In digital marketing, everything is changing and growing – and fast! Ideas that form the centre of your work today could be different tomorrow and if you’re not agile enough to grow with it, you die.

As a business we’ve got to stay on top of these industry changes and ensure that all our people are equipped with the best skills and information to do the best job.

To do this, we have a training and development program (customised for every person) that aims to upskill and furnish us with the tools we need to kick ass.

How We Do Learning:

1. Learning Programs

At the beginning of each year, each member of the team is assigned a learning program that outlines the skills and courses they’ll be working through in the months to come. This includes time for general blog reading and research, as well as defined courses, conferences and certifications.

The nature and overall direction of these programs are based on a number of factors, including:

a) Personal preferences

b) Current role in the company / future trajectory

c) Personal areas of strength and weakness

To give you an idea of what we get up to, here’s a small snapshot of some of the courses we’re involved in:

• • Content Marketing Mastery

 

• • Customer Value Optimisation

 

• • Link Building Expert Training Course

 

• • Market Motive Web Analytics

 

• • Social Media Community Mastery

 

• Paid Search Advanced Training

Every Friday we are then given 3 hrs of the day to do our reading and work towards achieving our qualification. As soon as we’re done with one, we’re on to the next one!

2. Conferences

Every year, members of the team are sent around the world to acquire new knowledge from the biggest and baddest names in SEO and digital marketing.

We find these conferences invaluable, not only because they equip us with in-depth knowledge, but also because they give us the chance to meet and chat to people from agencies around the world, and learn how they do things differently.

Attending conferences is one of the major perks afforded to CleverClicks employees; here’s a list to some of the most exciting ones we’ve attended recently:

• • PubCon, Las Vegas, NV, USA

 

• • Inbound, Boston, MA, USA

 

• • SMX Sydney & Melbourne, AUS

 

• • MozCon, Seattle, WA, USA

 

• Unbounce CTAconf, Vancouver, Canada

3. Blog Reading

As mentioned above, blog reading forms a major part of our learning as it gives us up-to-the-minute information on budding trends and industry news.

Our blog reading habits are encouraged at CleverClicks, and in addition to the chunk we do on Fridays (more on that below), we also try to do a little every day.

As a team, we use Slack for our daily communications and we even have a dedicated ‘Readings’ channel in which we post and share their favourite news pieces or articles with the rest of the team.

Here are a select few of our favourite blogs by category:

SEO:

• • https://searchenginewatch.com/

 

• • https://searchengineland.com/

 

• • https://blog.google/

 

• • https://www.seroundtable.com/

 

• https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Content:

• • https://www.copyblogger.com/

 

• • https://blog.hubspot.com/

 

• https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/

Social Media:

• • https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/blog/

 

• • https://blog.hootsuite.com/

 

• https://blog.bufferapp.com/

Digital Marketing:

• • https://moz.com/blog

 

• • https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/

 

• • https://blog.hubspot.com/

 

• https://blog.crazyegg.com/

4. The ‘1 Thing’

Every Friday, every member of the team enters into a battle against their team mates for the coveted title of 1 Thing King.

To win this title, your mission is to find the juiciest piece of industry-related news and drop it into our ‘1 Thing’ Slack channel. You’ll have to come to come armed with an elevator pitch for you post, outlining:

1. 1. Why should people care

 

1. 1. How it affects our clients

 

1. Why it’s the most important news of the week

Once everyone has brought forward and pitched their news, we have a vote, and the winner of the 1 Thing King title is taken out to lunch by our CEO. We also write a post on it for our 1 Thing blog.

Here’s a random sample of a week’s contenders:

• • Google Tests “Back to Top” in Mobile Search Results

 

• • Google Home turns voice answers into clickable links

 

• • Worldwide mobile internet use surpasses desktop for the first time ever

 

• • Facebook’s redesigned business Pages roll out to all

 

• Google Testing Icons on Mobile Sitelinks

This little ritual is not only fun, but it also keeps us up-to-date and creates a platform for the biggest stories in digital marketing to be discussed. Every week we’ve have a variety of different entries (except in the week that Penguin 4.0 was launched) and everyone has their own unique set of skills and perspective which they apply to the piece. It also sparks some healthy competition and debate!

In an industry that’s moving and changing so quickly these little learning rituals really help to keep us ahead of the curve. Not only does each individual benefit from being able to grow and expand their skill set, but the company benefits as well. Our Director’s favourite quote sums it up rather well:

CFO: What happens if we invest in developing people and they leave?

CEO: What if we don’t and they stay?

 

 

 

Tags: digital marketer, digital marketing, digital marketing conferences, digital marketing courses, search engine optimisation, SEO, social media