The world has quickly moved online since the advent of the internet – and 2020 has seen this happen at an accelerated rate. This means that you need to keep up with current trends to stay on top of your career and remain employable. While this can prove to be a challenge for some people who are not as digitally skilled as others, this doesn’t mean that you should give up hope as there is still plenty that you can do to improve your digital skillset.
In the following blog post, let’s have a closer look at some of the areas that you can work on to help increase your attractiveness to potential employers. While you don’t necessarily have to boost all of these digital skills, just working on one or two of them can make all the difference regarding your employability.
Social Media
Social media is everywhere these days and has been particularly important during 2020 when people have often been separated from one another. With billions of active users worldwide, it also provides an essential business tool that can be useful to companies of all different shapes and sizes. If you are a regular social media, you may think that it is quite an easy skill to master, but the truth is that it is an entirely different skill to use it for business compared to using it for personal pleasure.
The standard social media platforms that many businesses use are Facebook and Twitter, but we know that new sites are released all the time. Plus, this is a fast-moving field. If you want to get into a sector that is quite youth-oriented, it is especially important that you focus your attention on the newer platforms such as TikTok as per Famoid. The great fact about improving your social media ability is that you will gain a set of skills that can be transferred to different business areas. Take time to study how other businesses use social media for marketing campaigns, and how professional individuals use it to spread words of their services.
Search Engine Marketing and Optimization
When people are looking for a product or service these days, they are often looking online as a first port of call. So, this means that companies are putting huge sums of money – and plenty of time too – into improving their search engine marketing and optimization. To some people, SEO seems like something of a dark art, but there are some clear and measurable techniques that you can learn to boost companies’ fortune on search engines such as Google. If you have this ability, you are certainly going to be in demand by all types of businesses, which are competing hard to reach the top of the tree. Of course, like lots of other technological areas, things can move at a rapid rate, so you need to ensure that you keep your skills fresh and sharp to make yourself highly desirable.
Data Analytics
Another area that you can work on is the analysis of data. With so much customer information being collected online, it makes sense that someone is able to turn this into recommendations that companies can follow. You could be that person. Of course, data analytics is a vast and complex field, so it may not be the area you choose to get into if you are not the most technically proficient person in the world. However, if you are more technically skilled and are looking for a niche area, it could end up fitting the bill nicely. A big part of this analytical trend is directed at the marketing side of things, making recommendations about how companies can best spend their money to keep getting people through the door and make more sales.
Content Marketing
Company websites have a growing need for fresh content that keeps users coming back time and time again. The development of fresh material is also important from a search engine optimization point of view, so this area links nicely. Content comes in a wide range of different forms, including blogs, videos, podcasts, and images – all of which can be shared widely through social media platforms. Whether it is a website or social media page, the content is the central part of it and the reason why people keep coming back to use it. Content can have numerous advantages, including increasing brand awareness and establishing a business as a ‘thought leader’ in its field. Your main skill may be writing excellent and informative blog posts or designing world-class videos or fascinating social media graphics. Content marketing is another broad field, but booting some of your skills related directly to it can be enormously beneficial.
As digital skills go, you may think that sending an email is at the most basic end. However, the right email can get a customer to pay attention and drive them to act. There is a real art form in creating an email that engages people to the point that they feel the need to take action. So, if you can improve your email marketing skills, this will certainly help to make you more employable as it is an area that many companies are still looking to invest plenty of money in.
The fact is that email is not all about sending an offer to customers and waiting for them to use it. In fact, it starts with the initial signup and welcome email that make them feel like they are becoming part of a club. One of the main powers of emails is that people don’t tend to change their email address, so once you have access to their inbox in the first instance, you can continue contacting them for a long time to come. However, it would be best if you still made your emails interesting to the point that they are not going to unsubscribe, and you lose access forever.
Mobile
Since smartphones first burst onto the scene just a few years ago, they have become part of our lives in a big way. In fact, more people are making searches on smartphones than other devices, which goes to show how crucially important they are. So, if you can design a mobile-friendly web page, this could make you stand out from the crowd. You could even create a mobile CV that highlights your own skills and what you are bringing to the table should a company hire you. There are plenty of courses out there that can help to boost your technical skills, so click here to find out more if you are looking for a career in operations management or technology.
Digital Customer Service
Customer service used to be based in call centers largely and would require an entirely different skill set. Still, these days, there is a lot more interaction taking place behind a computer screen – whether this is via video chat or connecting on social media. So, if you are looking to get into customer service, it makes sense that you can connect with people online through modern messaging services. Striking the right tone can prove difficult as it is harder to convey emotions via messaging than hearing another person’s voice. Plus, people are often looking for quick and snappy responses when they get in contact online.
Video
People are spending more and more of their time watching videos online, so if you can produce the kind of high-quality content that they are interested in watching, there is no doubt that this could prove to be a beneficial skill which is going to be useful to a host of companies – both large and small. Video content can be a simple as shooting something on a smartphone and uploading it to Instagram. Still, it can also involve creating a fully edited video full of special effects. There are plenty of tools out there that have made this process easier to achieve than ever before.
With so many jobs involving a digital element of some kind, it makes sense that you work on your technical skills to make yourself more employable. Sure, having the basics is a great starting point, but if you can take this one step further and focus on improving a core area, this can end up making all the difference and will set you apart from the other candidates out there. Of course, some skills take longer to master than others. At the ‘easier’ end of the scale, you can certainly work on your social media and online customer interaction skills and give yourself the edge for businesses looking for great interactive people. If you are technically savvy, you can work on the harder elements of technical skills such as mobile web development and data analytics. With technical skills, you need to make sure that they are always properly updated, as this is a field that moves at a rapid rate. So, if you commit to continual online learning, this will stand you in good stead throughout your career.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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