In today’s online age, the importance of digital marketing cannot be overstated. With businesses looking to expand their online presence and reach their target audience through various online channels, there is a growing demand for professionals in this job sector.
If you’re already working in or interested in the field, you may be wondering how to take your career to the next level. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips on how to advance your career in this industry.
Stay Up-to-Date with Industry Trends and Best Practices
The digital marketing industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies, platforms, and trends emerging all the time. To stay relevant and competitive in this field, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices.
2. Learn New Skills and Specialisations
Digital marketing is a broad field that encompasses a wide range of skills and specializations. To advance in your career, it’s important to develop new skills and broaden your knowledge.
Consider taking online courses, attending workshops, or pursuing a certification in a specific area of such as SEO, PPC, social media, or content marketing.
3. Build Your Professional Network
Networking is an important part of any career, and digital marketing is no exception. Attending industry events, joining professional organisations, and connecting with other digital marketing professionals on social media platforms like LinkedIn can lead to valuable career connections and great opportunities.
Millions of businesses around the world are using Social Media now more than ever to reach their target audiences, to connect with their customers and to promote their products/services. We can understand why, because in today’s time, Social Media is constantly evolving and is a massive part of our consumer’s lives. Therefore, a good online presence on Social Networks can quickly help businesses reach the maximum number of users possible whilst also open up different advertising opportunities.
There are thousands of platforms, each with different features and rules, but there are some basic tips and guidelines you can follow to develop a good use of social media in your digital marketing strategy. Even if you aren’t a business owner, if you have a passion for social media and are keen to understand and grow your knowledge of it, this will be a useful read to help you knuckle down on the basics.
We’ve rounded up a list of key do’s and don’ts when using social media as part of your digital marketing strategy and explained why they are important.
1. DO identify your brand voice:
Understanding how you want your brand to be perceived online is important and is determined by how formal or informal you want your online presence to be. This will largely depend on your target audience and what kind of language or tone they would expect. For instance, if you manage social media for a makeup brand which mainly aims to market their products towards younger demographics, then you may decide to use more informal language, fun emoticons and take part in viral trends. However, if you’re managing social media for engineering firm, you may decide to have more educational content and a more professional tone within your content.
2. DON’T use the same content across all social media networks:
Consistent branding and tone of voice across all social media networks is important. However, recycling the same content and using it across all of your brand’s social networks is bad practice. This is because each social media platform is different and as such will have different set of guidelines which are considered ‘best practice’. We suggest using original content and messaging for each platform but keeping a consistent theme throughout. For example, if you are promoting ‘50% off all Beauty lines’ then it could be a good idea to have different product images on your Instagram and Facebook with a slightly different caption.
3. DO capitalise on trends:
The best part about social media is that there is almost always a viral trend or conversation which could be relevant for your brand to join in on. It is important for all businesses to pay attention to trending content which appeals to the audience they’re trying to reach and to take part in it, if possible. Captalising on these trends is key and can help push your content to even more users than usual and prompt them to engage with it.
A good example of a brand capitalising on trends is the popular beauty brand – Fenty Beauty. As a makeup brand, the main aim of their social media strategy is to convince customers to purchase and try their products. A popular type of content on TikTok is tutorials. Fenty Beauty utilise TikTok to post makeup tutorials showcase new products and how they apply and wear throughout the day. This has proven to be an effective content strategy for the brand as they tend to see high levels of engagement and build up a lot of positivity around their products.
4. DON’T use poor spelling and grammar within your content:
Human error is normal. However, it is important to take precautions to avoid your brand putting out content or copy with grammar mistakes and spelling errors because it reduces your credibility and looks unprofessional. To avoid this, it is a good idea to create your social media updates offline first in a document or spreadsheet. That way, you are able to proofread them before posting online for your followers to see. There are numerous tools which could be helpful in automating this process and add that extra layer of protection. For example, Grammarly is a great content marketing tool because it also proofreads your copy but also allows you to set your writing goals based on the type of writing you do, making it a useful tool for copy.
