Among other things, being professionally active in a creative industry means that you often have to be one step ahead of the competition.
Many creatives believe that the nature of their work is enough to push them into expanding their creativity and come up with new ideas every day; however, being restricted to work within the confined office space makes it almost impossible to let completely go and actually think out of the box.
It is the responsibility of employers to provide their creative teams with the instruments that are necessary for them to establish effective networks with their creative peers and evolve their skills and abilities.
If you are in charge of a full creative team right now, there is no better way to stimulate your staff into producing their best work ever, by making sure they receive continuous training.
There are several ways to implement this: seminars, additional courses, or just webinars, are efficient means of expanding your team's creativity beyond the restrictive office space, and a solid return on investment should be expected if you are serious about it.
Follow the tips below to implement a continuous training procedure for the five essential creative areas within businesses.
1. Content Strategy
Creatives involved in content strategy need to be regularly informed of the latest developments in copywriting, SEM/SEO, UX, blogging and social media marketing. Their position is, by definition, dependent on continuous training to ensure that their work is cutting-edge regarding innovation and effectiveness.
The best advice is to have your content strategy team follow the best relevant blogs, including Kissmetrics and Moz. Also, it's a good idea to keep an eye on professionals with significant influence in the field, such as Michael Brenner and Jay Baer.
In case you feel that additional training is needed to achieve the needs of continuous education, you should take a look at Content Marketing University. This school also has a fantastic conference, Content Marketing World, which is in September.
2. Development
The field of development is one of the most fluent of all the creative domains. New instruments and methods are always released with the purpose of making developers work faster, more effectively and keep them from getting bored. Many developers try to follow the industry's developments on their own, however, it is crucial that you make it easier for them to access all the continuous learning resources they can, for your team to be practicing the latest and greatest in their field.
There are great resources for your developers. Cats Who Code and Smashing Magazine are two amazing publications, whereas, if your team is interested in attending some conferences, we recommend OSCONGenerate and Generate San Francisco.
For e-learning platforms, there's Udemy, GeneralAssemb.ly and ZeoLearn's instructor-led courses. “Our crew has a background in development and we gear the training on the site towards job placement specifically,” said ZeoLearn's Biz Dev manager Ted Miller.
3. Product Management
Product management is similar to content strategy in the sense that a minimum knowledge of the various digital marketing roles within the team is needed. Therefore, your product management team would benefit from following the same influencers and blogs we recommended earlier for content strategists.
Similarly, if you would like to send your leading product managers to a conference, some of the best include The Market Research Event and Mind the Product. Furthermore a great training discipline for product managers is offered by Pragmatic Marketing, if you wish to follow the route of distance learning for your team.
4. Design
The creatives with the most pressing need for constant inspiration are probably designers. When it comes to blogs, some of the best resources regarding design can be found at Creative Bloq and Web Designer Depot.
An excellent way to have your designers freshen up their view and expand their creativity is for them to take different paths within their own discipline. For instance, you could look up typography courses or animation college programs for your design team.
Additionally, many influencers can help inspire your team. A thorough list is provided by Creative Bloq here. If you prefer conferences, a great one that will surely benefit your team is Bloomberg Businessweek Design.
5. Public Relations
PR specialists are often left out from continuous training programming because it's a common mistake to believe that their work only depends on standard tactics. On the contrary, though, PR professionals of the contemporary marketplace are required to have a strong foundation in SEM/SEO, social media marketing, content marketing and digital outreach. Moreover, great insight and resources can be acquired by certain blogs such as PR Daily and the Cision blog. Finally, PRs can grow their brands' coverage by reaching out to reporters who are looking for stories with the help of a great tool called HARO (Help A Reporter Out).
And above anything else, have them read one over-caffeinated journalist's list of how to pitch a journalist.
There. You now have everything you need to know to incorporate continuous training into your company's core policies. During this process, make sure to follow the same leads you asked your staff to keep track of so that you stay up to date with the newest trends, significant events, and developments in each segment of your field.
[[this article originally appeared on Forbes]]
A creative team is of course just one part of the overall marketing department. Download The CMO Solution Guide For Building A Modern Marketing Organization and learn from 20 progressive CMOs and senior digital marketing executives about building more effective Modern Marketing teams.
No comments:
Post a Comment