Lifelong learning as a digital marketer

"Education is the key to success". We have all heard this repeated many times throughout our lives, but it usually refers to the education one attains through institutions. They weren't wrong, but what happens after school? Do we stop learning or do we keep going back and forth to school? That's a personal decision, but the overall answer is we should never stop learning. This is where lifelong learning comes in.

Lifelong learning traditionally is “all learning activity that is undertaken throughout life, to improve knowledge, skills and competences within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective” (European Commission [EC], 2001, p. 9).

Simplified, it is a journey of learning/developing new knowledge/skills later in life after they have finished with formal education and through the rest of their lives.

According to lifelong learning guru, Nancy Merz Nordstrom believes that these are the top 10 benefits of lifelong learning:

10. Lifelong learning helps fully develop natural abilities.

9. Lifelong learning opens the mind.

8. Lifelong learning creates a curious, hungry mind.

7. Lifelong learning increases wisdom.

6. Lifelong learning makes the world a better place.

5. Lifelong learning helps us adapt to change.

4. Lifelong learning helps us find meaning in our lives.

3. Lifelong learning keeps us involved as active contributors to society.

2. Lifelong learning helps us make new friends and establish valuable relationships.

1. Lifelong learning leads to an enriching life of self-fulfillment.

As an aspiring digital marketer, I have come to realize that this career is ever-changing and needs one to have the willingness to be a lifelong learner. It's a norm for 'creative types' to be invested in always learning new things.

Working in the marketing field, you will fully appreciate just how critical it is for you to be open to lifelong learning. Take a year, 6 months or even a few weeks off and something changes, updates, evolves or a completely new social media platform arrives on the scene! Blink and you miss it!

In the past, digital marketing was considered a career for specialists in the marketing field, but now it is a necessity to be up to date with digital marketing for any business owner for better marketing strategies. For successful careers and a great track record, we as digital marketers need to be in the know of every change and upgrade in the digital space.

I value education and believe that lifelong learning is an asset for anyone. There is no such thing as knowing too much. Also with digital marketing always keeping me on my toes, these 2 blogs and 1 podcast have played a major part in my growth and knowledge.

1. The Moz Blog

2. Neil Patel Blog

3. iDigress Podcast

1. The Moz Blog

The Moz Blog is a blog that gets the insights, research and how-tos of doctors, top wizards and top industry experts that ensure a better and levelled-up way of doing your SEO and marketing. Moz is a company that offers SEO all in one toolset that will increase traffic, rankings, and visibility in search results. The blog, therefore, focuses on SEO and marketing tools. A new blog is published roughly every 3 days, focusing on several topics that affect SEO.

Recently, Emily Potter - Head of Customer Success at SearchPilot and one of the authors of the blog - wrote a piece on "the First 3 SEO Tests." She highlights how it is vital to write a strong SEO hypothesis. This includes the CTRs (click-through rates) you wish to achieve, ranking more keywords to improve your reach and then how to also improve previous rankings. You will then go on to do these tests; Test 1 - Title tags, Test 2 - On-page keyword targeting and Test 3 - Structured data to win rich results.

This is just one of the examples of informative articles in Moz. I would recommend it highly for anyone looking to take the SEO direction and for any digital marketer.

Rating: 3.5/5

2. The Neil Patel Blog

Rated one of the best blogs, Neil Patel's blog offers the digital marketer tips and tricks on how to drive large amounts of traffic to websites, even in a very

competitive industry. His articles range from the secret to top ranking on Google to the ways of gaining more

followers on Instagram. As well as these how-to's, it also covers articles about the worst SEO marketing strategies.

This blog is a great place to study and learn more.

Neil Patel is a New York Times bestselling author and has been referred to as one of the top influencers.

He is also in the top 10 on Forbes and was listed as one of the best 100 companies in Entrepreneur Magazine. You are in safe hands.

Rating: 4.5/5

3. iDigress Podcast

Presented by Troy Sandidge, iDigress is rated one of the top marketing business podcasts. It helps digital marketers and businesses to accelerate growth as well as authority in your business for 30 minutes. The average time of a lunch break. (wink, wink).

The podcast is available on all platforms that you listen to your podcasts on (Spotify, Apple podcasts, stitcher etc.)

iDigress is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. It is a network of podcasts hosted through Hubspot. Tony aims to create a space that

includes black clients/communities in the marketing space so that they have more relatable views and tips.

iDigress is in the top 1% of top marketing podcasts in the USA and the top 0.5% of worldwide podcasts. How could you not love such a platform?

Rating: 5/5

As a digital marketer myself, who just recently started out, I have found the sources of information vital in keeping up to date with how our industry is constantly shifting gears. I get to compare the different blogs and podcasts from time to time to see which one better suits me for the stage of change I am in. I think it’s a great thing to dabble in different platforms to be able to see what is your best fit.

In conclusion, it is vital to revisit sites such as these to keep yourself in tune with everything that is happening in digital marketing. Lifelong learning keeps one creative and interesting. Keep learning. Keep being great.