5. DOset objectives:
Going viral on Instagram and TikTok is great for your brand. However, it is important you set out some key short term and long term objectives to understand what your business wants to achieve from your social media strategy. It is good to think ahead and be aware of what you want to do with the engagement you see from your followers.
For example, in terms of potential short term objectives for a clothing brand, you could be having a flash sale and as such, would want to focus on using social media to boost sales. In terms of longer term objectives, as part of your digital marketing strategy you may want to use social media to build up awareness and establish yourself as a credible brand with an engaging online presence.
6. DON’T excessively use Hashtags:
A common misconception about social media platforms, in particular Instagram, is that using a #hastag with each sentence will push your content out more. This could not be further from the truth. Excessive use of #Hashtags is one of the most unprofessional and irritating practices and its worth avoiding. Using appropriate hashtags connects your post to related posts but it should be used, within reason, for this purpose only. Instagram’s algorithm has changed over the years and posts with too many hashtags actually seem to be less favoured by the platform and by audiences.
This is where understanding each platform and what works is important. Research how many hashtags are appropriate to include in posts on different social media platforms and use this information to influence your decision. Opting for less but niche hashtags instead of several generic ones is that it will be more likely to help you reach your desired audience and will result in more exposure.
Conclusion:
To conclude, we hope this gave you some insight into 6 do’s and don’ts when using social media in digital marketing. Incorporating social media into your digital marketing strategy is key for a successful online presence and will help you boost this in a productive and effective way.
Pursuing a Digital Marketing Level 3 Apprenticeship would introduce you to the basics of using Social Media as part of a digital marketing strategy and also help you kick-start your career within the industry that is constantly growing.
More information on this apprenticeship can be found here. Alternatively, check out our range of useful articles and blog posts here to find a suitable Digital apprenticeship for you.
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A practical guide to creating a working social media strategy
Getting to work on a client’s social media gives you the chance to flex your creative muscles and can be one of the most exciting parts of being a digital marketing apprentice. However – without a clear plan in place, it can quickly go wrong and could cause more harm than good. If you’re wondering how to get started with creating a strategy that works, read on, as we take you through the most basic elements of a professional social media strategy.
1. Define your goals
What are you hoping to achieve with your social media posts? Engagement, following, email sign ups? Having a goal in mind as you create your content will help you communicate a clear message to your audience. If you’re working on behalf of a client, they might already have some goals they can share with you. Ultimately, social media makes up part of a businesses sales efforts and so should be trying to accomplish a goal either directly or indirectly.
2. Know your audience
Before you start posting, you need to know who you are trying to target. There’s no point in posting Love Island memes if you’re trying to sell life insurance to pensioners. You might have more than one target audience – these are known as your segments. In which case, you need to plan content that will resonate with each of these. This informs not just what you post in terms of content and tone – but where you do it. LinkedIn, for example, is best for reaching professionals. TikTok might be your best for Generation Z. Again, make sure there is a clear definition of who you or your client wants to reach.
3. Do your research
In two ways. Firstly, you need to understand the product or service you are promoting to the best of your ability. You will struggle to post genuine and engaging content if you have no idea what you’re talking about – and struggle even more to respond to any commenters! Secondly, you should take a look at what your biggest competitors are doing. In our experience, this is the best starting point for your own strategy. What do they post, when, and how is it working for them? This should inform what you then decide to post. Is there anything your competitors could be doing better, allowing you to fill in that gap in your own content? You might want to compile your findings to help you with the next step.
Social media is an important part of a digital marketers career.
4.Create some guidelines
It is best to write down in a document some clear guidelines for the content itself. The client might already have these in place – colour palettes, logos, and so on. You could even go a step further and create some ready-made templates for social media. This might make your actual content creation a lot quicker in future. When you’re doing this, you should keep the previous steps in mind, thinking about target audience and goals. Do this for all types of content – don’t forget the importance of blogs and articles, for example, for directing traffic to websites and creating content that can easily be shared across platforms.
