- Rani Tria Anggiani
What are The Skills of a Digital Marketing intern? 5 Top Skills You Need to Master Now
If being a digital marketer is something that is constantly crossing your mind, then great! Digital marketing is one of the most sought-after jobs especially during a time like this. Read on to find out the top skills you need to master to be a top digital marketer!
So I probably didn't mention much about how I make a living in my previous articles, but I have a full-time job and a couple of side jobs as a digital marketer, also, I have 6 years of experience on the job, so I guess I can give one or two tips for you who want to start on becoming a good digital marketer. For fresh graduates, you have to start somewhere right? Maybe you can start by becoming a digital marketing intern! Don't ever feel afraid of the word "intern" maybe you are afraid of how the workload will be a burden, or little penny you get from doing to work (you might spend more of your money on transportations and meals than your intern salary) but I can guarantee you the amount of knowledge and connection you get from doing the internship is far more valuable than the salary. So think about the internship as an investment! For you who also want to shift your career into digital marketing, don't hesitate to start becoming a digital marketing intern too!
In this article, I will reveal to you the top 5 skills that you can obtain from being a digital marketing intern or skills that you need to master to become a good digital marketer!
1. Copywriting
One of the key aspects of being a digital marketer, or any other marketer really, is the ability to articulate what the company has to offer into well-written different wordings that can touch different layers of the target audience. Copywriting is very important as it is being used in almost every aspect of digital marketing platform touchpoints. From user flow, advertisement text and title, content marketing, hashtags, captions, branding, PR, and many other things. Strong copywriting can help your business connect easily with your customer and eventually will be a base for a community building that will tie up the loyal customer that has the same value as your business. Don't worry if you feel you haven't got this skill yet, copywriting is one of those skills where you can be an expert just by doing a constant exercise and read many references that can be your ideas in arranging words into a narrative.
I suggest you practice your copywriting skill by doing what you usually do every day, for example, writing caption into your Instagram post, writing the message to your loved ones, or simply make a note every time you found interesting advertisement copy or new phrases that can give you new ideas on creating a good copywriting. Being a copywriter means you also have to get used to reading news articles because sometimes, this is where you can get ideas on killer headlines, another thing is every time you watch a movie, pay attention to how the dialogue executed between the characters and how it flows to unwrapped the whole story of the film. You can adapt the same technique in making your own content marketing story.
2. Data analysis & research
I have to tell you upfront that being a digital marketing, means, you also have to get familiar with numbers and data. Digital marketing is all about measurement because unlike traditional media like billboards and radio, digital marketing media has its dashboard contain all the data that is recorded every second. We can read the result of our work instantly straight from the dashboard, and analyze it right away without having to wait any time longer. You might start your typical day with you reading all the statistics and analyzing what works and what not yesterday. The changes in digital marketing algorithms are very rapid so I recommend you to subscribe to media like Neil Patel or Search Engine Journal to get the latest update of the digital marketing world. When it comes to research, it also means you have to keep aware of what your competitor is doing and always have that social listening tool on, and what is more important, come up with the short term and long term strategy to tackle those competitors, based on data.
3. Creative design
The unique thing about being a digital marketing is you have to possess top skills that require both your left and right brain to work. Not only do you have to get familiar with data and numbers, but you also have to have that sense of creativity, especially when it comes to designing your digital marketing assets. You don't have to worry though, even though you are not a good photographer or not a good illustrator, at least you know the basics of it so you will understand and know how to collaborate with professional artists and graphic designers. This one is pretty crucial, as you are the bridge between a business and the creative departments. Understanding both the business and the creative execution will help you deliver the business goals more precisely. You can read more here about how you can make the ultimate creative brief that can boost your marketing asset production to the next level of quality.
4. Project management
what is project management? According to the project management association, Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge, and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Why project management skill is one of the important skills that a digital marketing intern has to possess? It is because your daily task will consist of a large number of big and small projects. As you are working in a fast-paced environment, everything has to be timely and you have to be ready for all momentum with quick execution. Other than momentum projects, you will be given a target to grow the digital marketing assets in the long run (for example growing community-based, branding, etc). With that amount of big responsibility and fraction of short-term goals, you need to organize your priority so not one thing will be left behind. I suggest you try to adapt some of the scrum methods that are used by many product managers in startup companies. Also, you might want to try several project management tools such as Asana, Slack, Trello, or Monday.com.
5. Proposal Making
As I mentioned before, digital marketing is a job that consists of small projects, while not ignoring big projects every 1-2 months. These projects, of course, must meet the company's target, whether it is a sales target, awareness, or reputation target. For a digital marketer to achieve these goals, what we have in mind, our ideas, our thoughts, our calculation, must be translated into one comprehensive document. This document will be very useful to be passed around our bosses, business partners, and even our teammates! I suggest you take a look at some examples of a powerful proposal or even read one or two articles about how to make a really convincing marketing proposal. If you are worried you don't possess the powerpoint skill, well don't be! You can always use Canva for a start, and your proposal-designing skill will grow from there.
Conclusion
I hope this article can be an eye-opener for you, don't limit yourself just because of the title "intern". Goes as far as you can, ask as many questions as possible. The one thing that can be your barrier is when you limit yourself, find chances to learn new skills, even it is beyond what I write in this article. Be greedy and hungry for knowledge, and I can guarantee you can be a good digital marketer one day.
