Digital marketing is the promotion of businesses, products, and services through digital media, such as the internet, digital display advertising, and mobile phones. As digital technology continues to grow, there is more opportunity than ever before to have a rewarding and lucrative career in the industry. If you feel these career path roles are one for you, here is a guide to some of them available in digital marketing.
Social Media Manager
This role involves creating content to be delivered across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and is a crucial point of interaction and communication with people who are existing customers as well as future customers.
Most of the population now use some form of social media, so powerful social media content is a crucial way to influence others to take action.
Operations Manager
An operations manager is a vital role in any business, including digital marketing. It is their job to ensure the smooth running and management of business processes, including staff management, hiring talented employees, and finding practical solutions to problems that hinder business progression.
It is a skilled role, and a good entry point to employment is furthering your education and understanding of the position, such as undertaking one of the available online operation management degrees.
Digital Content
Writer or Planner
A digital
content writer creates pages for the web, paying close attention to the action
that they want a reader to take. It could be to subscribe to an email list, to
share the content with friends, or to make a purchase.
A digital
content planner works out what sort of content should be created and published.
To make an effective content strategy, planners will be aware of important
dates and events in their industry, trending topics, and also know the target
market well.
Email Marketer
Writing marketing emails that have a good open rate and subscriber interaction is a skill. It involves creating irresistible subject lines and content that provides value to the reader so that it influences them to take the desired action.
You can learn the basics of email marketing as part of a larger marketing course, or look for specific courses that hone in on this useful skill.
SEO Manager
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and the aim of the role is to get web pages to rank highly on a list of search results. To do this, an SEO manager will employ various techniques, such as finding the right keywords and phrases to use within a block of text, using keywords in image descriptions and titles, and applying the correct tags to embedded links.
Other strategies to improve SEO include placing links on higher ranking websites, and this can be done using the guest posting and creating great content that gets shared.
Digital
marketing careers are diverse and are often fun. Thanks to the booming digital industry,
there is no shortage of jobs. Once you have the basics of digital marketing,
either through a course or from entry-level employment, you have the
opportunity to specialize in an aspect that you enjoy the most.
After spending years in the workforce and earning your position, it can be hard to even consider leaving it all behind for something new. However, there are plenty of reasons you might feel the need to switch careers: you’ve realized what you’re truly passionate about; you don’t see a future for yourself in your current career path; you want to experience something entirely fresh and different.
Can you change? Of course, you can. Everybody changes every day. But how versatile, agile, and quickly can you adapt yourself and your organization to stay relevant in today’s society?
Organizations are always evolving. What’s different now, is that we set a new speed record of change on a daily basis. Technology gives us unprecedented possibilities. And this sea of opportunities is pushing the traditional bureaucratic, controlled and hierarchical organization into an identity crisis.
Whatever your reasons, there are a few ways to get started on changing career path that will help you set off on the right foot. Here are some tips on beginning your journey.
Research Roles
Before writing your boss a resignation letter, you need to know what you’re getting into once you leave your current job. Go online, and find out what types of roles there are in the new field you hope to join. Carefully read the job descriptions, salary ranges, and necessary qualifications so you are fully aware of what changes you need to make in order to switch paths.
Do you need a few years’ experience or volunteering? Will the hours be very different from what you’re used to? It’s important to know what’s out there not only so you can make the best choice but also to warn you of details pertaining to the new career path that you may have been unaware of previously.
Gain
Qualifications
Once you have a rough idea of the kind of role you’d like to pursue, compare the necessary qualifications for it to the ones you already possess. Don’t be put off if you discover that your new career means having to learn new skills.
If you need to keep your current job until you’re secured in your new career, you can acquire the necessary qualifications by attending Walsh University Online. This way you will be more prepared when you finally switch roles, and you won’t have sacrificed your earnings.
Network
Many job opportunities come about not just from online postings but from personal connections to people in the field. Find nearby networking events to make connections with people who know more about the career path you’re hoping to enter.
Even if you don’t meet anyone directly linked to a role you seek, having a broader range of acquaintances who are willing to point you in the right direction is never a bad thing. Outside of formally networking, let your friends and family know about your ambitions to change careers.
You’d be surprised how many opportunities find their way back to you through the most unexpected routes.
Don’t Burn Bridges
It can be tempting to mentally check out of your current job while daydreaming about your future career, but resist the urge. Even if you’re hoping to enter a wildly different field, a good reference from your current employer is still valuable.