5. Write your plan
This is the most important step, and is about you writing a detailed plan for content.
There are lots of free templates online or you can create your own. You should schedule ahead in blocks where you can, leaving some room for “reactive” content (responding to events that might happen spontaneously). At minimum, you want to define an exact post topic, a basic description, the platforms you want to post to and when. You can go a step further and define more details such as exact captions, links or images to be used. Depending on your client, this might be a two-way process. Planning in this way not only allows you to organise your own workload, but makes it easy to communicate your plans with a client.
6. Take advantage of the data
Plans are dynamic – they should be constantly updated based on the feedback you receive. Data comes in the form of client feedback – comments or direct messages, or if you want to get more technical, unsubscribe rates as an example. This can be positive or negative but can help you understand how people are reacting to your social media presence. Helpfully, most social media platforms also allow you to access actual statistics regarding individual posts or whole profiles – you should take time to review and understand the most important of these to know what content is doing well for you and what you can disregard. Then revise your plan based on this! And the cycle repeats.
You should now know everything you need to get started with a thorough and effective social media strategy. Understanding the main components of digital and social media strategies in this way isn’t only helpful in your job role – it is one of the core competencies you need to be able to demonstrate as part of the Level 3 digital marketing apprenticeship. Following the information laid out here, you should be able to meet that criteria. Found what you’ve read helpful? Why not read more helpful digital marketing tips and tricks over on our blog.
The need for digital marketing has never been greater! Companies are always on the lookout for the next employee who will help them become the most sought-after.
Most people just think of a digital marketer as someone who just manages social media or writes a couple of blogs. These are tasks a digital marketer does but the job involves much more. Dependent on the type of digital marketer you decide to be there are many great benefits to joining this industry. You’ve come to the right place, if you’re looking to get into this industry or if you’re curious about its benefits.
1. Graduate marketing salaries are higher than the national average
Digital marketing jobs tend to be well paid. The average starting salary for a digital marketing graduate is around the £24,000 – £26,000 mark. In the field of digital marketing, the demand consistently outweighs the supply. So, this average will only increase as you develop in your career.
2. Stand out from the crowd
Instead of doing a course or a degree in digital marketing, an apprenticeship gives you real hands-on experience. This will give you knowledge and experience you can’t learn in the classroom.
3. Progression
After completing a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, you can progress in more ways than you might think. In many cases, apprentices can receive promotions within their current employers or even be placed into higher-level apprenticeships. Having a qualification and work experience will make you more attractive to other employers if you decide to apply for high-level positions. The possibilities are endless when it comes to digital marketing, whether you want to be a digital marketing executive, manage a marketing team or open your own company.
4. Flexibility
People with a digital marketing career have a lot of flexibility in their work. Project deadlines are usually present in these kinds of jobs, so you can devote as many hours as you want to work. There is no need for digital marketers to work 9-5 as they can work from home, office or wherever they feel comfortable. Digital marketing careers include email marketing, referral marketing, content marketing, search engine marketing, influencer marketing, pay-per-click marketing, etc. For newcomers and those interested in pursuing a career in digital marketing, a digital marketing career offers a variety of options.
5. Number of roles
Another reason to choose a digital marketing career is that it provides numerous roles. The marketing strategies and techniques used in a digital marketing career vary according to the client’s needs and requirements. To add, another great benefit is once you’re in the digital marketing space it’s much easier to switch sectors, for example, moving from social media to programmatic advertising.
6. Constantly expanding
There is no doubt that digital marketing is an industry that is growing rapidly. In the last few decades, the internet has become an active component of people’s lives. A way of looking at it is that this is only the beginning of the internet. Businesses, blogs, websites, journals, and a lot more will continue to flourish as long as the internet is there. Digital marketing will continue to grow as long as there is the internet. It will allow as many people as possible who are passionate about marketing. Since digital marketing is such a vast industry, the number of digital marketers present isn’t even half of its potential.
Here is a link to a blog that includes the growth statistics surrounding digital marketing.
