By Mina Guirguis, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing
Many B2B marketers are ambitious and growth-driven people. They want to learn as much as they can and know they can always improve themselves. That is why my app for this week is Coursera. This app gives you access to hundreds of accredited professional certifications across dozens of fields and technologies. Want better marketing strategy? You got it. Need a refresher on Google Analytics? Done. The best part is you can access a large amount of this knowledge for free! Professional certifications costing about $40 a month. Let’s dive into some of my favorite features of Coursera.
The breadth of topics
Coursera has over 7000 classes for you to pick and choose from. They range in both topics and difficulty. My personal favorites are the classes about soft skills. However, business related classes are just a fraction of what they offer. Do you have a passion that doesn’t fall in the B2B business space? How about art history? Photography? Psychology? All these and more are available to you to watch and complete on your own time. If you want to improve a skill, learn something entirely new, or just stay up to date, Coursera will have a class for you.
The quality of content
One issue with online classes is anyone can post a video of them online and call it a course. With Coursera quality isn’t an issue. Many of the classes are taught by industry professionals and each class has several reviews for you to read before you start. One of the larger instructors is Google, who uses their own employees to teach you skills and concepts. I went through their project management course, and it was both engaging and easy to follow. Due to the quality, these certifications are valid to add to your resume. So if you are trying to get a promotion, switch jobs, or switch careers, the online classes can get you there!
The user experience
There is a reason gamification is in everything from dating to investing. It is easy to understand and keeps you coming back. Coursera tracks several metrics for you in an easily consumable way. This helps you set goals and stick to timelines. The UI is easy to navigate, and you are never more than a few clicks away from a class.
Constantly learning and growing isn’t easy, but Coursera has helped me stay motivated and engaged. If you’re looking to earn something new, I highly recommend trying Coursera. It could be the catalyst that gets you that promotion!
