I Survived the Digital Marketing Institute’s Online Marketing Course

June 18, 2009 · Posted in Digital Marketing Institute 

This is a guest blog post contributed by Rita Tobin of IIA Member Company t2 who are based in Carlow. Rita recently completed the Online Marketing Course with the Digital Marketing Institute. IIA members were offered a great discount on this course when it launched so I’m very happy to hear that Rita had, overall, a good experience. Over to Rita.

t2I recently concluded the 12 week Online Marketing Course being run by the newly formed Digital Marketing Institute. In their own words

“This Online Marketing Training course, created and delivered by the Digital Marketing Institute, is the only course of it’s kind that has been created FOR the digital marketing community BY the digital marketing community.”

Generally whenever people use the words FOR and BY to describe something I immediately think of every shoddy short film I’ve ever seen that has been made BY young people FOR young people. However on this occasion they are spot on. It has been created by the digital marketing community for the digital marketing community.

The course is taught by industry professionals, many of whom are minor celebs, in the world of SEO and online marketing, in Ireland. The students on the course were predominantly from marketing backgrounds but work for a diverse range of companies and organisations from

I sat this course for three reasons

  1. Everything I had learned to date re SEO and online marketing was self taught and I wanted to know that what I had learned was accurate and was information I could trust.
  2. Here at t2 we wanted to improve the services we offer to our clients.
  3. I wanted to create a role for myself within t2 as an online marketer.

Upon completion I was very happy with myself. I learned loads. Admittedly there were parts of the course that were not particularly relevant to me e.g. affiliate marketing and display advertising but I do still feel it is important to understand how they work.

Did I mention I loved it?

I loved it.

It was a great opportunity to pick the brains of experts like Martin Murray and Anthony Quigley. I found the modules relating to SEO, adwords, analytics, interactive design and email marketing hugely informative and relevant. I have incorporated many facets from these modules into our daily business practices. Shenda Loughnane also gave a very practical lecture on display advertising. Unfortunately I missed Krishna De’s lectures on social media marketing but by all accounts it went very well.

There were a couple of modules along the way that did feel a bit like a sales pitch but I guess that is only to be expected due to the fact that it is being presented BY industry professionals FOR a group of people that want to promote their business or organisation online.

In general all the lecturers were great. The only major quibble I had was one announced one night that he doesn’t bother with his own online presence at all as the quality of sales leads that come in from his own website are poor. I felt in that throwaway statement he had, in essence, undermined the whole point of the course!

There was a bit of a kerfuffle over the assessment. Initially it was meant to be a presentation and a written assessment, then we were given a choice over whether we wanted to do the presentation or not and finally we were told there would be no presentation. It was a bit on the messy side but it was the first time the course had been rolled out and I am a forgiving soul.

All in all I highly recommend it and wish all the guys at the DMI the best of luck with rolling out the course in Cork and Belfast. See the Digital Marketing Institute for more details.

Rita Tobin

t2

Rita really took a lot of her learnings on board and she created for t2′s blog the following video with Anthony Quigley which explains why Search Engine Optimisation and blogging are best buddies.

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Comments

2 Responses to “I Survived the Digital Marketing Institute’s Online Marketing Course”

  1. Krishna De on June 24th, 2009 10:14 am

    Rita – thanks for sharing your feedback about the programme and I am sorry you missed the session about social media.

    A couple of other suggestions in terms of the tips you and Anthony share on the video:

    1. use categories wisely – I have found that my categories often appear in the search engines too

    2. don’t just post videos on your blog without details of what is covered in the online video. As with podcasts, write content to explain what is covered in the video and of course inclide your key words (for podcasts these are often described as being show notes and can be of benefit to the listener/viewer/visitor.

  2. anthony quigley on December 10th, 2009 10:51 am

    Hi there Rita

    We have just announced a new Diploma in Online & Digital Marketing courses starting in the new year.

    We have put all the details onto our online marketing training web site

    Let all your friends know!

    Anthony

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