How to Be a Digital Marketing Pro: Guide and Resources

May 31, 2015 by Abhinav Sahai

Time and again I’ve been asked this question. So when I answered this once again earlier today, I thought I’d just put down whatever I feel is essential. Here’s a guide to becoming a pro at digital marketing, and accelerating your inbound marketing efforts!

You should start off with SEO. At least the basics are necessary.

SEO basics you must know: 
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Website redesign:
http://offers.hubspot.com/seo-mistakes-website-redesign

Email Marketing basics:
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/beginners-guide-email-marketing/

Social Media Basics:
http://simplymeasured.com/definitions/facebook-definitions/
http://simplymeasured.com/definitions/twitter-definitions/
http://get.simplymeasured.com/grow-your-audience-om.html
http://offers.hubspot.com/the-science-of-success-on-twitter
http://offers.hubspot.com/introduction-to-linkedin-for-business

Then some Social Media metrics stuff:
http://get.simplymeasured.com/twitter-metrics.html
http://get.simplymeasured.com/hashtags.html
http://get.simplymeasured.com/social-ctas.html
http://get.simplymeasured.com/neg-feedback.html

Planning your social media calendar:
http://get.simplymeasured.com/2015-social-planning-em.html

Read the below blogs on an ongoing basis:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com – Social Media
http://allfacebook.com/ – Facebook Marketing
http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/tag/social-media-roi/ – This blog is not updated now, but most of the posts, especially under the social media category, are still relevant
http://simplymeasured.com/blog/ – Social Media
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing – Digital Marketing
http://quicksprout.com/blog – Digital Marketing
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ – Digital Marketing
http://moz.com/blog/ – SEO
http://searchengineland.com/ – SEO
http://www.wordstream.com/blog – Adwords / PPC (Pay Per Click)
http://unbounce.com/blog/ – Landing page optimization
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash – Web Analytics
http://cutroni.com/ – Web Analytics

Tools List:
https://goo.gl/falC2j – SEO/Social Media Tools list that you will find handy

Digital Marketing libraries, templates, guides:
https://library.hubspot.com/
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketing-guides/
http://quicksprout.com/blog – Make sure you checkout the Guides section on the right column

This last set (Blogs on an ongoing basis) is actually the key to continuous learning, so it would be a good idea will be to subscribe to all of them.

While there are lots of other good blogs also available, I’ve found following the above ones mostly do the job. Anyway, if some topic from another blog is really kicking ass, it will somehow find its way on your Twitter/Facebook timeline – so no need to worry.

Having said that, please do share if you feel I’ve missed an important resource.

Happy learning!