I must thank my friend Vejay Anand for giving me the opportunity to talk to the XIME Bangalore MBA Students. The topic was about ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Product Management’.

I shared my experiences in building Products, but that is NOT the focus of this blog. Many students wanted to get ‘hand’s on’ on Digital Marketing. They were looking for companies to help them with Projects.

Then I realized the sweet irony of it all. We as employers expect the students to have some hands on skills in Digital Marketing. And students as potential interns expect the companies to direct them with skills and ideas.

How do we break this log jam? How can the student claim expertise of Digital Marketing and showcase some hands-on skills? How can the students start on a higher pedestal?

Fortunately, with all the free tools available, it is very easy. Hence this blog, Digital Marketing Hands On!

Here are five ideas that you could do at a very low cost! In the end, I will tell you how to earn a friend for your lifetime with these actions.

Idea #1: Maintain a blog in WordPress

Choose any topic you want. For example, this blog is focused on the future. I had another blog on my photograph. Someone else might document their travels. One might write about their investment journey.

To make it job oriented, maintain it in a WordPress site. Experiments with the different themes, and choose the correct theme for your site.

Want to learn WordPress? You can follow this video.

Maintaining a blog involves…

1. Weekly – Fortnightly update of content that is relevant
2. Promoting the content to get traffic
3. Audience engagement

Make sure that your content is of good quality. It can be short simple statements, but need to showcase your understanding of the subject.

At Bsharp (www.bsharpcorp.com), we expect blogs to be of a certain standard. Here is an example blog. Blogs that approach this standard will help us to give you some projects.

https://www.bsharpcorp.com/blogs/empower-your-product-manager-with-ai/

Now, if a potential employer asks you what have you done as a ground work, your answer is easy. Point them to this blog.

Idea #2: Promote your blog in Linked In

First focus on building a personal brand through LinkedIn. Here is a ready course that will help you do so.

As part of your brand building activity, promote your blog.

Now, if a potential employer asks you what have you done as a ground work, your answer is easy. Point them to your Linkedin Profile. Tell them you know how to build a brand in LinkedIn and you could do it for them. You won’t ask them for directions, you will discuss, mutually agree and build their brand.

You could do a similar promotion in Instagram also, if you are looking at Consumer Marketing. This blog is more focused on B2B marketing. i

Idea #3: Make a video (on Canva)

It is not about your acting or special effects skills here. It is about your communication skills. Your ability to script a video towards a specific goal, and execute the video. Make your video in Canva, probably.

Add this video in your blog. Publish this as part of your LinkedIn profile. At Bsharp, we look for people who can conceive and execute on great videos to aid our product story. Here is a benchmark of an video.

Now a days, Canva is like Powerpoint or Excel – an essential life tool. An expertise on Canva is going to give you a heads up in your communication capabilities.

Idea #4: Create an SEO strategy for your blog

Create an SEO strategy for your blog. Identify the keywords and make sure the meta-data of the blog is embedded with the correct keywords. When you talk to the employer, you can talk about the blog in depth, marrying it with the SEO strategy.

What are the key words? How did you identify them? How did you make them part of the blog? What is your learning in terms of how they rank? They need not rank high up, or even rank at all. But your understanding of the overall approach on SEO and how it is done will communicate your preparedness to the company.

Here is a quick course you can take on SEO for content marketing.

You can do your research of the keywords in the Google Search Console.

IDEA 5: PROMOTE YOUR BLOG on ad sense SOME SMALL BUDGET

I know. This step involves some money. Some small money may be. Take a budget of Rs. 3000-Rs. 5000. Create a Google campaign for your blog. Sign in to Ad Sense and promote your blog with this budget.

Study the impact of the money on the blog. Is it improving traffic? From which regions? What is the page flow? Are there repeat users? How many minutes are the users spending on your blog? Write this as part of your project report. Present it to your college. Also, publish it as part of the blog.

Again, the objective is not to get huge traffic into the blog or make it the leading blog in the subject. The objective is to go through the journey of a marketer and showcase what you learnt from it. Be ready to talk about the actions you have taken and the metrics there of.

FIND A FRIEND

Here is another big idea. This will earn you a friend. You need not do all of the above for your own blog. You can reach out a friend who is running a business. May be a travel agency back at home. Or a gift shop in the corner. Or some aspiring software developer. Or … well you get the idea. Now, take their business as a basis, build a free web platform for them and perform these five steps.

Their business will grow, and you will have a friend for life.

You can also study the impact of these actions on their business, in terms of actual revenue and make it as part of your resume.

• So, you study all the theory at college
• So, your resume has projects that are hands on
• You have learnt by doing
• You can talk about it and
  If you are enterprising…
• … you just earned a friend for your lifetime.

Get hands-on on digital marketing. Tell your interviewer, ‘Bring it on!’.

What’s more, you will get that internship or the job.

This is going to involve about 100 hours of work, over weeks. Consistency and discipline is key. You have to learn. You have to tinker with platforms. You have to do. It will go against the grain of your brain.

If you fight through it, you have a unique value proposition when you sit for your interviews.

May the force be with you.