What to Learn After Content Marketing

Content marketing relies on using relevant content to build customer relationships. Not only does content marketing drive sales, but it also creates customers who are more loyal because they feel connected to a brand. If you know how to use content marketing, you might consider learning brand marketing, social media marketing, website optimization/SEO, or digital marketing. We’ll cover each of these skills below, so you clearly understand what skill you want to tackle next.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing relies on content created with a specific audience in mind and designed to appeal to the interests or problems of that audience. This could be blog posts, articles, reports, ebooks, videos, podcasts, or other media. The content builds and supports a relationship with the audience through social media, email, or websites.

Content doesn’t push a product, service, or brand. It focuses on what the audience is interested in, and Content Marketers learn that through data analytics. The content is relevant and valuable to the audience and rarely mentions the brand or product. Relevant content tells consumers a relatable story and gives them a sense of belonging to a group.

Read more about what content marketing is and why you should learn it. 

What Can You Do with Content Marketing?

Content marketing helps you connect with your audience, improve brand loyalty, generate leads, and increase sales. Unlike traditional marketing, which makes a direct pitch for products, content marketing is based on storytelling and rarely mentions a brand or sales. The content appeals to readers by helping them with a problem or issue. 

The first step in content marketing is to determine your audience and what they care about using Google Analytics and social media analytics tools. Once you know your audience’s interests, you can begin to draft content that addresses those needs. This helps build a relationship with your readers, which is crucial to improving brand loyalty. 

Although content rarely mentions the brand or product, relevant content tells a story that consumers relate to best. It gives them a sense of belonging to a group. Content marketing creates more customers than traditional marketing, and these customers are also more loyal. They feel connected to the company or brand and are more likely to buy again. This connection develops through storytelling that resonates with followers.

Content marketing also generates more leads than traditional marketing. Consumers prefer to learn about companies and products through articles and blog posts rather than advertising. Finally, content marketing costs less than traditional marketing and leads to higher conversion rates.

Skills to Learn After Content Marketing

After you have mastered content marketing, there are other similar skills you could learn, too. Brand marketing, social media marketing, website optimization/SEO, and digital marketing are all realistic possibilities.

Brand Marketing

Content Marketers must know how to present and follow a brand’s voice. This puts you in a good position to move into a role as a Brand Marketer. Brand marketing is publicly supporting a company’s or individual’s image on social media. Brand Marketers are part of a team including Marketers, Designers, and Sales Representatives. They follow industry trends and public image and create marketing and advertising campaigns to strengthen brand identity. Brand Marketers don’t focus on a product or service. They track how a brand performs online and develop strategies to build or improve that performance.

Social Media Marketing

Content Marketers post content on social media and can easily change careers to become Social Media Marketers. While Content Marketers post links to content on social media, they mainly work on blogs or on websites. Social Media Marketers work exclusively on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok to connect with a target audience. 

In addition to posting and sharing content, Social Media Marketers must choose between paid and unpaid advertising to drive traffic to the company’s website. Buying paid ads involves spending money, while organic traffic does not, but paid advertising works much more quickly than earned marketing, so it makes sense in many circumstances. Social Media Marketers also set goals, define an audience, choose content, and engage with followers. They also use analytics to collect, track, and analyze data on social media accounts and plan future campaigns.

Website Optimization/SEO 

Content Marketers also work closely with website optimization tools, which could be another skill to learn after content marketing. Website Optimization/SEO Specialists are in charge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure a website ranks as high on the search engine results pages as possible. They choose keywords to be included in content to drive traffic to a website. SEO Specialists also run audits to check for a clear and easy-to-use website structure, speed, mobile-friendliness, XML sitemap, and navigation. SEO Specialists use many of the same tools that Content Marketers do, like Google Analytics and SEMRush, to track website performance and search engine rankings and keep an eye on the competition. 

Digital Marketing

You could also branch out and become a Digital Marketer. Digital Marketers create campaigns to promote goods and services on the internet. They use social media, email, blogs, and websites to develop long-term plans for growth in line with the company’s goals. Digital marketing jobs vary a lot. You can work for yourself as an entrepreneur. In smaller companies and startups, you might handle everything from regular social media posts to running analytics, keeping tabs on how a campaign is doing, and researching new tools to improve your company’s digital marketing. In large, established companies with many employees, you may only handle a few areas while other team members are in charge of the rest.

Learn Content Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

You can learn content marketing with hands-on classes at Noble Desktop. Taught by expert instructors, class sizes are small and give you ample opportunity to interact with the instructor and the other students. If you want to learn more about content marketing, sign up for Noble's Content Marketing Bootcamp. This course covers an introduction to content marketing and techniques for content creation and promotion, including how to measure the success of your content marketing.

If you want to go a step further, try Noble's Digital Marketing Certificate course. It covers email marketing, SEO, Google Analytics and Google Ads, and all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn Marketing. You also get a Streaming for Social Media course and a portfolio class. If you want, you can retake any class for free for up to a year. To find out more about content marketing and change careers, visit Noble Desktop's digital marketing page.

Key Insights

• Content marketing helps you connect with your audience, improve brand loyalty, generate leads, and increase conversions.

• After you learn content marketing, you can learn additional skills, such as
• Brand marketing
• Social media marketing
• Website Optimization/SEO
• Digital Marketing
• You can receive comprehensive content marketing training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.