Let's say you spent about 46,000 dollars on a marketing degree, hoping to graduate with
relevant marketing skills and that number, can go upwards of hundreds of thousands of
dollars depending on which college, if you choose to go for an MBA etc. you've worked
for months to earn that degree, but it'll pay off in a career right, all that debt will
pay off when you get one of those high paying marketing jobs. Okay, now picture this, you
have your dream job at that marketing agency you've been dreaming of, you're one of the
well-paid marketing strategists, for your first project your boss asks you to sit down
with John from purple cereal, one of their clients and build his marketing plan.
So, you have your client meeting and turns out, John from purple cereal wants a full-blown
content marketing strategy, his buddy Joe runs a similar brand and all of his leads
clients conversions happen online, on his website, his traffic is through the roof and
sales are through the roof too, John wants to replicate this with purple cereal and now
you're responsible for the entire content marketing strategy. You have to come up with
a content budget, you have to plan and map out an editorial calendar, you have to create
an audience persona, you have to set content ROI, you have to manage expectations and oversee
the production of content. The first project a content calendar with
15 topics is due next week, would you know how to answer John, would your marketing degree
mean that you have the skills and knowledge it takes to put a content marketing plan that
works into place. From the hundreds of conversations I have with graduates per month, chances are
slim to none sadly, but don't lose hope just yet, in today's video we'll talk about how
to build real marketing skills that are relevant today and in the future. I�ve been a full-time
content marketer for almost a decade, back in 2017, five years after working in this
industry full-time, a client called me and said hey Julia, can you come to my office
and teach my people your skills and instead of just teaching five people, these profitable
content marketing skills, I sat down and created an entire course, called the comment strategy
and marketing course. This is my flagship training program, I structured
the course so that at every point my students are building the parts of a brand content
strategy, so you're learning how to and then you're developing an audience persona, you're
learning how watching me build an editorial calendar and you're building one too, you're
watching me find SEO keywords, put together a great list for any brand in any industry
and then you're doing it too and by the end of the course, you will have a working content
strategy on your hands, you simply pick the brand a niche to develop one for and then
I teach you every step. If this is something you need, go check out
my course now at comicstrategycourse.com/course, the link is somewhere around here, you get
a lifetime seat access to all of my updates and you even get mentorship with me. Okay,
so back to our topic of relevant marketing skills, so back in 2011, I was going to college
for a very unrelated degree, a medical degree, turns out I had no passion for that industry,
I think I would have made a terrible nerve. So, I dropped out of college and I taught
myself relevant content marketing and writing skills, within three months after dropping
out of college and learning these skills myself, I started a brand called express writers and
nearly a decade later, here we are completing 20,000 projects with 90 people on staff.
Back when I started, I literally coded my website myself, I learned every skill, I wore
all the hats, I only had 75 dollars in my savings, so I believe anyone can achieve this
and get to a point where they have market ready, relevant marketing skills. So, let's
talk about two methods you can use, the industry of content marketing itself, is worth over
400 billion dollars in this decade, so this is a huge opportunity, if you want to break
into the market, learn skills and use them and get paid, so if you want to skip that
expensive marketing degree and go straight to a place of learning relevant skills, there
are two things I recommend; number one, commit to weekly reading or listening, that can be
listening to audible, listening to podcasts, listening to shows and then secondly, commit
to taking notes as you're reading, that's the best way to instill a skill, if you're
learning it through a book, take notes and write down what you're learning.
Well, I have a list of those for you, it's in the YouTube description, so go look for
that link and download that list, it's pretty comprehensive, so you'll see a list of authors,
books, shows and you can literally start listening and learning now, there are so many amazing
marketing experts that have just dedicated themselves to educating, I�m not the only
one, so there really is a wealth of resources out there that can teach you even more relevant
marketing skills than a college degree and the way to bridge the gap from knowledge to
skills is to start doing, start creating content. So, as you begin to learn from these books,
authors, educators, start writing content, commit to creating something every week or
if you can every day and it doesn't have to be long, for example a tweet is only a few
sentences, so if you tweet, if you write a LinkedIn post, if you write an organic Facebook
page post, if you write an Instagram caption, maybe you write an email headline, a blog
outline, all of that counts. The best marketing experts are the doers and
practice truly does make perfect, even experts with decades of experience in the industry
are still users and viewers today, it's how you refine and continue to sharpen your skill
sets as a marketer between reading, listening, watching, taking notes and then writing creating
content yourself, practicing, you will already begin to sharpen and retain relevant marketing
skills. That's it for today's video, don't forget
to check out my comic strategy course, if you're interested in enrolling in a course
that teaches you every step of building a brand content strategy at comicstrategycourse.com/course
and check the YouTube description for that resource we mentioned, the top authors, shows,
books, podcasts that I recommend listening to, to hone your skills; and as always, don't
forget to hit that subscribe button on YouTube and I hope to see you around.