Career Tips: 4 Ways to Own Your Digital Marketing Career
It is common for many first-time digital marketers to have the following thoughts: I hope I’ll get the job; I hope I’ll get a raise; I hope that I’ll get a promotion; I hope that I won’t be out of my job if layoffs come around.
If you have been getting similar thoughts, it is advised that you set your goals and make things happen for yourself.
Not following up on that advice may result in you falling behind your peers. People you train may end up getting promoted ahead of you.
It is important to remember that your career is your own. So set aside the ‘hoping’, and start taking charge today.
Here are 4 tips that will help you take charge of your digital marketing career:
1. Expand your professional network.
- As the old saying goes, “It’s not what you know, but who you know”.
- People tend to work with those they know and trust. That’s why networking is so important, both online and in-person.
- Referrals can be a tremendous asset, and not just when you’re looking for a job.
- LinkedIn is the go-to online resource for professional networking. Hiring managers and recruiters often go there first when looking for potential candidates or researching potential candidates.
- Here are a few tips for you to grow your network on LinkedIn:
- Keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date.
- Use a professional-looking headshot.
- Make sure to fill out every field you possibly can.
- Optimise your profile like you would optimise any website you work on for a client.
- In-person networking can be a bit more challenging these days, but certainly not impossible.
- Take advantage of local professional groups, public service groups and more general groups as they can be a great source of networking.
2. Continue your education.
- Change is constant. This is undoubtedly true in digital marketing, where search engine algorithms are updated almost daily, paid search techniques continue to evolve, and website technology changes regularly.
- If you aren’t a perpetual student of your craft, you will fall behind.
- Here are a few ways you can continue learning;
- Read more.
- Reading is essential.
- It not only helps you learn more about your work, but it also helps you expand your mind to think in different ways.
- Read about more than just work stuff, too. Biographies, self-help, and other works can be beneficial.
- Explore Digital Marketing Websites.
- Go through digital marketing websites.
- The news and opinions you will get to read from those may be invaluable to you continuing education.
- Attend Professional Conferences.
- They are a great way to continue your education and build your networking skills.
- It is beneficial to stick to conferences with sessions that will help you get better at your work.
- Learn about all aspects of Digital Marketing.
- When you have more experience, learn about other aspects of your trade as well.
- One of the things that will help is knowing at least the basics of how different areas of digital marketing work.
- Being able to help knit an overall strategy is extremely valuable.
- Set up your own website for practice.
- Set up your own website if you’re doing SEO or website development work.
- It’s amazing what you can learn just playing around with a website that doesn’t carry as much risk as playing around with a client’s website.
- Another way to have a website is to volunteer to help out a charity you support. They will appreciate the assistance, and you get a platform on which you can hone your skills.
- Read more.
3. Always be ready for your next job.
- Looking for a job can feel like a full-time job itself, and you never know when you will need to look for a job.
- Here are some tips that can help you-
- Update your resume: Having an up-to-date resume at the ready will help you if that time ever comes.
- Avoid using fancy templates for your resume: Many automated recruiting systems use a parsing system to pull the resume into their applicant management system. Some fancy formatting will completely throw off the importing of the data. It’s OK to have a nicely-formatted version to email, but if asked to upload a copy, use a plain format.
- Read the full job description before you apply for a job: Never rely on the job title alone to guide you. Otherwise, you will waste the recruiting manager’s time and your own.
4. Find a job that fulfils you.
- It’s incredible how many people work jobs they hate just because they need a pay-check.
- Sometimes it’s necessary to do so, but if you hate your job, you have the freedom to go and find something else.
- You need to find a job that pays the bills and makes you want to get up in the morning and not dread Mondays.
- While we all can’t make money working on our hobbies, it’s always possible to work on something that you enjoy as you earn a living.
- Learn to work on your strengths. While it’s good to identify weak areas in your work and improve upon those, continuously working in a job where you struggle is bad for your long-term mental health.
- Being fulfilled at work is being part of a team with a great culture.
- People are now awakening to the realisation that they don’t have to work in a crappy, dead-end job for companies that don’t value them.
- In the end, it’s wonderful to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you’re doing great work that is helpful and fulfilling.
Remember: hope isn’t a strategy. Now is the perfect time to take your career destiny into your own hands. You want to make yourself indispensable.
