Guide for Beginner to Learn Digital Marketing Free of Cost

Digital marketing is considered as one of the best occupation today. Many aspiring students wants to make their career in digital marketing and people change their profession to become a digital marketer, I am one of them. This happens because a digital marketer earns handsome amount of money for his creativity. If you are love working on the internet, trust me this is one of the best jobs.

For a beginner, it is very difficult to decide to go for an online course or offline. Also, they charge you lot of money. Let me make it clear for you, until and unless you don't know how to learn digital marketing, classes or tutor can't teach you. Because this is what you can do by implementation not just by studying.

Here in this blog, I will guide you to learn digital marketing with the free resources. Guidance from a digital marketer is very important but if you learn through the resources provided on this blog, your basics will get stronger and you will become ready to go for next level. Below are noteworthy points for a beginner to start with digital marketing. This is what I followed and have seen experts following:

1. WordPress:

If you want to learn digital marketing start with your own website. It can be entertainment, news, education, photography, etc. website. WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on MySQL and PHP. So anyone can make an edit for designing the website accordingly.

I will post more information about purchasing of the domain and hosting the website in my upcoming blogs.

Syed Balkhi started wpbeginner.com which is free guidance to understand WordPress. wpbeginner.com will give you step-by-step guidance. Also, they have YouTube channel so you can subscribe and learn practical implementation. I have mentioned the link below so you can visit in order to start learning.

Website: www.wpbeginner.com

YouTube Channel: WPBeginner - WordPress Tutorials

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

In digital marketing, Search Engine Optimization is the most crucial part. It helps to appear your website on google, bing, yahoo, etc. at free of cost. Presence on google first page is a major concern. Read my last blog to understand SEO by Yoast. However, here I have something different i.e., Webmaster tool by google. There are a lot of things in webmaster, so you have to go through with the complete details and understand its importance.

I have provided the link below so that you can be guided step-by-step. First, sign up to the webmaster using your google email and get your website verified. Once you are done with verification, start learning more about term SEO from the webmaster.

SignUp and Verify Website: Start with Google Search Console

Webmaster Forum: Learn Webmasters Tools

Webmaster YouTube Channel: Google Webmasters (visit popular upload section to learn more about webmaster.)

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM):

SEM is Search Engine Marketing, where you pay to get your product details appear in search result. A digital marketers focus should be at paid Ads to appear on top of google search result very easily. Because 80% of people search google for the relevant result. AdWords has many options to promote the product using a landing page. Terms like Cost Per Click (CPC), Pay Per Click (PPC), impression, display and search network, video Ads, etc. can be understood very well.

AdWords works on the bidding process. So, before investing money of the client you can go through several options for market research. In AdWords, market research can be done using tools like keyword planner, display planner, an Ad preview applicable cost to promote the brand, research for the potential area and audience with the brand value.

Before getting started, you should know that google earns 80% of their money from AdWords. Because social media can help you majorly in brand awareness. AdWords can help you to get your product sold. Also, google provides the AdWords certification for which you need to appear for the online examination. To proceed with online examination click here and follow the instructions carefully.

To study more about AdWords click to the below options:

Step-by-step guide: Google AdWords Help

YouTube channel: AdWords

4. Analytical Reports:

If you want to keep the track for each and every activity that happens by the visitors on the website, blogs, YouTube Channels, Blogspot, etc. Then you must learn google analytics first. Google analytics is the most important feature as it helps in analyzing and maintaining record. It helps you maintain the record keeping all the aspects in mind like demographics, geographic reports, interests based audience, the technology used by an audience, etc.

Basically, google analytics provides you a tracking code which needs to be inserted in required place to track the activity.  Google provides this analytics reports for completely free of cost. You can also become a google analytics certified, click here for more information. Also, to learn more about analytics please go through the below link which can be helpful to get proper guidance.

Step-by-step guide: Google Analytics Help

YouTube Channel: Google Analytics

5. Subscribe Newsletter:

In digital marketing, concept keeps changing every day. This happens to maintain the interest of the audience and keep them exciting with something new coming up in the market. Also, to overcome with the issues faced by the audience. This becomes very difficult for a digital marketer to stay updated every time. However, there is a solution for this, subscribe to different website newsletter which can inform or update you with all the recent concepts.

But before you go ahead and simply signup to any other website let me tell you, links in above-mentioned points can make you stay updated only you need to go through with them once in a day. Subscribing to other websites newsletter will provide you the suggestion and tricks for the latest concepts.

