Content marketing is all about informing your audience and sharing knowledge.
So why not take it to the next level?
A surprising number of top brands in various industries have done just that, by offering online classes.
Some are free, while others are paid, but a lot them have gained a good deal of popularity.
Marketing SaaS companies, in particular, have gotten a lot of mileage out of this strategy.
Digital marketing moves fast, meaning marketers and entrepreneurs are always learning new things over the course of their careers.
MailChimp, one of the best known email marketing software companies, has started offfering a variety of free classes on the online learning community Skillshare.
Hootsuite, a social media software platform, is doing something similar with their Hootsuite Academy courses.
In a recent blog post, content marketer Dawn Papandrea explains how these companies use education to attract and retain new customers.
MailChimp and Hootsuite Academy: Brands offer online classes for free or a fee
The email marketing platform MailChimp offers a variety of classes via SkillShare.
Free courses include Getting Started with Online Marketing, which encompasses 14 short videos led by Allyson Van Houten, product marketing lead at MailChimp.
Nearly 30,000 students have taken that course, which totals one hour and 11 minutes.
[image source: Content Marketing Institute]
The social media management tool Hootsuite offers free courses, which have been taken by more than 200,000 professionals.
One intermediate course is titled Social Media Strategy – From A to Z.
[image source: Content Marketing Institute]
There is also a 40-hour Advanced Social Media Strategy Certification course for $999, which is created in partnership with Syracuse University’s renowned S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
To date, 30,000 people have earned a certification through the academy.
You can check out more stories about brands using education as part of their content strategy in the full blog post from The Content Marketing Institute.
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