There are endless free courses and other resources online which you can use to learn how to get more out of your online marketing efforts. Most successful marketers today did not learn social media marketing or blogging at a university. They researched, they read blogs, watched videos took some online courses and tried it out for themselves. They asked questions; they talked to other bloggers and online marketers, and they learned.
We have started that way. Five years ago we were just scraping at the surface or content marketing, and we had to learn fast. We found that most information you need to become a successful online entrepreneur could be found online.
You just have to find the right source at the right time. To make your life easier and help you to get started with the most important aspects you need for your online success, we put together a list of great courses for all things online marketing, blogging and creating websites.
All the courses in this list are FREE, at least as of now, while I am writing this article. However, pricing is in the hands of the course owners and may be subject to change.
Before you read on - we have various resources that show you exactly how to use social networks to gain massive traffic and leads. For instance, check out the following:
FREE Step-by-Step Twitter Marketing GuideFREE Pinterest Marketing Ebook
Some of the courses may have additional information, a more extended version, or a certificate, which you can pay for if you like.
But you can get a ton of information for FREE. I tried to choose very different courses: various topics, different types of institutions (from universities to marketing consultants and entrepreneurs). Some of the courses have a specific starting date and some you can simply do whenever you feel like it or need them.
Warning: I have not tried all the free courses on this list myself. I tried to chose valuable information and free courses you can benefit from. However, if you participate in one of the courses and have some tips, experiences or additional information to share, please let us know in the comments.
Website Creation
When you are going for online success, the first thing you need is a website, and most of the time a blog. An easy and very widespread way to set up a website and blog is with WordPress.
Since most of us are not proficient programmers, setting up a website or blog with WordPress can be a challenge. This course guides you through the necessary steps to get a WordPress website up and running. It starts with Domain and Hosting, Choosing a Themen and Creating the Homepage. You will also learn about subpages and the basics for making your website social media friendly with share buttons and email signup forms.
Marketing
Buffer is building a series of email courses on various marketing and online business topics. They already released one introductory Social Media course. There are more courses planned; you can subscribe if you want to get notified if courses on topics like Twitter, HTML/CSS or Language learning are released.
- Social Media 101 by Buffer
Neil Patel offers a bunch of free courses or videos explaining a ton of online marketing topics in his Quick Sprout University for free. It’s not one course, rather a collection of small videos on various topics. The material is not new and as social media and online marketing evolves so quickly some of it may be slightly outdated, but especially if you are starting out with marketing, it still offers some great insights.
There is also a collection of marketing courses offered by well-known universities. However, I am not convinced that universities are the best place to learn marketing for a current project. From what I have seen so far, these often tend to be on the more theoretical side leaving many of the questions that arise if you try to actually do it out of the picture. Still, if you want to take a look are some courses you can do for free, some of them would also give you a certificate for a small fee:
- Introduction to Marketing by University of British Columbia
- Digital Branding and Engagement by Curtin University
- IMAGE | ABILITY – Visualizing the Unimaginable by Delft University of Technology
- English Composition by Arizona State University
(If you missed the starting date for your course, check back on this site for more courses and information. You may well be able to find a similar course or some transcripts free to use.)
Hey, before you read on - we have in various FREE in-depth guides on similar topics that you can download. For this post, check out:
FREE workbook: CREATE AWESOME BLOG POSTSFREE Beginner's Guide: START A BLOG
Hubspot is famous for its engagement in Inbound marketing. You can learn about Inbound marketing and even get Hubspot certified with their free course on Inbound marketing:
- Free Inbound Marketing Course & Certification by Hubspot
We here at The Social Ms offer a free Email course on Pinterest Traffic Generation. The course is meant to give you some hands-on tactics you can instantly implement to get more traffic to your site from Pinterest. - Free Email Courses by The Social Ms
Get 1000s of clicks from Pinterest
Learn how to start your social media marketing journey:
All the basics in 4 Days, 4 Emails
Join us for a free email course about content marketing.
Join our (free) email course about Blog SEO today!
Join our free Email Course to learn how to grow an audience and traffic from Twitter:
Advertising
Wordstream offers a PPC university. They have a ton of material online for you to choose the right topic for your most pressing questions about PPC.
- PPC University by Wordstream
Programming
In the age of internet more and more people want to know the basics of programming or just learn one or two programming languages. Readers of CodeCondo are entitled to their free web development and web design courses. These include PHP fundamentals, HTML, Android development. All in all, CodeCondo offers 13 different programming courses:
- Programming courses by CodeCondo
- CCNA Routing And Switching – The Easy Certification Guide
- Learn HTML5 and CSS3 by building a responsive tableless calendar
- Learn to create an HTML and CSS3 landing page design
- Learn jQuery by making a Content Slider
- Learn JavaScript By Building a Simple Quiz
- Learn HTML5 Distance Meter
- Become A Copywriter Pro from Ground Up
- Build Mobile Apps and Make Money with Best Marketing Techniques
- Learn Designing Using Adobe Photoshop from Scratch
- Learn Android Development From Scratch
- And more
I hope you found an interesting course you are going to enjoy. If you are aware of more free courses that may be useful to some of our readers, feel free to include them in the comments below.
If these free courses are not enough, check out our ebook “The Social Traffic Code!” We give you the exact steps you have to take to grow free traffic from social media.
Don’t miss it!
