What are the most effective ways to keep your marketing skills up to date?

Don't sleep on influencers! While more "official" resources such as Hootsuite and Marketing Dive are fantastic, listening to successful influencers in your field can help give you additional insights, viewpoints, and tips that the other tens of thousands of people reading the same Hootsuite newsletter won't know.

The question here would be which blogs and newsletters to read? LinkedIn can be helpful in this. Follow senior marketing leaders in your field and industry. See which marketing thought leaders they are following and commenting on. From there, you'll start to get an idea on which newsletter and blogs to subscribe to. Additionally, you'll also know which industry thought leaders to follow. Blogs and newsletters can have a bit of a lagged effect, but posts from those thought leaders tend to be up to date and applicable.

Use AI and chatbots to your advantage when learning new skills. Feed the chatbot your notes from the online course and ask the chatbot to quiz you, have a conversation about the topic, or summarize the content in a new way.

If you work in a larger organization and want to start networking with other employees who share the same or similar responsibilities, don't be afraid to start your own community! Creating a Slack channel, Discord Group Chat, or WhatsApp Group can be a great option to get more niche advice, share findings, discuss learnings, and find solutions to problems.

Be open to sharing your results with others on social, forums or private groups when experimenting and measuring. Sometimes you'd be surprised at how different your results can be compared to others. It can help uncover gaps and speeds up your learning.

Networking and having conversations with friends or colleagues in the marketing industry can be a valuable way to stay up-to-date. By discussing their challenges, recent successes, and learning from their experiences, you can gain insights into the industry. The opportunity to share common struggles and discover solutions can be immensely beneficial. Additionally, your peers might suggest courses or recommend exploring new platforms or demand-side platforms (DSPs), providing you with avenues to expand your skills and knowledge in marketing. This approach to learning can be effective not only in marketing but in any industry as it encourages collaboration and the exchange of ideas.