These 5 points are the most crucial one I wanted to share for the beginners to learn digital marketing. This will take time but will give a satisfactory result to start your career with. I will also mention about social media marketing in my next blog to learn at no cost. Certain certifications which cost you nothing but hold true value in the market will be mentioned in the future blogs. I will stay motivated and love to share more if I keep receiving your response on my blog.

Top 5 Social Media Trends Gaining Priority in 2017

As we know social media sites bought all possible comfort to an individual on one single platform i.e., through the internet where brand and customers meet at one place. At one single touch, we can connect to various brands and to their promoted offers. Who is helping us getting this comforts? It is all done by the genius, who works hard to get their creativity on a digital platform and explore it socially.

 In today's world, we use Social Media for making friends, chatting with them, video calling, sharing - moments, data, pictures, videos, files, etc. Also, a place where millions of people show creativity, earn money and become famous. Even a big brand promote their products on Social Media sites because it has specified audience.

Every coin has two sides, same goes with social media sites. Misuse of social media sites is very common these days. Big social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have started taking actions by running a different algorithm to stop any wrong side happening on the site.

Some social media trends will dominate 2017 for a huge change. Major of this trends are:

1. Messaging Apps:

Messaging apps have a much wider community of users than social networks. If compared with social media sites, social messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber and WeChat together have more users than the big networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. This preference comes due to the interactive facility provided by the social networking. Facilities like SMS, audio calling, video calling and data sharing, etc. help to make conversation easy and cheaper.

Businesses are also taking advantage of the Messaging apps. For example, if you click an Ad running on Facebook, it will divert you to the chat or messaging section and let you interact with their representative. Business has realized the importance of social messaging compared to social networking. This part helps them building trust with their customers and a convenient way to get feedback.

2. Fake NEWS restriction on Social Media:

Millennials are turning towards the internet as main news source. Social media should take a step against the rise in "fake news". Some social media sites are losing visitors/users along with the global ranking as they didn't put proper parameters on the sites. Facebook is already running an algorithm to restrict an influence over the fake news to the user. Some countries are also making different regulations for the Social Media sites letting fake news proliferate.

Fake news is responsible for spoiling the name of a brand and its value in public. It is very easy to track activities of a user on social media, this also gives an easy method to stop these irrelevant things going ahead.

3. Sales and Customer Service getting more social:

For businesses, social media purely works as a marketing tool and does not gives effective results. Later they realized, having a direct conversation with customers might help them. Research says consumers learn about products on Pinterest and Instagram. They're sold on Facebook & Twitter. Customer service can be given on Facebook Messenger.

This trends towards "conversational commerce" stands to accelerate in 2017 with rapid deployment of chatbots. You can read more about what is chatbots as it is described briefly here. In short, it is a conversational interface via auditory or textual methods. This helps business to have interaction with consumers and maintain suspect and prospect list.

4. Lack of Social Media Skill:

Companies promote their products on social media sites to create brand awareness and also to generate sales. But, many employees in same companies have no idea how the product gets promoted through digital and social media platform. This happens because training and resources for frontline employees have been largely ignored. According to Forbes, research from management consulting firm Capgemini Consulting says nine out of 10 companies report their workers don’t have the requisite skills to leverage social media as a business tool.

Each day in social media new concepts takes place, it will definitely widen the gap for the employees to get updated with social media. Some well-known social media sites may come to an end in 2017. On the other hand, there are social media sites which are not known yet but might come up with very new features in the market and capture the attention of the audiences. In order to fulfill this gap quicker, online resources can help.

5. Updates in Social Media Apps:

Social Media always brings something exciting for its users. Recently, Instagram and WhatsApp updated their app. WhatsApp re(launch) its ‘status updates’ settings which are in compared with Snapchat. Instagram updating its application by adding a feature to upload several picture and videos in one go rather than telling a complete story with one. This is in the organic form not in the ad format.

Such new updates in Social Media App plays major role because it keeps the user engaged and restricts them to migrate to another Apps. Also, majority of users visit social media through the mobile application and very less through other devices. Businesses have realized this importance of social media mobile application. This helps them to promote any brand or product selecting target audience.

Conclusion: Social Media Trends in 2017 will have a great impact on businesses. I suggest focusing on above-mentioned social media trends and upcoming social media trends. Businesses will have a tough time to understand today’s market. However, an expert or specialist might help them by understanding trends and best tricks to promote brand or product on social media sites.