Conclusion
There is a lot of potentials for newcomers to invest in this industry, making it a good choice for those wanting to pursue careers in digital marketing.
If becoming a digital marketing apprentice is something that interests you, sign up for our newsletter to be notified of upcoming available opportunities.
Are you starting or currently undertaking a Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship? Unsure how the End-Point Assessment works? Look no further!
Overview
Once you have completed your training and passed your Level 3 Marketing Principles Certification, Level 3 Principles of Coding Certification and Google Analytics Individual Qualification, you are ready to start your End-Point Assessment (EPA).
The EPA takes place in the final few months of your apprenticeship, using four assessment methods:
Portfolio
Employer Reference
This will be an accumulation of everything you have accomplished in your job so far. A chance to show the knowledge and competency you have gained through the apprenticeship and how you apply this in your work. Your real work project overviews will include performance reports, customer service and feedback.
Your line manager will provide some information on how they think you are performing at work and the progression you have made. This will include how you apply your knowledge and behaviours whilst undertaking tasks within your role.
Synoptic Project
Interview
You will be given a pre-defined project set to show a selection of your knowledge, skills and behaviours. You will be given 4 days to complete this task. This is a chance to show you are consistent in your work and that you have an understanding of specific digital marketing areas that may not be included in your day-to-day role but you have learnt in the apprenticeship.
This is an opportunity to gather any other information or evidence to support your knowledge and competency shown in your Portfolio and Synoptic Project. This allows you to expand and define your work to the assessor, this will include your EPA work and workplace tasks.
The EPA gives the assessor a cumulative overview of your performance against the specified standards, allowing them to make a judgement on if you have met or exceeded the standards. Using a variety of assessment methods ensures that the assessment of your work is a reflection of your performance and the quality of the work you produce for your company using the skills and knowledge you have gained whilst undertaking this apprenticeship.
Grading and Results
Following the completion of your End Point Assessment, the grading will take place by an independent assessor. Who will accumulate your submitted work before the interview and will partially assess. The interview will allow the assessor to explore your portfolio and synoptic project in more detail, validate and test your knowledge. After the interview the assessor will come to a final conclusion for your grade. You will be awarded with a single grade of; Pass, Merit or Distinction.
The criteria that the assessment and grading is made from is the below 3 points:
The What: What you have shown you are able to do
The How: How your work has been carried out
The With Whom: Who you have worked with, the internal and external work relationships you have built
If you have met the minimum expected criteria you will be awarded a Pass. To receive a Merit your work must have a number of dimensions that shows you work significantly above the minimum criteria. For a Distinction grade, the quality of all your work must be significantly above the minimum criteria.
Summary
In conclusion, if you are thinking about undertaking a Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship or have already started, your EPA will happen in the end months of your apprenticeship once you have passed the required exams. You will be focusing on your knowledge, competency and behaviours, aiming to be significantly above the expected criteria to gain a Pass, Merit or Distinction. If you want to find out more information about the different stages of the Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, please take a look at the blogs section of Apprentice Tips.
This is a great apprenticeship to undertake, it provides you with all the skills and knowledge you need to excel in your role and career as long as you apply yourself. Please be mindful that each apprenticeship will be based upon how the company your work is ran, you may not always be placed in the department you wish for but you may have the option to rotate. Make sure to research which company and apprenticeship would work best for you. Good luck and enjoy!
Thinking of doing an Digital Marketing Apprenticeship and build a successful career? It is an excellent way to kickstart your career and a great opportunity filled with experiences and learnings which will develop your skills and expertise. In this era, businesses cannot be successful without marketing so this can be a perfect chance to help a business grow!Within a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, you will learn industry skills, apply them, and earn all at the same time. Does this sound good to you? If yes, keep reading this blog to find out more about how the apprenticeship is structured and how you will be assessed.
On-Programme Breakdown of Assessments in the Digital Marketing Apprenticeship
Throughout the apprenticeship you will take 3 core exams that will equip you with all the knowledge and skills you need to become a well rounded Digital Marketer.
