(Mostly) Free Online Courses to Increase Your Digital Skills
You don’t need a classroom anymore to learn essential skills to jumpstart your career. Millennials are taking online courses to learn important skills in our now-digital world. They are studying skills that are not taught in classrooms, right from the comfort of their own home, for free.
Millennials are known for rejecting the standard 9-5 job in an office and taking on more freelance work. Taking online courses to learn and increase digital skills gives recent college graduates the ability to work from home with multiple clients and make a living on their own terms.
Interested in learning more about how you can make money right from your computer? Take a look at the list of online courses and platforms below to get started.
Microsoft Office
No matter if you do decide to work in an office or from home, you will most likely be using Microsoft Office. With multiple programs such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you will learn the ins and outs of each program. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with Word and the data organization you can do with Excel.
Facebook Blueprint
Everyone and their mother is on Facebook, which makes it one of the most important platforms to advertise and influence people. Facebook Blueprint offers free courses for beginner and advanced users of the social media platform.
Facebook is the first platform of advertising that allows users to target a direct audience based on their interests, age, location, career, or even if they just got married. With an incredible amount of data, Facebook is one of the best places to run digital advertisements. Learn how to optimize a business page, run targeted advertisement campaigns, and create viral content.
Google Partners
Oh Google, how we love to search everything we need answers to in your search bar. Well, how would you like to have a Google badge next to your name and on your resume? By joining Google Partners, you can take courses for free and earn certificates and badges in digital advertising and ad words.
Did you know that you can make a living by just being an ad buyer? All you have to do is pass the exam and find clients! Learn everything you need to know about buying Google Ad Words, mobile advertising, shopping advertising, and more through these online courses!
HubSpot Academy
Known for their fantastic CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, HubSpot also offers free online courses for digital marketing. Take an online course in Inbound Marketing, where you will learn how to connect original content with other original content. It also offers a course on email marketing, which answers the questions of when to send it, what makes a good subject line, and how it should look.
For all of your digital marketing needs, you can take online courses at HubSpot Academy for free and earn certifications to publish on your resume and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Learning
If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, stop reading this and go make one right now. Seriously. This is the Facebook of the professional world. Connect with friends and family along with people at work and people you admire professionally and be found by job recruiters.
If you have an extra $25 a month to spare, invest it in yourself and subscribe to LinkedIn Premium to have access to LinkedIn Learning courses.
With LinkedIn Learning, you have access to millions of courses and videos on almost every topic imaginable. From learning about leadership and body language to spreadsheets and business development, there are endless possibilities to what you can learn.
When you are finished with a class or course, it will show up on your LinkedIn profile as an earned skill and certificate. So get started today and spruce up that resume!
Lynda Learning
Meet your new friend Lynda. Most universities give their students free access to Lynda Learning through their university account. If you’ve graduated, don’t worry, check with your local free library to see if they offer free access to the platform.
Similar to LinkedIn Learning, you have a whole catalog of courses to choose from. Learn about programming, WordPress, photo editing software, or business management in prerecorded videos. There are even educational pathways designed for you that combine multiple courses to ensure you get the education that you deserve.