Five Reasons to Develop Your Digital Skills
Did you know that Ancient Egyptians used to shave off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats?
No? Well that’s probably because you’re not an Ancient Egyptian.
Did you know that every second, two new members join LinkedIn? Or that Google’s +1 button is used five billion times a day?
No? Do you know why and how this can generate results for you and your business?
Last year we founded The Juice Academy to address the digital skills gap in the marketing industry. So far we’ve trained over 50 young people in social media and digital and seen our entire first cohort of apprentices offered full time jobs when they graduate in a few months.
Digital skills are important. Not the digital skills that people think they have because they can send a tweet or sync an app on Facebook, but the digital skills that enable marketers to deliver real results for brands.
Here are five reasons to think about developing your digital skills:
1. Currently digital accounts for 8.3% of the UK’s GDP and this is only set to increase. It’s predicted that if we don’t up skill, the lack of digital services will cost the UK up to £2bn a year in 2017 – if you don’t up skill, you might miss out
2. More and more people are using social channels, so more people join the conversation. There are around 15 million businesses on Facebook competing for a share of voice – so you need to know how to stand out and achieve results, or be lost in the fray
3. 57% of people who like a brand online do so to get an offer or a discount. The problem with this is that this type of customer is fickle, driven by price so typically won’t show loyalty unless it’s to the cheapest provider – you need to understand how to provide genuine value to build lasting social relationships
4. The online environment is constantly changing. There is so much content out there and so many ‘gurus’ promising instant results – you should be selective where they take content and advice from, bad tutorage is worse than none in many circumstances
5. Online sales have consistently grown for four quarters and 81% people say social interactions with friends and family have influenced their purchasing decision – you need to understand how to influence social opinion in a non-commercial way to generate genuine recommendations
Interested? Our next social media training course is at The Juice Academy on 23rd July and you can find out more here.
Thanks for reading and here’s another random fact for you - in the Scottish Hebrides, an island is defined as being an island only if it is big enough to sustain one sheep.
Anna Wilson is Head of Digital at Tangerine PR and The Juice Academy
