertisement industry with a focus on web-related content.
Everything from social media posts, blog articles, online sales and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) belongs to what we refer to as digital marketing. This means that there are dozens of individual niches and career growth paths available for you to choose, depending on your skills and preferences.
Valuable Digital Marketing Skills
While you don't need any prior knowledge of digital marketing to start a career in one of its niches, there are still several soft skills worth considering. Most of these skills relate to teamwork and your ability to organize your own time and resources. Some of the skills worth having when it comes to your future job interviews include but are not limited to:
- Good Writing Skills
- Team-Oriented Attitude
- Time-Management Skills
- Problem-Solving Mentality
- Ability to Work Remotely
- Progress-Oriented Work Habits
Digital Marketing Niches to Consider
To say that there are numerous niches and sub-industries to consider when it comes to your future career growth in digital marketing is an understatement. Digital marketing is a vast landscape of different job descriptions and professional titles which allow individuals to branch out as they see fit.
There has never been an industry more limitless or more focused on pioneering new trends than digital marketing. With that in mind, some of the branches you should consider exploring include the following:
- Content Writing (Blogging, writing ads, and social media posts)
- Social Media Management (Engaging your company's followers)
- SEO Specialist (Optimizing content for better ranking)
- Email Marketing Specialist (Writing, sending, following up on email sales)
- ECommerce Specialist (Creating marketing content for online stores)
- Copywriting (Writing short ads, catchphrases or marketing slogans)
- Content Analytics (Following content trends and instructing creators)
- Graphics and Web Design (Creating visual content for marketing needs)
Steps for Successful Digital Marketing Career Growth
Now that you have a better understanding of what a career in digital marketing can offer, let's take a look at how you can grow your digital marketing career. Remember that your mileage and time to learn may vary depending on how familiar you are with digital marketing, blogging, social media, etc.
1) Invest in Personal Development
There is no denying that digital marketing is a field which requires some initial learning and investment into personal development. Choose one or several options from the list above and look for tutorials, courses, and guides related to those fields.
Whether you are a working mom or a woman with an extensive marketing career already behind her, you can learn about digital trends and skills anytime, anywhere. Platforms such as Udemy and Lynda offer comprehensive courses for numerous digital marketing niches and will get you up to speed in no time.
Every course you take or skill you gain from online learning should be added to your resume for good measure. In a constantly involving industry, it's crucial to keep your skills up-to-date, whether you're just starting out or are a seasoned veteran of the industry.
2) Combine Different Niches
The best way to differentiate your resume from others is to combine different skill sets. For example, in addition to developing your skills as a blog writer and editor, you could become an SEO expert as well.
3) Start Small and Build a Portfolio
As is the case with any industry, you will have to start small and work your way toward reputation and success over time. Freelance platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer offer numerous possibilities for digital marketing professionals to gain experience and earn money along the way. It's not unheard of for freelance digital marketers to land long-term clients through these platforms and quickly stabilize their career growth.
Whether you apply for full-time positions or one-time projects, you will need portfolio pieces to showcase your accomplishments. Portfolio pieces can be anything from articles published under your name to content you created for social media websites.
Online editing tools and online paper writing services can help you put past work into a cohesive whole in the form of a resume or personal monograph. Gather data on any project you work on in order to use it for future clients and employers. (Do this immediately after the project is finished. Your future self will thank you when you're not scrambling to put all of this together the next time you apply for a job!)
4) Always Be Learning
For better or worse, digital marketing is a life-long, learning-oriented industry. Be ready to learn on the fly, sometimes for projects which you were already hired for and need to hone your skills and knowledge along the way.
Arm yourself with patience and a learning-oriented mindset if you want to build a successful digital marketing career. If you endure the initial uphill climb and keep your skills sharp, you'll find your efforts are rewarded with great job opportunities (like working from home while raking in the big bucks).
In Summary
It's no secret that digital marketing is a competitive and constantly evolving industry. This means that there are always new opportunities for digital marketing career growth - but you have to be willing to seize them, or your peers will pass you by.