Level 3 Digital Marketing assessments
Level 3 Principles of Coding:
Appreciation of logic
HTML/Java languages
Compatibility of code on different platforms
Components involved to make the web work
Level 3 Marketing Principles:
Basic marketing principles
The role of customer relationship marketing
How teams work effectively to deliver digital marketing campaigns and can deliver accordingly
Customer lifecycle
Main components of digital and social media strategies
Google Analytics Individual Qualification
What is Google Analytics and the importance
Understanding the Google Analytics interface
Creating and analysing three different type of reports (Audience, Acquisition, and Behaviour)
Basic campaign and conversion tracking
What is the End Point Assessment in the Digital Marketing Apprenticeship?
The 3 core aspects of the End Point Assessment
Summative Portfolio:
You will produce a portfolio which evidences your real-work projects that includes everything in the apprenticeship standard. The portfolio will be assessed as part of the end point assessment so it’s crucial to make sure you hit all the competencies! The aim of the portfolio is to showcase your very best work that you have done at work and show that you are a brilliant digital marketer in all aspects of marketing. Below are some examples of evidence you can include in your portfolio:
The employer reference forms a key part of the End Point Assessment. The intent of the employer reference is for your employer to support apprentices by validating the evidence that they have submitted. Employers will be asked to provide an overall evaluation for each area of the competencies whilst giving detail of how you meet the requirements for the apprenticeship standard.
Synoptic Project:
The synoptic project is a crucial part of the End Point Assessment, it is designed to assess apprentices of all the competencies in the apprenticeship standard which is irrespective of the workplace. The project will take four working days to complete in which you will be away from your day to day work and must be in a ‘controlled’ environment. This typically means doing the project in a quiet room or a dedicated workstation where you are away from the normal place of work.
Professional Interview:
The interview is the last thing to complete in your End Point Assessment. It is a structured professional discussion between you and the independent assessor and a last chance to show them your specialities within Digital Marketing. The interview will be focused on your portfolio, the synoptic project, as well as referencing the employer reference too. During the discussion, the assessor will ask you various questions about everything you have submitted, explore aspects of your work in further detail, and validate your quality of work you have produced.
Results:
The grading process takes place at the end of your End Point Assessment after everything is completed. The output is a single grade; Pass, Merit, or Distinction. The grading decision is made after the interview and is typically made on the basis of the totality of the evidence presented.
Conclusion
Digital Marketing is an incredibly varied field to work in as there are so many aspects to explore. You will have an excellent opportunity to really find out what sparks your interest and develop this into a speciality. The number of different areas you can work in is immense. Be sure to do your research on the company as the apprenticeship will be based on what the company does. For more details on how the apprenticeship works, take a look at the other blogs!
If you are currently on an apprenticeship program that is concluding,
then you may have heard the term EPA (End Point Assessment) which is the End Point
Assessment and takes place at the end of the apprentice program. After an
apprenticeship has completed 3 exams in Principles of coding, Marketing principles
and the Google Analytics individual qualification., the EPA will be the next
step.
The EPA is the final stage in an apprentice’s journey before
a grade is awarded. It consists of a:
Portfolio
A project conducted away from the workplace
Employer reference
Interview
Each of the above will be assessed by an independent assessor and then award the apprentice with a pass, merit, or distinction grade. Using different assessment standards, the apprentice is assessed on the quality of work, the application of skills, knowledge and behaviours specified in the standards.
Even though the EPA sounds daunting the apprentice would have
already acquired skills without even releasing it such as:
Managing, planning, specifying, leading, and reporting on digital marketing projects.
Applying a marketing mix to meet customers’ expectations.
Implementing content for the different audiences, and online channels and creating clear CTA and user’s journey
Applying the 4 marketing principles:
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Interpreting, communicating, and briefing internal and external stakeholders on digital business requirements.
An understanding of the principles of coding
Managing and optimising key channels and content within a digital marketing plan.
What are the assessment methods?
The 4 elements of the EPA in more detail.
