Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree

This post covers reviews of two courses I did – Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree and Diploma in Creative Writing from Symbiosis, Pune.

Over the past year or so, I have been trying to get some formal training on areas that may not be directly related to the work I do; but have been personally interested in.

I am listing below the two certifications that I managed to complete during this while, and ones that I thoroughly enjoyed going through.

Since both these employed self-paced, distance learning methods, it was convenient to do these from the comfort of my home.

If you are interested in these areas, I would definitely recommend these. Let’s start with Udacity.

Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree

So I am now a Udacity-certified Digital Marketing specialist! Well, this was a fun course that took me right back to the days when I used to attend classroom sessions – complete with classmates, instructors, tests and marks! The magnificence of the new connected world!

The course was a lot harder than I expected it to be – with a deadline for completion, about 10 hands-on projects where I spent real dollars to market some real stuff and strict reviews by instructors.

It also took a lot more time and commitment than I expected it to (my bad here. They clearly specify the expectations upfront; I just over-estimated my skills in the area and thought it would be a breeze for me).

But I thoroughly enjoyed the video-based lessons by some very pleasant instructors and competing with classmates on getting better marketing results.

I am listing below the key topics that were covered in the course, and my Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree projects – these could be used as a reference for any new students signing up for this course. If you find it helpful, do post your comments below.

• Prepare to market
  • The learner has to plan for a campaign using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound) objectives, define value proposition and create a target customer persona. Here’s my submission for this project (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 1/ udacity digital marketing project 1):
    • Udacity DMND Project 1: Get Ready to Market
• Content Strategy
  • The learner will plan and organize content, understand the power of story telling and understand how to measure impact
    • No Project
• Social Media Marketing
  • The learner will create a blog post, and create compelling posts for various social media channels. Here’s my submission for the project (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 2/ udacity digital marketing project 2):
    • Udacity DMND Project 2: Market your Content
• Social Media Advertising
  • The learner will learn to design and run a live Facebook campaign. Here are my submissions (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 3 / dmnd project 3):
    • Udacity DMND Project 3 Part 1: Create a Facebook Campaign
    • Udacity DMND Project 3 Part 2: Run a Facebook Campaign
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
  • The learner will understand the principles of SEO, and conduct and SEO audit. My submission below (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 4):
    • Udacity DMND Project 4: Conduct an SEO Audit
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
  • The learner will learn about how Google Adwords campaigns are organized, and how to run a Google adwords campaign. My submissions below (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 5 / project 5 evaluate a google ads campaign):
    • Udacity DMND Project 5 Part 1: Create an AdWords Campaign
    • Udacity DMND Project 5 Part 2: Run an AdWords Campaign
• Display Advertising:
  • The learner gets practical insights into using Google Adwords Display Ads. My submission below (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 6 / evaluate a google ads campaign udacity project):
    • Udacity DMND Project 6: Evaluate a Display Ad Campaign 
• Email Marketing:
  • The learner learns how to build subscriber lists, and run an email marketing campaign with MailChimp. My submission below (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 7/ market with email udacity project/ dmnd project 7):
    • Udacity DMND Project 7: Market with Email
• My Portfolio:
  • And finally, the learner creates her/ his own Digital Marketing Portfolio. Here’s mine (Udacity Digital Marketing Nanodegree Project 8 / dmnd project 8):
    • Udacity DMND Project 8: Create Your Portfolio

Symbiosis Diploma in Creative Writing in English (DCWE)

This was another tough one that spanned almost a year.

With about 6 exams to complete and a few writing projects, this course gave great insights into the art of creative writing.

What I did not like about the program was its exam structure – where one had to memorise material from the books to pass. But otherwise, it was fun.

The next one I am looking at is a language course. Let’s see how that goes.