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How to learn a new skill quickly and effectively is certainly a question worth pondering for those of us in marketing or content careers. Just for these reasons:
- The needs of companies change
- Technologies evolve
- And maybe even people’s preferences evolve on what strengths they want to build on
So here’s how I determine which new skills to focus on and how to learn a new skill quickly and effectively.
A look at my current skills
As a business storyteller, there are some skills that will probably never completely disappear from being needed:
- Understanding of what stories should be told
- Knowing the audience
- How to create content performance cultures so content does perform
- Understanding and maximizing the data-driven insights on what works and what doesn’t
- Writing and/or editing skills
So I like to identify the core skills and then build from there. What other new skills can help me level those up? For example, understanding artificial intelligence prompting can help me be a better writer and editor.
New and emerging tech
I love looking at new and emerging tech, and certainly, there have been advances. From artificial intelligence to new ways to podcast and livestream to human voice cloning. The point is that there are always new things to learn, but we have to be picky to an extent. It’s impossible to learn every possible new thing.
I look at how hard is to learn any specific new skill. What’s the Return on my Effort, so to speak? For example, I was considering a master’s degree at some point, but never got across the cost and time investment. Will I earn that much more because of getting that additional degree and will the things learned help me at all?
So, in that case, the answer to how to learn a new skill quickly and effectively for me was: It wouldn’t be that quick and might not even pay off.
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Ways to learn new skills
There are a number of ways to learn new skills.
Google/YouTube it
Depending on what the skill is, somebody might have already done a YouTube video on the topic or blogged about it. Certainly, be aware of why they are talking about a specific topic, but if they share actual valuable tips on how to do something, that’s one way to learn. Heck, I google things all the time when I don’t know how to link Excel sheets or other things that don’t pop up on the daily.
Take a course
Coursera is one example of a company with a wide range of courses that can help you learn a new skill on your own time.
Learn by doing
While taking a course or even a certificate offering can be the way to go in some instances, I’m also a fan of learning by doing. Need to learn how to set up an email cadence in ConvertKit? Log into ConvertKit, understand the basics of the process, draft the emails, and set up the sequence.
So there are definitely options on how to learn a new skill quickly and effectively. And we should also consider that not all skills are learned overnight. I didn’t become a decent podcaster overnight. Neither did I learn content strategy overnight, but certain pieces of content strategy – especially when it’s emerging technology integration, can potentially be learned quickly.