When you want to learn a new skill or brush up on an old one, what’s the best thing to do? Reading books and watching videos can help you learn more about a subject. But if you want hands-on training and to benefit from someone’s real-world experience, it’s often best to take content marketing courses.
Enrolling in a class, whether it’s online or at a local college or university, gives you the chance to network. With your course instructor and meet others with similar interests or career goals. Plus, taking a course can help you learn new skills, potentially advancing your career.
Whether you are new to content marketing, have been in the industry for a few years, or want to understand how content marketing can help your brand, taking a content marketing course can help you advance your career and pick up a few extra skills.
Why Take a Content Marketing Course?
There are a few reasons why you might want to take a content marketing course. For one, some content marketing courses lead to certifications, and those certifications often look particularly appealing to employers. In fact, some employers look for or require potential hires to have certain types of certificates.
Aside from beefing up your résumé, there are other benefits to taking a content marketing course. Even if you think you know all there is to know about content marketing and content creation, it’s likely you will walk away from a course with a few new tips and pointers. Even a simple intro course could provide new information on the practice of content marketing.
What Happens After You Take a Content Marketing Course?
What happens after you take a content marketing course really depends on you. You might be able to use your newfound knowledge and skillset to negotiate a raise or a better job with your employer.
You can also find practical ways to use your new skills and knowledge. For example, if your course covered putting together a content marketing strategy, you might set out to create a strategy for your brand. If the course showed you new ways to find topic ideas or to brainstorm content ideas, you can put those methods into practice.
When you are taking a course are you guilty at collecting all the information you learned in a folder. To stick that folder on a shelf, never to be looked at again? To get the most out of your education, you need to use what you learned as much as possible.
Types of Content Marketing Courses
It’s possible to divide content marketing courses into a few distinct categories. For example, some courses are designed to be taken in a series and lead to a certification if you complete them all. Others are standalone courses meant for professional enrichment rather than a certification.
Universities also offer content marketing courses. Online courses offered by universities can be taken on a for-credit or not-for-credit basis. Others are available as MOOCs (massive open online courses), which are free and open to anyone. Moreover, business such as Hubspot also offer courses such as content marketing.
A few examples of current content marketing courses and certification programs include:
Hubspot Content Marketing Certification Course
Hubspot’s Content Marketing Certification course is completely free and results in a certificate from Hubspot. During the program, you learn what content marketing is, why storytelling matters, how to develop a strategy, and how to promote, analyze, and measure your content.
AMA Content Marketing Certification
To earn an AMA content marketing certification, you take a series of content marketing courses on LinkedIn Learning. The courses fall into five separate categories, each identified by AMA as in-demand and relevant to marketers. The categories include strategy, planning, production, promotion, and measurement. Although there is a monthly fee for LinkedIn Learning/Lynda courses, some public libraries offer access for free.
The Strategy of Content Marketing
Coursear offers a strategy of content marketing course. The following, comes from a partnership between Copyblogger and UC Davis Extension. It is a five-week course that walks you through topics such as content marketing strategy, content creation, and content management.
Content Strategy for Professionals
Coursera for example, offers courses for professionals such as content strategy. This course however, comes from Northwestern University and is a five-course specialization. The fifth course in the specialization is a Capstone project that will give you a chance to show off what you’ve learned in the previous four courses and to apply your new skills to a real-life project.
How to Choose the Right Content Marketing Course
Which content marketing course is right for you? It depends in part on your schedule and what you’re hoping to learn. Are you just looking to get your feet wet? you can try a single course on the subject. If you’re hoping to advance your career, earning a certificate or specialization might make more sense. Certificate programs and specializations tend to be more in-depth than single-course programs. Certificate programs will give you more all-around knowledge of content marketing.
Although budget is usually a concern when it comes to continuing education courses. Online Content marketing courses are very low cost, especially if they are online. Although Coursera does charge a monthly fee for certificates and specializations, it often gives you the option of auditing a course for free.
Finally, one last thing to consider when choosing a content marketing course is what you want to learn. If there is a weak spot in your company’s content marketing or if you have a skill that needs developing, think about taking a course.
No matter how long you’ve been working with digital and content marketing, there’s always something new worth learning. Taking a course gives you the chance to build new abilities and challenge your existing skill sets.