Summative Portfolio
A collection of work that includes evidence of the
knowledge, competence, and behaviour of the apprentice. Competencies that could
be included within the portfolio are written communication, research, technologies,
data, and customer service.
Synoptic Project
This project is like the other projects that the apprentices
would have completed within their duration of being an apprentice., but this
will take place away from the workplace. This project will also not be related to the apprentice’s
current place of employment and will take place over 5 days. But will include previous
competencies that they should be familiar with.
Employer Reference
A statement shows how the apprentice has demonstrated technical competencies required from the apprenticeship standard within their day-to-day role. Including specific details of what the apprentice does, how they do it and whom they did it with, where this is applicable.
Interview
The final part of the assessment will be an interview
conducted by an independent assessor. Talking points will include what
and how an apprentice has done and how they have done it. The independent assessor will also have marked
the portfolio and the synoptic project.
The interview will cover what an apprentice has:
submitted in the
portfolio
produced in the synoptic
project
cover the
standard of their work, as evidenced in the portfolio and the project
approached the
work submitted in the portfolio and the project
After the interview, the grading choice will
be given. An EPA is the final hurdle for an apprentice and once completed the
apprentice will then receive a certificate to confirm the official,
industry-recognised apprenticeship qualification.
What next?
What next?
Once
you have finished your current apprenticeship you may be left wondering what now?
Well,
you can go on to further study digital marketing by completing different levels
of apprenticeship such as:
If
you would like to learn more about Digital Marketing, check out our other
articles here.
Duration:
15 months
Level
6 – Marketing Manager Apprenticeship
Roles:
Digital Marketing Executive, Marketing & Communications Executive, Social
Media Manager, SEO Specialist, Marketing Campaign Manager, Executive Content
Creator, Digital Marketing Account Manager, Social Media Specialist, Digital
Marketing Lead
Duration:
36 months
If you would like to learn more about Digital Marketing, check out our other articles here. or you can find more information here or get in touch by contacting us via LinkedIn or Twitter.
If you’re a digital marketing apprentice you may want to add video content to your skills to use! We are going to cover why video content is going to be the future of marketing and how you can start to apply it to your work as a level 3 digital marketing apprentice!
Why Video Content Is Key As a Digital Marketing Apprentice
In todays world video content is really making its stand, Since 2018 the amount of hours spent online watching video content has almost doubled, going from 10.5hrs to 19hrs per week! This obviously opens a huge opportunity for marketers to really capture some of this audience by taking their products and services and putting it into a digital watchable format that can be found across multiple platforms.
How Can Video Content Benefit a Digital Marketing Apprentice?
As a digital marketing apprentice you really need to show you knowledge with tools that you would use for marketing. This may consist of a blog that explains how to use something you sell, Lets say you sell smart plugs that connect to your Wi-Fi and let you set on and off schedules and be able to toggle the plug on and off remotely from your mobile. To explain a setup in a blog you would have to write up essentially a instruction manual but with more detail that may end up being around 2000 words and has taken you a 5 hours to produce. If you was to create a video step-by-step guide which by the way 96% of people have reported watching this would not only be more in detail and informative but would take a lot less time to produce a 2 minute explainer video. So you have reduced your production time by say 50% and got it down to 2.5 hours, not only is this a huge benefit to you and your company because you’re now 50% more productive! But the person viewing doesn’t have to sit and read a 2000 word blog where they have to keep going back and back to try and understand, They can visually watch and take all the steps with you.
Where To Use Video Content
Video content has become popular over all platforms but your main focus would be: Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, I’m going to show you how to cater for each individual channel.
Instagram: This is a platform where you can place any kind of video whether its infographics, ads or explainer videos. However you have to remember your target audience, there’s no harm in testing what your audience likes and they can also adapt to what you post. Instagram should really be syncing up with your knowledge as a digital marketing apprentice and be taking advantage of a strong selection of hashtags with high and low usage to get the best coverage. People will sit for hours a day scrolling through Instagram so if you can showcase your product in use for 20-30 seconds and get people to tag your company in their posts you’re well on your way to brining in a large audience to your page.
