Code - Not Just For The Pros

Where does the magic happen? Behind the scenes. We’ve worked so hard to learn different ways of optimizing our search engines, which keywords to use and how, different software that will analyze our data, but what we haven’t talked about it all gets there. The answer is: coding. This six letter word that holds all the magic.

Coding is a set of instructions that tell a software what to do. You feed it information lie font size, placement of images, background colors, and it spits that out on your screen. It’s designing in a tech language. Without coding, you wouldn’t be able to read this screen (or see it for that matter). Sounds easy, right? WRONG. It’s actually quite difficult, but very enjoyable once you get the hang of it.

There are a couple different languages used by marketers. The most basic form is html, which most people are familiar with but don’t exactly know how to use it. My digital marketer assigned us to try this out for ourselves through Codecademy. My experience with it was very positive, taking into account how uninterested I was when I first read about this assignment.

As I was going through each lesson, it crossed my mind how useful coding actually is – for marketers especially. We work with what we’re given in terms of format and layout, but what if we could create our own? That would be even more personalized and unique, tailoring specifically to our brand.

Well, enough about me (for now) – let’s get to why all digital marketers should invest time in learning the basic coding languages.

Why Is Coding Important to Digital Marketers?

“…Code literacy is a requirement for participation in a digital world.” – Douglas Rushkoff

You can’t participate if you aren’t in the game. Knowing coding will make you more competitive. With the rise in demand of this specific skill, when most people are hopping onto this new trend, you’ll be leading it. Not just being a stronger competitor in the marketing world, but it allows you to really understand what’s going on behind the tools you are using.

We are only limited by the materials we are given. Understanding coding will give you an edge and push those limits technology has placed upon us. How many times have you had a vision of what your presentation or project would look like, but ended up changing it halfway because you couldn’t figure out how to use technology to produce it? Instead of working around it, you’ll be able to work through it – even if that means having to create a code to make it do what you want it to do.

We’ve always been given things, and we’ve always found a way to make it better by getting to the roots. That’s what coding is – the roots of our webpage design, our marketing automation efforts, digital campaigns, etc. When a problem goes wrong with a link, you’ll probably want to fix it ASAP. Having basic knowledge will allow you to either fix it yourself, or have someone fix it by speaking in their language.

My Experience With Codecademy

As mentioned above, html is the most basic form of coding. I tried out html with Codecademy, which is ranked as #3 in “Top 10 Programming Skills That Will Get You Hired”. I got through to the “HTML Basis III” and I do have to say I was impressed at how fun it was. Initially, when I read that I had to do this thing for two hours straight, I was kind of worried. But, it’s actually not that bad if you like problem solving.

On the left side, you’ll see an instructions bar, the side gray open space is your code, and the small screen in the upper right hand corner are the results. The system shows you an example of what it wants you to produce, and it gives you instructions on how to do it. As you progress through each lesson, the instructions become more vague and less detailed. It takes all that you’ve learned and combines it together to put your just-learned knowledge to use.

I have to admit, I did take a small break during one of the last steps because I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong. Being determined to figure it out and move onto the next stop, I got my head back in the game and completed the step. Coding is very much of a problem-solving game, some may enjoy it and others may hate it.

Here is a recap of my progress in two hours:

Start time: 10:34pm

End time: 12:34am

I think I did pretty good! I only got through 33% of the course… but still.

I'd recommend you all to give it a try -- you might have more fun than you think.

Squarespace

I also had the chance of playing around with creating my own webpage via Squarespace. This site allows you to create your own free webpage. Customizing on Squarespace is no problem because they have a large variety of factors to add to your site. This includes layouts, color choices, placement of text boxes, etc. With all the different factors, it will definitely be unique.

One thing that I didn’t like with Squarespace is changing the content that came with the layout was a bit confusing. I had some trouble changing the icons on the homepage to display other image because it either has to be the right size, or I just couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I would have enjoyed it more if I was able to edit right where it had context. For example, if you want to edit the title, you have to click on the “edit” tab an it shows an editing bar on the left side where you can input a title, a tagline, browser image, etc.

Click HERE to check out my Squarespace!

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this post!

Until next time,

Diana