I am a big believer in upskilling your knowledge – especially when it comes to content creation.

Learning more about content and content creation – including affinity topics that complement your knowledge – helps you to become more efficient and innovative with your content. This is so important to stand out and create content that you can be proud of and that your audience will love and share.

I’m sharing with you 4 courses that I have done and that I can recommend as being beneficial towards creating your own content as well as optimising it effectively.

A little disclaimer, these courses are not cheap. If you’re willing to invest the time and money then go for it but if not, there are other websites that you can explore such as Udemy and Coursera, however those I unfortunately cannot vouch for at this stage. Hopefully I’ll have more time in the future to explore those too – let me know if you’ve tried them!

In the meantime, let’s get going with looking at these 4 courses and if any take your fancy.

Red & Yellow’s Digital Content and Copy Writing Course

This course through Red & Yellow is a great place to start. The name gives it away really.

The scope of content it covers is really beneficial and the online learning platform is easy to navigate with a lot of support from the team at Red & Yellow.

It looks different to when I took it, which I must admit makes me want to take it again. The first topic is social storytelling and I am a huge advocate of telling stories in – and through – your content.

The fact that you get to physically create content and explore the creation process is a big win for me. Nothing beats practical learning.

They mention that at the end of the course you’ll be able to create a content marketing plan, which is so incredibly important. If you’re looking for a way to hone in your knowledge of content creation then I highly recommend this one.

GetSmarter’s Digital Photography Course

With social media being a hugely visual medium, having high quality photographs is an absolute must. If you’re creating content on your own then investing in learning the basics of photography is well worth it.

This digital photography course teaches you the basics of handling your camera and how to create killer shots. (Get it? Shots? Killer? Smooth one.)

I really enjoyed this course as although I was familiar with my camera, it was a great way to refresh and appreciate the camera settings and photographic techniques more.

It was peer review, which on a good day makes me cringe. But it was really valuable hearing the different perspectives people had of my work. You might think your image means one thing but someone else will see it completely differently. It’s a great lesson to keep in mind when creating content.

Overall a really fun course that gives you the chance to experiment with your photography. An important one if you’re looking to take your own photographs for your content.

GetSmarter’s Graphic Design Course

This graphic design short course was the first online short course that I ever did and certainly got me hooked.

I went through a stage in life where I wanted to be a graphic designer and this course was to test out if that is what I wanted to do. It wasn’t.

But it taught me a lot of valuable lessons when it comes to creating my own content for social media. Now I know the basics of design and what is visually appealing and attractive for my audience.

The course focuses on Adobe Illustrator and how to use it to create beautiful, effective designs. Funnily enough these days I use Adobe Photoshop to create my social media posts but I brushed off my Illustrator knowledge to create my logo.

A great course to get you thinking more about the visual impact of your content and how to create images that evoke responses from your audience.

GetSmarter’s Search Engine Optimisation Course

This is the latest course I completed. I’ve always felt intimidated by search engine optimisation but this course taught me that it’s not as terrifying as I first thought.

This search engine optimisation course gives in depth explanations of the basics and also positions SEO in the grand scheme of things illustrating how important it is to keep in mind when creating your content.

My favourite module focused on content strategy and it made me realise the importance of SEO when creating content. It’s something I’ve always put off as it is a complicated sounding “thing”.

Now I know that’s not true. Yes the analytics are still quite frightening to me but the benefits outweigh the fear.

SEO is an incredibly useful (and necessary) skill to build when it comes to maintaining your website and creating content online.

Final Thoughts

I think it’s safe to say that these courses touch the surface of all the ways you can create and optimise content that will resonate with your audience.

But they’re a good place to start if you’re just starting out – or even if you’re a seasoned creator looking to brush up on your existing knowledge.

What do you think? Are there any courses there that you would like to try or more that you can think of?

I’m trying to tell myself that I don’t need to do anymore courses but I think we both know that’s not true.