What a marketing degree doesn’t teach you: How the Empower Network can add to your marketing skills.
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
As I have said in previous posts, I am studying for a marketing degree. I find marketing pretty interesting and informative we learn about a lot of different things and different marketing techniques. But one thing it completely ignores is practical application of these marketing principles. And online marketing. There is almost no mention of social media marketing, and nothing about advertising online, websites or any other key marketing tools which are based online. Which is a bit of a joke considering how important and widespread online marketing now is!
At my university, with so much free time on my hands, I volunteered to do the marketing for a not for profit company called the Digital Youth Enterprise. It is a not for profit social enterprise which aims to inspire and support young people to start and succeed in business using their digital skills. Volunteering allowed me to put what I was learning to good use. But, most of the marketing needed for a company like this was online marketing. This is something I knew nothing about.
Learning marketing Whilst Earning
My mentor Paul Wakefield, also owner of digital Youth enterprise has been an internet marketer for some time. He taught me a lot about social media marketing, as well as different opportunities available for businesses online. He also got me involved with the Empower Network. He advised me to join because it would not only help me earn a bit of cash, it would also teach me more about online marketing, through practical application, then I was learning from university.
I have not been with the Empower Network for long, probably less than a month. I have not earnt any money from it yet, although I hope to very soon. One thing to remember is, with something like this, you don t just make money overnight. It is a convenient way to make money but this doesn t make it quick and like all things it takes time. However, I have learnt an awful lot so far. I had no idea about SEO and its importance. I had no idea about the value of building your lost and maintaining a relationship with viewer, even if they are not customers yet. I was introduced to aweber (which I am almost up to grips with) and how to use it for your business. I am currently learning about networking online to promote your blog and doing this via social media. I have just set up a new twitter account for this blog!
Anyone Can Learn marketing Through Empower
Believe me, before I joined the Empower Network I couldn t even write a blog post. I m no guru now, but improving. And should I ecide to get a job after university, I will have developed a new set of skills in online marketing which will be hugely attractive to employers and incredibly useful to me either as an employee or business owner.