YouTube: YouTube is going to be the hub of your content, People that go here should be able to see an extensive list of tutorials and tips and tricks and some trouble shooting. There is almost no limitations on YouTube for content length and being able to get auto generated captions for those that may be hard of hearing is a crucial feature for anyone posting video content in 2022!
Facebook: Almost the same as Instagram content wise but unfortunately you don’t get to reap the benefits of the hashtags the same as Instagram. Facebook will be a more connecting platform as you may post a video and people who are interested are more likely to tag friends and family to show them. You would also benefit from tutorials on Facebook as they can be longer than 1 minute unlike Instagram.
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Social media is at the forefront of peoples minds today with approximately 3.78 billion social media users worldwide in 2021. With so many users worldwide, if you’re not using social media in marketing then you absolutely should be! There’s an array of opportunities for marketing on each social media platform, whether you’re a B2C or B2B. The marketing sector has evolved over the years, especially with the likes of the pandemic pushing tech innovations to surface even faster than before. But what does this mean?
As more of us are working from home, using these tech devices, the marketing sector has had to adapt to these changes, pushing advertisements in other places other than the traditional methods. As an Apprentice Digital Marketer, you will learn the benefits of social media in marketing and how to curate social media campaigns subject to the Apprenticeship Standards.
However for now, we will run through 3 major reasons why you need social media in marketing…
The world is moving to Digital, and so is Marketing
The world is becoming more digital and self serve by the day, with innovations such as Amazon Alexa popping up. However, the 2020 Covid Pandemic had heavily increased the pace of Digital innovation.
Traditional marketing is still existing in the likes of radio, newspapers and billboards however, many sources are moving online. Newspapers and magazines have moved forward with the times and now operate online. They even have their own social media accounts where their audience can comment and re-share articles, which in term is getting lots of engagement and more views than traditional alone.
By being online this opens many more doors to obtaining customer data and behaviours, creating mailing lists, gaining subscriptions and much more than just paper alone: the possibilities are endless!
Social Media Advertising is noticed much more, and considerably cheaper
Although we still see traditional marketing around, it’s something we have all become accustomed to seeing and not being interested. Our mobile devices however, are getting much more screen time, therefore much more attention.
“In 2020, digital advertising spending in the United Kingdom (UK) amounted to 16.47 billion British pounds” – Statista.com
Additionally, social media advertising can be much cheaper than traditional. Some posts across platforms are as cheap as a few pounds with a much higher exposure. Generally, there is a much higher ROI with paid ads.
There are huge benefits to social media advertising, such as:
Targeting audiences at granular levels including demographics, behaviours, locations, interests etc.
Gaining back data on audiences to cater advertisements to them
Analytics on advertisements being so precise you can see how effective your ads are
Revising whilst they are active to gain the highest benefits from your ads
There are so many different formats of advertisements apart from the standard image
The rise of short video content – taking the web by storm
In 2021, the most downloaded app is of course, TikTok.
Unless you have been living under a rock the past year, everybody has heard of the video based app taking over the online world. But what does this have to do with social media in marketing?
Many social media platforms are turning to short video based content to follow in TikTok’s footsteps – as it’s success is very clear. What people want to see has evolved over time, and short videos show no signs of slowing down. The fact that TikTok has been the most downloaded app of the year, shows where people are visiting most. So, if you’re not creating this type of content and using it for advertising, you’re most definitely missing out on the 1 billion users alone on TikTok…
Although video content may seem harder to do, is it no doubt more fun to take part in rather than uploading a plain infographic. With the use of trending sounds combined with user participation – short video is so engaging that even the likes of huge corporations such as Innocent Drinks & Ryan Air are getting involved in the fun.
Read here to stay up to date with social media trends.
Conclusion
In short, social media in marketing today is a must. The audience on each platform is so vast there is no excuse NOT to include social media in your marketing plan! Talking of social media…
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Learn more about our favourite marketing tool Canva, and how it can help you shine as a Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice.