Continue to work hard and impress your colleagues right up until your last minute at the company. You may wish to come back to your job at a later date and doing this will be much harder if you inconvenience your boss before leaving. You can never have too much support when embarking on a new career path.
A family-run Publix Grocery Store is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, aren’t they? They might be the formula for helping to win the war on employee engagement and build an excellent Publix culture backbone.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. An awesome quote by Maya Angelou.
Creative employees do remarkable work because they seek to complete something, to heal something, to change something for the better. To move from where they are now to a more centered, more complete place. You don’t get creative once everything is okay. In fact, we are creative because everything isn’t okay (yet).
According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues, and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”.
Only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. That fact is surprising to us. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People are actively engaged and help move the organization forward.
88% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the disengaged. 72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged.
Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond with the organization that employs them. They are people demonstrating a willingness to recommend the organization to others and commit time and effort to help the team succeed.
People are motivated by intrinsic factors. These are personal growth, working to a common purpose, and being part of a larger process. They are not focused on extrinsic factors.
Passing through Publix’s sliding doors to escape the blistering Merritt Island, Fla. heat is a welcome relief, but it isn’t just the air-conditioning that jumps out at you. As you walk the aisles, bag boys and clerks in sage-green shirts and black aprons routinely smile and ask questions: “How are you today? Can we help you with anything?”
If a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. What happens is an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do.
At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot.
What engages employees?
Publix grocery store … so what engages its employees?
The drivers differ regionally as well as person to person, but employee engagement is largely about social connections happening within the organization.
But there are factors unique to certain winning businesses have in common. Let’s examine those that make Publix a winner in employee engagement:
Employee-owned business
Publix is the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers, and bakers into the company’s largest corporate shareholders.
All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation.)
Publix employees (and former employees) are the controlling shareholders, with an 80% stake, worth $16.6 billion. Surprisingly none of them belongs to a union.
The Publix compensation grants shares of a store-specific bonus pool every 13 weeks. The exact amount varies, but typically 20% of quarterly profits go into that larger pool; 20% of the pool is then paid out in cash to the store’s employees.
When competition opens up across the street and sales are impacted. Employees are incented to make sure they’re doing everything they can to serve that customer to the best of their ability.
Commitment to open, honest communication
Communication is core to the Publix culture and employee engagement. Employees understand the why behind their jobs – what they’re expected to achieve and how it impacts the relationships with its customer.
Collaboration is highly valued, and Publix teams communicate to get projects accomplished. They strive to learn what is working well in other stores.
Employees are encouraged to develop professional goals and connect with colleagues, contributing to growth in all jobs. This demonstrates to all employees there’s a long-term future.
Publix almost exclusively promotes from within, and every store displays advancement charts showing the path each employee can take to become a manager. Fifty-eight thousand of the company’s 159,000 employees have officially registered their interest in advancement.
Associates rotate through various divisions, from grocery to real estate to distribution. This gives them a broad sense of business. A former cake decorator in a store bakery is now in charge of all strategy for its bakeries. A distribution center manager overseeing 800 associates got his start unloading railcars. 34,000 employees have more than ten years of tenure.
Publix grocery store … branding with organization stories
Publix has an excellent reputation for outstanding employment branding. Being fast, fun, and friendly is part of Publix employees’ DNA. It creates an image of an innovative and fun place to work.
A strong employment brand image offers clarity on the Publix culture and what it stands for. This ensures the right people are attracted to the organization and the wrong people apply elsewhere.
The right engagement practices ensure understanding the most meaningful motivators to a company’s employees.
Committing to an intentional culture like Publix, one that’s open, transparent, and enables employees to thrive is a very smart investment. Your employees are your business. The better they are, the better your business.
The bottom line
When considering why employee engagement has become a key differentiator, the answer is right in our faces: We all have busy lives; we’re all pulled in multiple directions all day long. Given an alternative, does anyone want less engagement or to spend more time on their to-do list?
This idea isn’t really new. Corner markets and convenience stores aren’t just competing with the big-box superstores, they flourish. Why? The reason is in their names: They’re right where their customers are, and they’re convenient. They don’t usually have lines, and they don’t have aisles and aisles of choices to sift through.
Publix gets it and as a result, is winning the war of employee engagement.
If you are looking for additional resources in customer engagement, one of my favorite experts is Bill Quiseng. You’ll find lots of good stories and examples tolearn from his blog.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Influence Consumer Behavior Through Personalization Strategies
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
