Digital skills essential to succeed in your career
If you missed Part 1 of this two-part series, be sure to click here and read up on the other essential skills for digital success. Here are more of the qualities and skills digital professionals should work on in order to succeed in this rapidly evolving field: Social media Recently having their 10th anniversary and with one-fifth of the world’s population on Facebook, they are certainly here to stay. From a business perspective, social media transformed the web in a revolutionary way by putting the big corporates on equal footing with smaller businesses and organisations. The idea of consumer sentiment which was previously only an abstract concept that could be gathered through expensive focus groups was now delivered in real time without a filter to businesses across the globe.
Search engine optimisation
Some estimates are that search engines represent 65% of all website traffic so it is no surprise a whole field has developed for those looking to gain an edge with their search engine ranking. By the time a new book is printed about SEO it will generally be out of date. SEO for digital marketers has been a continuous struggle to stay updated with the releases that Google and other major search engines have brought in regularly. For a time digital marketers started to show hubris for essentially cracking the code, but with Google’s Panda update we were again put on the back foot. The vision of Google in the long term seems very clear, to eliminate the little tricks and gimmicks which put those in the know in an advantageous position in terms of search ranking and create a ranking system whereby only those sites truly deserving of their rank remained. Certainly the workarounds that once worked are slowly becoming unusable, but the goal remains - strong search engine rank across a wide range of keywords is ideal. Digital teams now need to integrate their SEO strategies back into overall digital and marketing strategies as a single component rather than an independent plan.
Pay-per-click
Pay-per-click forms the backbone of all digital advertising. Although we still use the term ‘campaign’ to refer to pay-per-click promotions, the traditional view of an advertising campaign is completely different. A text ad pay-per-click campaign could be planned in the morning, created in the afternoon and launched in the evening. Unlike traditional advertising campaigns it is a marathon rather than a race. Being able to continuously tweak campaigns for small gradual improvements is the real challenge. You will need to leverage your understanding of analytics and try to best understand the motivations of your users and customers.
Content management
The web and all things digital have always been content, and continually we have seen digital beating out traditional media. It was all the way back in 2009 when Encarta Encyclopaedia closed down shop due to the consolidating efforts of Wikipedia’s unpaid contributors. With traditional media companies losing their influence, and their businesses altogether for that matter, there has been a power vacuum being filled by all manner of specialists and sites. It is a new era of democratisation of content that has led me to write this very article.