Why digital marketers should know how to code
Kanyen Sherwood
Marketing and Sales Coordinator | Experienced with Digital, Brand, and Content Marketing
If you’ve ever worked as a team, you know what happens if you ask a group member to help. Their response is always “sure, I’ll get around to it”, and the work isn’t done for a few days until you remind them again. This is exactly why knowing how to code is extremely valuable to marketers. Instead of waiting a week for your design team to change a page to a different format, you can do it yourself instantly. Think of all the time you could save yourself and your company.?
Knowing how to code is a skill. Becoming proficient in HTML, SQL, and similar languages takes dedicated time and effort. Having these skills and being able to use them in a marketing context increases your value as a marketer and can help differentiate you from other marketers. There are no downsides to learning how to code. Websites such as Codecademy(https://www.codecademy.com/) offer free and simple classes to help you learn! This is an easy investment that will help you further your career.
Codecademy
Codecademy is a website built to teach coding in a simple manner. They offer courses in a bunch of languages such as Java, C, Python, HTML, SQL, and more. This is a one-stop shop to learn to code and even offers certificates for you to display your proficiencies.
I spent some time learning HTML in Codecademy this past week. While I am still a beginner, I am already seeing its applications of it in a marketing environment. The site makes learning easier by highlighting the different attributes and elements that make up the language. It also puts the webpage you are updating side by side to see which lines of code are affecting how your webpage looks. This is what the code looks like, taken from a direct screenshot of the site.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular website builder that has a focus on being user-friendly. Its slogan is “Create a website in minutes”, and is completely accurate. It is a simple drag-and-drop system that allows you to customize templates and create good-looking websites quickly. It also allows you to build your site using HTML. Similarly to Codecademy, Squarespace highlights parts of your code to help you understand more quickly. One of my favorite features of the website builder using HTML is that it offers options when you start writing a new tag.
For example, starting a tag of “<i” shows you a list of possible tags that start with this character.
As a beginner, this is very helpful to remember which tags to use. This is an example of how coding with HTML works on Squarespace.
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WordPress
Since my own website is made in WordPress, I definitely have the most experience with this platform. (psst, click here to visit my website!). WordPress is an extremely popular website builder that has easy access to useful plugins. In fact, over 43% of all websites worldwide use WordPress! This is a huge number, which means that adding WordPress to your skillset will make you much more hirable. It is simple, easy to learn, and can be as advanced as you want. Personally, I had some issues formatting some of the more complicated graphics on the page when I did not know HTML.
Here, this pesky second line “Made GRAND” refused to become a bigger size. I spent ages trying to find the option on the WordPress editor, but it didn’t exist. I gave up for months and just accepted that it was going to be the same size.
When I started learning HTML, it clicked that I could edit it manually! So I dove into the code and tried to solve the issue manually. This is what the code looked like initially (don’t worry, you don’t have to read all that).
All it took to fix my issue was a very simple addition of the phrase “has-huge-font-size”. And bam! The issue was solved.
Look at that glorious tiny difference. The feeling of finally conquering this part of my website felt so satisfying. I had been looking at it angrily for months before I found the solution. And this solution was all due to learning HTML.
Even when these website builders try to make things simple, sometimes you have to know a little code to make things work. Every platform has its benefits and downsides. Squarespace is the perfect way for beginners to get started, while WordPress is more powerful and complicated. Ultimately, the decision on what platform you use comes down to your specific needs. But the one thing you do need is a knowledge of HTML to add to your marketing repertoire.