Are you considering a career in Digital Marketing, but you are not sufficiently familiar with the topic in order to make a decision? In the past few weeks, I had a few friends asking me whether switching to a career in Digital Marketing will be the right choice for their professional development, so this one is for you, guys. 🙂 Today, I will show you a great course from LinkedIn Learning that will introduce you to the basics of Digital Marketing, and will hopefully help you decide whether it is the right career path for you.
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LinkedIn Learning: the educational corner of LinkedIn
If you are already an active user on the business-oriented social media platform, you are probably familiar with LinkedIn Learning. In 2015, LinkedIn bought the American company Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, and started offering its high-quality educational video courses on its own LinkedIn Learning platform.
Getting started with Digital Marketing on LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning comes with the Premium plans, and it offers an extensive variety of courses covering Marketing, Business, Advertising, Software Development, Graphic Design, and Technology.
However, if you are trying to get started with Digital Marketing and just watch all the videos that are out there, you might get confused when trying to connect all the information by yourself.
For this reason, I recommend you the course Become an AMA Professional Certified Marketer in Digital Marketing, a collection of videos that covers all the basics to get you started with Digital Marketing.Â
Wait! So I have to pay in order to take this course?
Although all the courses from LinkedIn Learning come with your Premium account, LinkedIn offers a 30-day free trial, which is more than enough for this course. Just remember to cancel the free trial before the 30-day expiration, otherwise your subscription is renewed automatically, and you will be charged 27 EUR – which is the price for the Premium plan. In other words, you can take this course for free during your 30-day trial.
After you have finished your 30-day Premium trial, LinkedIn offers an additional 7-day free trial only for LinkedIn Learning with no credit card required. For some reason, it doesn’t give you this option if you haven’t consumed your 30-day one first.
However, I think that the 30-day trial will give you more time to watch the course without stress and worries on whether you will finish it before the expiration date.
While you are trying out the Premium plan, make sure to check the rest of the Premium features as well. If you are wondering whether they are worth it, I wrote an article about LinkedIn’s Premium plans, evaluating each feature separately.
Become an AMA Professional Certified Marketer in Digital MarketingÂ
This course was created in collaboration with the American Marketing Association, which was one of the first organizations to define the concept of Marketing in 1937.
It includes 20 videos with a total duration of 44 hours, and after you’ve finished, you will receive a Certificate of Completion that you can easily add to your LinkedIn profile. You don’t have to watch them in the order they appear, you can watch them in the order you want.
The course include the following basics:
Online Marketing Foundations – 3 h 48 min duration, 11 chapter quizzes
An introduction to the absolute basics of Online (Digital) Marketing, laying out the foundations for effectively developing your company’s Marketing strategy.
Skills you can add to your profile*: SEO, Digital Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Web Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC)
*This refers to the skills that the course offers you to automatically add on your LinkedIn profile once you’ve finished watching the video.
Content Marketing Foundations – 2 h 1 min duration, 6 chapter quizzes
An introduction to Content Marketing. Basically, Content Marketing refers to the generation of written and visual content such as blog articles, social media posts, etc.
Skills you can add to your profile: Lead Generation, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing
Mobile Marketing Foundations – 3 h 35 min duration, 7 chapter quizzes
This course introduces you to the basics of Mobile Marketing, such as web optimization for mobile visitors, SMS campaigns, mobile advertising, QR code programs, mobile app development, etc.
Skills you can add to your profile: Mobile Marketing, Brand Management
Google AdWords Essential Training – 3 h 28 min duration, 10 chapter quizzes
Learn how to get started with Google AdWords, Google’s online advertising program. In this video course, you will learn how to set up your first ad campaigns, and how to optimize them to get more clicks.
Skills you can add to your profile: Google AdWords, Lead Generation, Advertising, Pay Per Click (PPC)
AdWords and Analytics: Remarketing – 57 min 19 s duration, no chapter quizzes
This course is labeled as Intermediate by LinkedIn, so I recommend you to watch the AdWords Essential Training and Analytics Essential Training videos first. It introduces you to the concept of Remarketing, or the techniques you can implement to target the users who have already shown interest in your company by visiting and interacting with your website.
Skills you can add to your profile: Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Advertising, Web Analytics
Content Marketing: Staying Relevant – 18 m 8 s duration, no chapter quizzes
A really short video on Content Marketing that explains how to write and prepare relevant and personalized content for your specific audience.
