Most Important Skills Digital Marketing Specialists Should Possess

The year 2017 saw an upsurge in the use of a variety of a social media and search engine platforms. And while the year 2018 has dawned with grace on the digital landscape, the many successful strategies of the previous year will reign even in the year ahead. Fierce competition between brands will need digital marketing experts to learn, possess and re-invent a variety of digital strategies from their marketing culinary.

What this means for digital marketing professionals is that their seasoning will now have to carry a variety of expertise when it comes to creating digital marketing strategies. This discipline must include a grand mix of both technical, aesthetics, & emotional mix. Here are some traits that a digital marketing enthusiast must stay on top of, in order to position their brand as a valuable contributor in their domain.

Search Engine Optimization Or SEO

‘SEO Weighs And So It Pays’ -

The above quote carries a lot of basis in the digital space.  As a digital marketing enthusiast, this has, is and will continue to remain as one of the primary skills to possess.  SEO on a subject level is an ever learning platform that no digital marketing professional can claim to master. In the essence of the subject, it is best treated as a continuous learning & improvement process.

Keywords and ranking is only one aspect to it. In its entirety, it forms the basis and major share of a brand featuring on top of search engine pages. The ideal goal of a digital marketing professional should be to generate traffic and online conversions from it. It is therefore important for a digital marketing enthusiast to understand

•    Technical know how
•    Dealing with sitemaps to response codes
•    Extensive use of tools such as MOZ, SEMRUSH  and screaming fog

Content Creator, Curator And A Content Elixir

As cliche as it sounds, content has and will continue to be the primary promoter of a brand in all sense. And so a digital marketing professional must be able to act like a content wordsmith and be able to possess cross content creation skills. These would include know-how of creating content for various social media platforms, newsletters, press releases, mobile content strategy, email marketing skills and needless to say website content and blogs. A marketer who can create seamless content for a variety of platforms is more in demand at all times. What would be an added and a very important trait is to position oneself as a content strategist than just a content creator.

Social Media

By far and the last couple of years, social media platforms have evolved as a predominant or most important platform for brands to advertise. Needless to say, a digital marketer must possess the necessary skills and techniques to use social media platforms to leverage the brand's presence at all times.

Facebook and Instagram engineering and re-engineering marketing models provide key insights and a necessary bend that digital advertising is shaping. Digital marketers must hone themselves on these platforms usage and best applicable time for brands to stay active and most importantly stay relevant content-wise.

Data Analysis
 
It is without a doubt that as a digital marketer, you would be dealing with behavioral patterns of a variety of users across multiple platforms. And such information comes from huge amounts of data gathering and processing. Needless to say, a digital marketer  would need to be able to analyze and interpret data and be able to use it for brand positioning.

Tools like Google Analytics have already proven its predominance in handling huge amounts of data. This comes in very handy to keep track of brands online performance and measure key metrics such as traffic and conversion. Data analytics is a very important skill to possess and may add the necessary feather to a digital marketers cap.

Video Production

As a content creator it would be but necessary to possess some video editing and production skills. Visual content without a doubt rules all forms of content and so having this skill would give marketers a bonus.

Mobile Strategy

As a marketer, if you are reading this on your mobile device that is proof enough of how important it is to have your content created for hand-held or mobile devices. Various researchers have proven that the global population is on their mobiles for most times during any day. And so while this platform will rule as a brand advertising medium, there is a larger identified gap that marketers must fill.

Digital marketers must embrace and understand the difference between mobile marketing and desktop marketing in order to capture the essence of marketing in this medium. It would also be helpful to understand some of the common mobile development platforms and mobile terms such as mobile responsive website design.

Most importantly marketers should be able to execute and apply both offline and online mobile marketing strategy to a brands advantage.

Email Marketing

By far the oldest and yet the most effective strategies that a digital marketer should know and possess. It is much more than just sending out emails or newsletters. A marketer  must be able to craft compelling emails and email marketing strategies, track progress and use it to push the brand's presence at the most likely times an open ratio is desired.

A digital marketing enthusiast must be able to know and identify email extraction methods and have sales forward mentality to convert prospects into a sale for a brand.