Want to Impress Your Employer? Become a Full Stack Marketer!

Could you imagine walking into your next job interview as resolute and determined as Liam Neeson in Taken? "I have a particular set of skills—skills I have acquired over a long, long collegiate career". As marketers, attaining a background in everything is quite valuable. Personally, I've always been fascinated with the idea of learning how to code (I'm talking HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python); I've just never taken the initiative to do so. To start this off, Onboardly gives us their definition what it means to be a full stack marketer: "Full stack marketers have a working knowledge of all of the modern marketing tactics, from PPC and email marketing to social media and PR. They use that knowledge to create integrated growth strategies that they are capable of executing with limited external resources." The list expands further to describe analytics, SEO, copywriting, positioning, content marketing, landing page optimization, and much, much more. It would take decades to become any sort of specialist in all of these things, but expertise—especially as a novice marketer—is by no means necessary.

So what is coding, and why is it important? Well, coding is the process of assigning a set of instructions for the purposes of classification or identification by a software. Coding is it's own language, making up everything that is the internet and computers. Google itself spans over 2 BILLION lines of code. Co-founder of Zapier, Wade Foster says a full stack marketer is "A marketer who can get their hands dirty will be much more effective than one that always has to lean on a developer. Being able to edit the copy directly via HTML reposition an element on the page via CSS will let a marketer iterate quicker without distracting the development team." The ability to make simple coding edits will make you far more valuable to your employer, ultimately adding another handy tool to your tool belt.

Because I wasn't fully aware of all the computer programming languages before writing this blog, I think it'd be helpful to define some of them.

1. HTML—stands for "HyperText Markup Language". This is essentially the bone structure of a website, devised to be viewed by anyone else connected to the internet. It's comprised of HTML tags and hyperlinks for navigating a website. I felt it was most similar to creating a Microsoft word document—you can alter text, font-size, font-style, text-alignment, borders, tables, colors, etc.
2. CSS—distinguished as "Cascading Style Sheets". CSS is the skin to your HTML syntax which describes the presentation of your web page. Instead of changing each element on each line of code, CSS allows you to universally change the outlook to your web page. It allows one to adapt the presentation to different types of devices, such as desktop screens, mobile devices, or printers.
3. JavaScript—JavaScript is a programming language commonly used for designing interactive web pages. It's a way to impact or manipulate elements that are inside of an HTML tag. It's important to know that HTML and JavaScript are two separate languages.
4. Python—Python is another powerful programming language that lets you integrate systems effectively and work swiftly. Python has an elegant structure, making the programs you write easier to perceive. It comes with a large library that supports common programming tasks such as searching text with regular expressions, connecting to web servers, testing short snippets of code, and much more!

My professor asked us to learn basic HTML and CSS through Codecademy (a free, hands-on coding program that introduces you to the basics). Our objective was to engage the programming software for two hours, and record how much we'd learn.

Just to show you how excited I was, I want to draw your attention to my very first line of code I'd ever written. After a couple of hours, I'd grasped the hang of things.

With my first impressions, I'd found coding to be incredibly intuitive and straightforward. Codecademy provides an amazing step-by-step process for learning how to creatively code. Having no prior knowledge of coding, I felt like I'd obtained a vast amount of knowledge in such a short period of time. I have to admit, It wasn't as raw and dry as I had expected it to be; their interface is very user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. I would actually go as far to claim that everyone should have a basic understanding of how it works. Being the foundation of everything digital, these programming languages are there for us to learn and will only continue to set us apart from other job competition. I look forward to finishing these modules and pursuing other programming languages in the near future.

Have you ever designed your own website before? As a marketer, it could be that crucial element of experience that gets you hired. Web sites are handy for many reasons. First, it's a great way to display your personal portfolio of work for others to see and quickly hook your audience by drawing them into whatever you're offering. Second, It's a medium to ramble on about your passions through blogging. And last, knowing how to set up your own website just proves to your potential employer that you're capable of ingeniously constructing something on your own. With that being said, there are several platforms that have pre-constructed templates for you to design a full-fledged website—WITHOUT CODING. Some of the most common platforms include Squarespace, Wordpress, Wix, and Weebly.

I attempted to build my own e-commerce website comprised of my own photography images on Squarespace. I thought the process would be smooth, however, I actually found it to be quite difficult to manipulate and navigate. At first glance, Squarespace is a very minimalistic, image-oriented platform that offers the ability to track your traffic through analytics. Although it was visually stunning and offered a lot of flexibility, the controls to edit and add my work were slow and not very intuitive. It also requires a monthly fee to run your site after your 14-day free trial.

All-in-all, if you're looking for a challenge and want to tackle the task of constructing your own website from the ground up, then coding is for you. Coding taught me to be detail-oriented, and organize my work accordingly. If you're looking to easily build and manage a website through pre-installed templates, and you don't want to take the time to learn how to code, then Squarespace may be your go-to platform. With all of these free resources available at our fingertips, I'd encourage you to always keep learning. Who knows, maybe you'll have more fun than you think!

Jonah Neuss