The workplace is starting flood with a generation who grew up with social media. Yet, as digital natives who have only known Tumblr and never used LiveJournal, we don’t necessarily know more about social media simply because we grew up with it. While us millennials in social media startups are naturally linked to social platforms, both dictating the consumer market and as part of it, we still have to develop the skills that will benefit the brands we work for.
Try out e-learning
Could you be doing things better? Absolutely. Learning doesn’t stop when you leave the classroom, especially in the constantly evolving world of social media. One way of ensuring you are always at the forefront of your industry is to enroll in a form of training.
There is an abundance of useful courses online, especially when it comes to social media. Lynda has courses that detail Facebook ads, targeted audiences, Twitter cards and more. These kind of personal development tools is time effective and can support on the job learning. As are result, your employer may be happy to front a subscription.
For simple social media strategy updates digital marketing sites, such as Moz, can be very instructive alongside the vast array of YouTube videos out there. However these online courses can often only provide a brief basis of knowledge, or updates, and do not always get to the root of social media learning.
Don’t overlook the training course experience
Where online learning can fall short, something more in-depth and IRL may be better suited. Classroom training companies like Activia Training have written on how useful online learning can be, but that it cannot compete with the real world environment in terms of student engagement.It’s important to weigh up the the worth of the efficiency of online learning against the level engagement involved with a classroom environment.
If you can make a good case to your employer as to why the business could benefit from more in depth training, e.g you can then help other staff learn best practices and in-depth knowledge of the social media marketing landscape, or that a coherent, well designed, well thought out online presence is key to ensuring your business looks professional, as noted by Easy Offices.
Don’t assume you know everything there is to know
Social media and digital marketing practices are ever growing and advancing, just because you’ve got a 10k Twitter following doesn’t necessarily mean you are an amazing social media strategists – it may mean that you were one, within a certain industry, at a certain time. But if we don’t evolve we will fall behind.
