6 Basic Digital Marketing Skills You Must Have To Be A Great Digital Marketer.

So you want to be a digital marketer? Thumbs up! Great Thinking. Well, there are no hard and fast rules to becoming a digital marketer. You only need some basic skills and patience to realize your dream. Do you know the basic skills that are necessary for you to become not just a digital marketer but a great one at that? In this post , i'll show you six basic skills you must have to become a great digital marketer. 

A lot of folks also want to dabble into the world of digital marketing but they are often oblivious of the basic and necessary skills needed to become an exceptional digital marketer. In a bid to clear out this uncertainty, some digital marketing folks has recommended having a degree in digital marketing as a pre-requisite for starting a digital marketing campaign or becoming a digital marketer. They're also of the school of thought that having a digital marketing degree is all that's required to become a successful digital marketer, and that automatically qualifies you a digital marketer. 

Well, they may be right in their own conceit, but every experienced digital marketer will certainly have a different opinion. Friend, having a college or university degree in digital marketing isn't among or is the least basic skill you need to become a great digital marketer. 

There are a lot experienced and professional digital marketers in the world who had carved out a niche for themselves in the digital marketing world without having a college or university degree in digital marketing, they simply discovered these basic skills i'm going to show you and developed it to stand-out from the crowd in the digital marketing space. 

I have been into digital marketing for quiet a couple of years now, helping small and medium scale businesses to gain online visibility, drive online clients and customers to their business and increase their search engine result ranking. I did not have a degree in digital marketing, i studied chemical engineering in the university. I looked inwards and discovered i have some of these basic skills, which i needed to maximize and use it to start making some money for myself, and this is exactly what i've been doing. 

Therefore, having or not having a degree in digital marketing is not a major criteria to becoming a great digital marketer. However, a degree in digital marketing could be an added advantage, but having a digital marketing experience is by far worth a million times more than a degree in digital marketing. Having established this fact, it is time to delve into some of these basic skills you must have in order to become a great digital marketer.

What skills are necessary to become a great digital marketer?

1. Creative Writing Skills: Creative writing skill is the first most basic skill you must have to become a great digital marketer. Without creatively knowing how to carve out contents, your digital marketing career or campaign will be a fluke. No one can succeed in digital marketing without having this skill, and knowing how to write creatively and expressively. Since all we do in digital marketing is write, write, write and write. You definitely need to keep writing to master the art of creative writing, which is a pre-requisite skill for becoming a great digital marketer. Some people are born with writing skill, while others learn the art of creative. However you acquired the skill, you just need to keep practicing the art of writing in order to become a successful digital marketer. The more you write, the better you become in the art of creative writing.

2. Content Marketing: After mastering the art of creative writing, the next thing is to begin to use your creative writing skills to explore the world of content marketing. What is content marketing? Content marketing simply means creating contents that markets a particular thing on a blog or website and increase traffic. 

As someone who's aspiring to become a great digital marketer you need to develop your mind and brain towards creating exceptional contents that will market your client's business blog or website and increase traffic. Therefore, your contents must be able to capture your visitors attention and make them want to spend quality time on your blog or website. It must also be compelling enough to make them want to take action to sign up, register, subscribe for email updates or leave a comment about your content. 

Your headline must be catchy, the body of your content must be captivating to make them want to read further and your conclusion should eventually make them take action. If your contents does not make your visitors to comeback next time to read new posts on your blog or website, increase daily traffic, or cause your readers to take necessary action, then you're not a good content marketer and you need to review your content marketing strategies. Content marketing skills is one of the basic digital marketing skills you must have in order to become a great digital marketer.

3. Search Engine Optimization(SEO): Digital marketing is broad and it covers a wide variety of internet marketing skills. It is about all the processes and actions taken to make your client's business visible, and have a strong voice on the internet. Search Engine Optimization skill is one of these basic skill you must have to be able to succeed as a digital marketer in marketing your client's business to potential client's and customers. 

The importance of SEO skill to a digital marketer cannot be over-emphasized, because of the competition among various business blogs and websites in gaining the number one spot on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other major search engines. 

A lot of brands, organization and large corporation are looking for experienced SEO  experts to give them that breakthrough of making their brands and business website rank higher in search results. This is why as an aspiring digital marketer, you need to hone your SEO skill in order to land good jobs from these brands. What is your role as a search engine optimization expert? 

Your job as a SEO expert is to make your client's business blog and website rank high in search engine result page(SERP), such that when people search for businesses that are relevant to your client's business, his business blog or website pops-up on the first page of search results. This feat can only be achieved through creating contents that are search engine friendly, which means using search engine "keywords" that are relevant to your client's business. 

You can master the art of search engine optimization by searching and learning some useful search engine "keywords" that describes your client's business and use them in creating your content. I'll discus more about search engine optimization in my subsequent posts. However, you must start developing your SEO skills as would-be digital marketer. Mastering the art of search engine optimization is one of the basic skills you need to become a great digital marketer and carve out a niche for yourself in the digital marketing world.

4. Social  Media Marketing Skill: The introduction of social media has undoubtedly made the world appear smaller. Now, we can all connect with not just family and friends, but including people we've never met before through the social networking sites. Social media is meant for networking and connecting with people who share similar passion with you. 

The various social networking sites are platforms for showcasing your business to your friends, fans, followers and networks. As an aspiring digital marketer, you need to be familiar with the various social media sites and master how to use them to market your client's business to your networks. There are various social media platforms that are very efficient for social media marketing. Topmost among the social networking sites you need to effectively explore as a digital marketer are; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google plus, Pinterest and Instagram. 

Each of these social media platforms have distinct ways of using them to effectively and efficiently deploy your digital marketing campaign and get good results. Social media marketing skill is an essential skill you must have to succeed as a digital marketer. A lot of digital marketers relegates the social media to the background, and do not take it seriously. 

But the power of social media in digital marketing is enormous, because it has the capacity of turning your connections and networks to potential client's and customers and generate sales. Social media marketing skills is necessary in your quest to becoming a great digital marketer. I'll be discussing more about the various social networking platforms in my subsequent posts.

5. Copy-writing Skills: Copy-writing skills is another important skill you must possess if you really want to become a great digital marketer and stand-out from the crowd. This skill is necessary to make your visitors take action by patronizing your client's business. Without this skill, your visitors will read through your content or copies about your client's products or service without any motivation to do business with your client, hence no sales will be generated. 

No Copy-writing skills, No Sales! What is copy-writing? Copy-writing is the art of creating copies about a product or service with a view to generating sales. These copies have to be compelling to motivate your readers to bring out their money to patronize your client's business. Copy-writing skills is an important skill that will make you become a great digital marketer. I'll write more on this skill in my subsequent post.

6. Email Marketing Skill: Email marketing is the process of sending out frequent email updates about your client's products or services to your email subscribers. This helps to keep them up-to-speed information about latest products or new services of your client. To succeed in email marketing as a digital marketer, you need to have a list of all your visitors email and email subscribers to your blog and website, so you can keep them updated. MailChimp is currently the best and largest email marketing platform you'll definitely need to incorporate into your digital marketing for effective email marketing.

These are some the basic digital marketing skills you must have to become a great digital marketer.

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