Are you interested in a career in marketing? Maybe you're a creator or small business who needs to strengthen their marketing knowledge and skills to grow your brand, promote a project, or build your business online. The Internet is full of endless amounts of resources, so it can be overwhelming knowing where to start. For that reason, it's one of my biggest goals to grow my blog so I can provide my insight and share my resources. From courses and certifications to photography and social media graphics, there are lot of free and simple ways to develop you marketing stratgies.
I highly recommend taking online courses, especially ones with certifications, because it will increase your knowledge, strengthen your skills, and help you stand out on your next application or in your next interview. Building your confidence with courses or certifications will make a major difference. Completing courses and certifications also demonstrates to employers that you're dedicated to learning more and take initiative to grow. I also suggest exploring royalty free photography websites so that you can use professional, high resolution graphics on your social media profiles or website. High quality photos make the biggest difference online.
1. Unsplash
Unsplahs is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under their royalty free license. Royalty free means that it's a part of the public domain so there's no need to worry about copyrighting issues. If you're aiming to grow your digital brand with your business, it's very important to make sure you have professional images; however, you don't want to face copyright issues. For that reason, I recommend steering clear of Pinterest because a lot of those photos are copyrighted. Unsplash has a plethora of professional, high resolution images.
2. Canva
Canva is an incredible free resource for creating social media graphics, presentations, documents (like brochures, posters, resumes, etc.) and other visual content. There are customizable templates if you need help getting started on a design. Canva has provides a lot of royalty free photos and videos as well as countless elements to design amazing graphics and documents. Although Canva is often referred to as a graphic design platform and I highly recommend it for digital creators, I also think it's important to note that it's not highly recognized within the graphic design community like Adobe products like Photoshop or Illustrator. Canva is free, but you can sign up for Canva Pro and receive access to more photos, elements, and other feature. Fun fact: if you're using Canva and manage a 501(c)3 nonprofit, you can submit an application to receive Canva Pro for free.
3. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software. In addition, HubSpot provides amazing resources on their blogs as well as business, marketing, and sales courses—some with certifications—to help businesses or digital creators grow. I highly recommend reading their incredible blog posts because they offer so much insight, statistics, and information about different aspects of marketing to help you understand the power of it.
4. Google Digital Garage
There are dozens of courses offered on Google Digital Garage. One I highly recommend is the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, which includes a certification that you can include on your resume or LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your knowledge. The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing certification course is 40 hours, so be prepared that it will take a considerable amount of time to complete it. The good thing is you can save your spot, pause, and come back again later. There are so many amazing courses that are beneficial for digital creators, including business communication, coding basics, and digital wellbeing.
5. Multitude Productions
If you're like me, you've thought of countless podcast ideas during the pandemic. Many of my favorite podcasts are a part of the Multitude collective. Multitude is an independent podcast collective and production company based in Brooklyn. Launched by Amanda McLoughlin and her friends, Multitude focuses on making podcasting more accessible, offering amazing resources, and providing incredible insight to help other creators launch their shows. I highly recommend checking out Multitude's blog because it's full of so many incredible free resources to help you understand what it takes to launch, maintain, and monetize a podcast. They also have an awesome podcast starter kit that you can purchase and they even offer free consulting for creators from underrepresented backgrounds.
I hope these recommendations and resources are as helpful for you as they have been for me. If you have any questions, or recommendations for me, please reach out. I'm more than happy to chat.