Skills you can add to your profile: Digital Marketing, Web Analytics, Content Marketing
Content Marketing: Blogs – 1 h 5 min duration, no chapter quizzes
Another short video that introduces you to blogs, and how to plan and write your content in order to get the maximum of your Content Marketing strategy.
Skills you can add to your profile: Content Marketing, WordPress
SEO Foundations – 3 h 27 min duration, 10 chapter quizzes
I personally think this was one of the best courses I watched on LinkedIn Learning. It explains extremely well the basics of Search Engine Optimization, and it is suitable even for people who have never heard about it before.
Skills you can add to your profile: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO: Keyword Strategy – 4 h 21 min duration, 8 chapter quizzes
After you have been introduced to SEO by the previous course, you are now ready to start your first keyword search with SEO management tools like Moz and SEMRush.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Digital Marketing
Social Media Marketing: Managing Online Communities – 50 min 56 s, no quizzes
This course introduces you to Marketing on social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and teaches you how to build an online community for your brand.
Skills you can add to your profile: Twitter, Small Business Marketing, Facebook, LinkedIn, B2C Marketing, Public Relations
Facebook Marketing: Advertising – 1 h 45 min duration, 6 chapter quizzes
Learn how to design and publish Facebook ads, target specific audiences, create budgets, and which are the best ad types for your business.
Skills you can add to your profile: Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Facebook
Marketing and Monetizing on YouTube: 3 h 10 min duration, 7 chapter quizzes
As the largest video platform, YouTube is a really important channel to advertise your content and earn money from it. This course will teach you how to get started with YouTube, and how to optimize your videos for search engines.
Skills you can add to your profile: YouTube, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Brand Management
Social Media Marketing: Facebook and Twitter – 1 h 36 min duration, no quizzes
This course focuses on social media Marketing specifically on Facebook and Twitter, and it goes in depth on which platform is better depending on your company’s goals.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Twitter, Small Business Marketing, Facebook, Social Media Marketing
Optimizing Marketing Emails – 1 h 6 min, 6 chapter quizzes
In this course, you will get started with E-mail Marketing, and you will learn how to design e-mail campaigns and newsletters, create lists based on the specific characteristics of your audience, and how to monitor its behavior.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â E-mail Marketing, B2C Marketing
Content Marketing: Newsletters – 12 m 1 s duration, no chapter quizzes
This really short crash course will introduce you to the basics of newsletter campaigns, and how to prepare your content to fit the needs of your audience.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Digital Marketing, Content Marketing
Introduction to Web Design and Development – 3 h 38 min duration, 5 quizzes
An introductory course to get you started with Web Development. If you have no previous experience in the field, you will understand it better if you practice along with the videos by using the exercise files provided by LinkedIn.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Small Business Management
Learning Conversion Rate Optimization – 1 h 30 min, no chapter quizzes
Conversion Rate Optimization is the fancy way of talking about the conversion of your potential customers into actual customers. You will get the basics in this course.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â SEO, Web Analytics, Content Marketing, PPC
Google Analytics Essential Training – 3 h 9 min duration, no chapter quizzes
The course that will get you started with Google Analytics. I do recommend to watch this video collection before moving on to the more advanced Analytics courses.
Skills you can add to your profile: Google Analytics, Web Analytics
Advanced Google Analytics – 3 h 45 min duration, no chapter quizzes
An advanced course on Google’s analytics platform that will show you techniques and methods to understand the customer behavior on your website.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Google Analytics, Web Analytics, SEO
Content Marketing ROI – 1 h 2 min duration, no chapter quizzes
Estimating the Return on Investment can be sometimes difficult for Content Marketing. In this course, you will learn how to prove the ROI from blogs, videos, podcasts, and other Content Marketing activities.
Skills you can add to your profile:Â Content Marketing
After you have done watching all the courses, you will receive a certificate of completion that you can add to your LinkedIn profile. I was a little bit disappointed that it was just an ordinary certificate like any other from LinkedIn Learning – I was expecting something different due to the fact that it is a full AMA course of 40 hours. However, this doesn’t reduce its value – it is still a great introduction to the basics of Digital Marketing, and it will help you see whether this is the right career path for you.
Want to learn more about LinkedIn? I recommend you these articles:
- The 10 Commandments of LinkedIn NetworkingThe 10 Commandments of LinkedIn networking
- Is LinkedIn Premium worth it? My honest feedback
