Two Worlds Collide - Marketing and Coding
You may be thinking, wait - I majored in business, not computer science! Well yes, but remember that term T-shaped marketer? This is exactly what I was talking about; diversify yourself by learning the basics of different industries outside of your own. As a digital marketer, you will be working with the tech department to ensure they produce the correct code that aligns with your marketing plan. Learning the basics of coding enables you to better understand the process of constructing a website and assist when needed. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to do something yourself rather than waiting! Read about why marketers should learn to code from The Martec.
What is Code?
Coding is what makes it possible for us to create computer software, apps and websites. Your browser, your OS, the apps on your phone, Facebook, and this website – they’re all made with code. There are a hundreds of different programming languages that make up code, but the most popular ones are JavaScript, Python, Java, CSS, Swift, and Ruby. Today, I did the basic training on HTML through Code Academy, which stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the first step in creating a website and describes the structure of Web pages using markup. While this all may feel way over your head, stay with me because I’m going to discuss the very helpful and surprisingly easy coding training I just went through!
Code Academy
If you’re looking for a FREE and manageable way to learn the basics of coding, Code Academy is the perfect place to start. I’m going to walk you through my first few encounters with the training and report on the notable skills learned. See the image below for the first lesson breaking down the paragraph elements and emphasizing the opening (<p>) and closing tag (</p>) on the ends of the content, making up an element. We then practiced putting together elements and discovered how to do headings and subheadings indicated by <h1> to <h6> tags depending on the desired size.
The training took you through a series of exercises with instructions to the left, the coding document in the middle and the website on the right. One of my favorite parts of the training was the review slides which provided around 10 key elements of what we just learned. Pictured below is from the first training. Code Academy did a great job of teaching the material in manageable chunks to avoid information overload! It ended up being a productive system of reading the lesson on the left, then practicing and finally running the changes made, allowing you to see the result on the right! It truly felt like I was building a website! See below for a screenshot of the interface throughout the training.
Alternatives
While Code Academy did a fantastic job at teaching the basics of HTML coding, there are a variety of other online trainings available doing the same thing! A few include: Skillshare, Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy and Hack Design. I would recommend doing multiple trainings to immerse yourself in the most used coding languages. Read a little bit about each of them from Learn to Code with Me.
WordPress
I decided to put my skills to the test and build a website page! First stop - WordPress, where you can build a website, online store, portfolio, or blog for as inexpensive as $3 a month. They say, “all you need is an idea and an internet connection.” I took a screenshot of their traffic homepage showing your progress on completing site setup and recent activity. As you can see, I don’t have any activity because I ended up having trouble creating a website. While WordPress is highly regarded as a simple platform to build a blog or information site, it wasn’t as intuitive as I imagined. I got as a far as choosing my layout, and changing the title, but could not figure out how to change the home page photo.
Square Space
While I have used Squarespace before, the initial interface was already created so it was fun to start fresh this time! I started a blog called ‘Succulents 101’ through my brand, Plant Happy. I was able to create my homepage including a logo on top with the tagline, Plant Happy, Live Happy. Squarespace is an incredibly easy platform to use once you play around with it for a few hours. You can even add your own code to your website under Code Injection where you can include live chat services, domain verification for custom email services, or site analytics. I highly recommend using Squarespace as it is “the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence.”
Coding is the future of our business world, as everything is moving to an online presence which requires code to create. It’s important to understand the basics of code to differentiate yourself from others in the professional world and better understand the fundamentals of digital marketing. Read about 5 Coding Skills That Will Elevate Your Digital Marketing Career to learn more! Immerse yourself in the free coding courses to become smarter than every other marketer!
That’s all for now, tune in next week to learn about Email Marketing & Marketing Automation. Happy Valentines Day!