Like many occupations, Digital marketing is, well… Digital. We’re almost certain you’ve seen a plethora of advertisements for various task management services, designed to streamline workflow within a digital environment. Asana, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet are examples of these services. These platforms excel at what they do due to the need of a stable method of communication and task management within a digital organisation.
It’s safe to say, demand for these platforms has increased dramatically in the past 15 months, with the current times having a huge effect on everyone’s working situation. Infact, Microsoft teams alone saw a 50% increase in daily users in the first 6 months of the global pandemic, most likely due to the large percentage of employees working remotely.
Using Canva As A Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprentice
With over 30 million active monthly users, Canva is a well established, industry standard web tool primarily used for content creation and digital marketing strategies. It’s been made even more accessible recently with the addition of a downloadable app version I can access from my desktop and mobile device.
Used to create social media graphics, presentations, printable documents, animated and other visual content, Canva offers users a platform for marketers to create digital content easily with in-built assistance.
Because of its unrivalled ease of use and low stress, this is a perfect tool for learners, as well as professionals.
What Is Canva Pro?
“It is essential to have good tools, but it also essential that the tools are used in the right way” – Wallace D. Wattles
Digital tools are absolutely vital for a level 3 digital marketing apprentice, and professionals. One of the most popular has unquestionably been Canva Pro, a digital marketing tool used by new and established businesses as an alternative to heavy, expensive software with a much higher skill ceiling.
Canva Pro is the paid-subscription version of Canva, which brings a number of additions at a reasonable price of £99 per year, including:
75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics
420,000+ free templates with new designs daily
Create 1 Brand Kit and upload your own fonts and logos
Unlimited use of Background Remover
Resize designs infinitely with Magic Resize
Save designs as templates for your team to use
100GB of cloud storage
Schedule social media content to 7 platforms
Top 5 Uses For Canva Pro
75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics
Finding the right stock photo for a project can be a time consuming and sometimes pricey investment, however with Canva Pro’s large bank of stock images, you’ll be able to find the perfect image, 100% of the time. By entering simple keywords into the search bar, you can find exactly what you’re looking for all in one location.
Unlimited use of Background Remover
Want to be able to remove an entire background from an image? Well Canva gives you the option to do that with 1 click…pretty good right? Well Canva Pro removes the limit cap on this function, allowing you to remove as many backgrounds as I want!
Upload your own fonts
A disadvantage about the regular Canva compared to Canva Pro, is the inability to upload user fonts. This can be particularly problematic when a client has specifically requested a font for a piece of marketing, ruling Canva out of the question as a resource tool. Canva Pro removes this issue by allowing users to create a Brand Kit, adding logos and fonts to the application without restriction.
Instagram Stories
With 1 billion monthly Instagram users and over 500 million daily story users, engagement has never been more important on the platform. With the sheer amount of traffic, incorporating stories into your strategy is a great way to advertise to consumers, and take up all that screen space. Stories aren’t the easiest thing to design, that’s where Canva comes in. With tons of story templates you’ll be able to harness this digital tool to save me time, and create relevant content.
Content Planner
Exclusive to Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise, introduced in 2021 is the content planner feature. If you’re familiar with content planners such as Buffer and Hootsuite, then this feature needs no explanation. However if you’re not familiar, we will provide an explanation here at ApprenticeTips.
This feature turns Canva from a tool which focuses on content curation, into a platform capable of publishing content directly to social media accounts from the application. By simply linking an account to the right project folder, with a few simple clicks we can add images to a calendar, picking and choosing the dates and times for our freshly created content to be published out to the world wide web.
Conclusion
If you’re an aspiring or professional digital marketer, I advise this tool over many of the others. It combines versatility with ease of use, removing the stigma that good visual content can’t be achieved without heavy duty software. While Canva is a free to use application, the amount of assists and benefits the Pro Subscription brings will certainly help you shine as an apprentice!
To learn more about the Level 3 Digtial Marketing Apprentice course in its entirety, click this link.
To discover more about Canva Pro, you can visit the website here.
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