9 Resources to Help You Learn Coding Basics for the Average Marketer
Coding is becoming one of the more “marketable” skills for professional marketers. All puns aside, of all of the skills you could choose to learn in order to enhance your portfolio, coding is definitely something that has become easy to learn and even easier to apply in the daily work of a marketer. From website development to email marketing, those who know how to code certainly have the upper hand.
The bonus here is that there are now also a lot of online resources that teach you how to code for absolutely free. Those options that come at a cost also may surprise you and be less expensive than you’d think. Check out some websites that can help you get started with your class search:
Udemy has easily become one of the most popular sites for online courses in general, but their coding courses are fantastic for learning to code as a marketer. A quick search will find you a variety of courses for beginners, entrepreneurs, and even for kids! If you are a beginner and looking to learn applicable coding skills, they had courses on C#, HTML, JavaScript, and Web Design. The platform is extremely to use and classes start around $20 or so, there are also some free classes on Udemy—but most of the coding classes are low cost.
If you are looking for a site where you can learn from the best, without paying high-stakes tuition, Coursera is where it is at! With top names like Penn, Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, Stanford, UC San Diego, and Duke, you can absolutely expect to learn from the best professionals in the industry! Top courses include “Web Design for Everybody” constructed by the University of Michigan, “Code Yourself” by the University of Edinburgh, and “Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code” by the University of Toronto.
Codecadmy offers a completely free platform to learn how to code. Their website features a bunch of success stories of people who literally knew nothing about coding and then went on to implement it and become extremely successful in their careers. With over 25 million viewers around the globe, this is one of the more successful (purely coding) instructional sites out there, and it is definitely a good starting point if you are really looking to develop that skill set. This is not a place to learn theory, but rather a place to get thrown in knee’s deep with coding lessons and activities for learning quickly. They offer variety of courses including HTML & CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, and Ruby on Rails. It really is a one-stop shop for coding skills, so this is what we recommend as a Marketing Agency for those who work with us on our web design and landing page teams.
Khan Academy was one of the first sites to offer online coding courses. Since then they have expanded their course selection to include just about anything that might interest you in this arena. The website is known for using drawings, games and animations, to teach difficult concepts—and their coding courses are no different. Khan Academy teaches JavaScript, HTML and CSS. One of the really cool features is that students enrolled in the course at the same time can interact online and share the work they’ve created.
Code.org is really a site dedicated to learning advocacy, with the mission statement “Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science.” Obviously, not every child is enrolled in an academic environment where learning computer science skills is a possibility. Further, female students are often discouraged in one way or another from pursing this goal. As a project of advocacy, to make coding available to all, this site is a truly fantastic project. Even if you are a marketer having the desire to learn coding for performance reasons, I would highly recommend checking out this site. It is a great resource for beginning students. That being said, once you do become more advance, they also look for instructors to help children improve and learn their coding and computer science skills, so why not give-back for the skills you acquire?
Similar to Coursera, edX offers courses from the top name institutions—notably: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, UC Berkeley, The University of Texas, University of Maryland, and the University of Queensland. They offer a variety of coding courses, as well as series of courses for coding to get the most out of your learning experience and gain a range of skills that would be tough to learn in one class alone.
Whether it is Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Web Development, or other coding skills that you are looking to learn, Code Avengers is a good place to start. The courses range in time that you will need to dedicate. For example, Javascript is 77 hours of learning, where web development is 25 hours total. The best thing you can do is start with a little research and see what exactly it is that you want to learn coding for. If you are really just looking for skills to enhance your wed development as a marketer, than you may not need to spend 77 hours of your life learning Javascript (then again, that could always come in handy…right?)
Are you not completely sure that you have time for an online course or that you want to spend the time learning coding right now? That is a totally reasonable feeling and you might want to check out Treehouse for a free trial! Before you commit to a paid course you have access to their entire course library for free. Best of all, Treehouse offers the same type of courses (Javascript, HTML, C#, etc) as the other programs on this site—you are just guaranteed a try before you buy.
Lynda (brought to you by LinkedIn) is quickly becoming one of the most popular educational sites on the Internet. Similar to Treehouse, they also offer a free trial to explore their courses and try-out a few to see what you like. There are a ton of developer tools, which can be really useful for marketing skills outside of coding as well (such as app development), but their coding classes are really strong and their offerings basically cover anything you could need as a marketer. Some of the biggest companies such as Microsoft, NBC, Adobe, and Patagonia, have referred their employees to Lynda, so you know that it has to be one of the top places to go for online education.
The Takeaway
As fast as learning software is concerned, there is no shortage of it on the market. Checking out any of these sites is a good starting point if you are interested in learning coding (I am almost afraid there are too many options). My recommendation is to first figure out what kind of coding skills you want to acquire and go from there. If you are certain it is time to get learning, you might look into one of the sites with op-university developers, otherwise take advantage of one of the sites that offers a free trial.
What are your thoughts on these coding courses? Have you tried any of them yourself? Let us know in the comments section below!
About The Author
Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com
Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.