A computer and a stable internet connection are really all you need to get started - or to hone your existing skills - so no more excuses, start advancing your digital marketing career today!
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The Dated, Everyday Tech Stifling Women's Voices Shows the Importance of Diversity in Tech
"You're not like other girls. You're so...chill."
I've gotten that "compliment" from multiple guys in multiple contexts — and I'm ashamed to admit that until a few years ago, I took it as one.
Occasionally I'd wonder why. After all, anyone who knows me well knows I am the Anti-Chill: a tightly wound stress ball, ready to explode into tears at any given moment.
So what was giving these guys the wrong impression? As it turns out, it was my voice. My cool, unnaturally-deep-for-a-woman, never-shrill voice.
And if I'm honest, I always prided myself on not sounding 'like other girls.' No uptalk or high-pitched squeals of glee from me. I thought I sounded smarter and more serious. Talk about internalized misogyny.
This isn't just me though. There is a societal double bind that forces women to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the right pitch and tone for each situation.
Just consider the advice that Democratic-debate coach Christine Jahnke gave female candidates to avoid being labeled as shrill: "… go slow and low. Very purposefully slow your pace and lower the tone a bit, because that will add meaning or gravitas to whatever it is you're talking about."
In a nutshell: try and sound chill, not shrill.
What I didn't know, until recently, is how this bias against women's natural voices is being reinforced and amplified by century-old technology. (Just one of many examples of how technology designed by and for men ends up hurting women in the long-run.)
Author Tina Tallon explains this little-known fact in her recent New Yorker article, summarized below:
How 20th Century Tech Is Holding 21st Century Women Back
With the rise of commercial broadcast radio in the 1920s, women's voices began getting critiqued. As Tallon explains, station directors asserted that "women sounded 'shrill,' 'nasal,' and 'distorted.'" So when industry standards were set, directors didn't take women's voices into account.
When Congress limited the bandwidth available to each radio station in 1927, station directors set a bandwidth that would provide the minimum amount of information necessary to understand "human" speech.
They used lower voices as their benchmark, so the higher frequency components of women's speech necessary to understand certain consonants were cut, making women's voices less intelligible.
- Researcher J.C. Steinberg asserted that, "nature has so designed woman's speech that it is always most effective when it is of soft and well-modulated tone." He explained that if a woman raised her voice on air, it would exceed the limitations of the equipment. As Tallon says, "He viewed this as a personal and biological failing on women's part, not a technical one on his."
Why You Should Care
Women have always been told to lower their voices, but this 20th century approach to sound frequencies is still accepted as the standard, literally forcing women to lower their voices if they want to be heard.
- To this day, many algorithms and speakers distort women's speech by limiting higher frequencies, causing women's voices to lose definition and clarity.
Tallon sums it up well:
"Consequently, women are still receiving the same advice that they were given in the nineteen-twenties: lower the pitch of your voice, and don't show too much emotion. By following that advice, women expose themselves to another set of criticisms, which also have a long history: they lack personality, or they sound 'forced' and 'unnatural.'"
----
So as we continue to grapple with implicit biases against women, from what it means to be "presidential" to who's considered an "innovative leader," let's remember the importance of diversity in tech.
Had a woman been involved in researching/setting the standards for radio frequencies, she might've been able to steer the industry towards a voiceband that would allow men and women to be heard equally well. And perhaps had a more impartial voiceband been established, I'd have heard a more diverse range of female speakers growing up, and internalized fewer biases myself.
That's why we care so much at PowerToFly about making sure cutting-edge companies have diverse teams.
Times were different then, sure, but the fact that Depression Era standards are still impacting how we hear (or don't hear) women's voices is a vital reminder that what we do today impacts our world for centuries to come.
Agree?
- Network with top executives even if you aren't looking for a new role
- First look at flexible, work-from-home, in-office roles
- Join live chats led by expert women in your field and beyond
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