Learning to program is one of the great educational challenges of our society. It is becoming increasingly important to be computer literate and the ability to program and understand programming is becoming essential to remain competitive in an increasingly connected and rapidly changing world of work.
Our civilization is experiencing unprecedented changes across many realms, largely due to the rapid advancement of information technology. The ability to code and understand the power of computing is crucial to success in today’s hyper-connected world. [Al Gore – On Code.org].
That’s why we love initiatives that are committed to giving a strong push for more and more people to become computer literate. Code.org is a non-profit platform sponsored by companies like Microsoft or Facebook whose goal is to spread computer literacy to all children in the USA.
These types of projects clearly have a focus on today’s students and tomorrow’s future workers. But what about today’s professionals? The digital services sector is enjoying good health and The number of people working in it is increasing every year.. These are very often workers with an excellent background in marketing and advertising but with a complete lack of knowledge of the most basic computer concepts. This lack of knowledge translates into a fear of anything to do with code. We are not saying that these profiles of workers should have advanced computer skills, but that they should be trained in the rules and concepts that are the basis of digital language: HTML[HyperText Markup Language] and CSS [Cascading Style Sheets].
Reasons to learn HTML and CSS
There are many reasons why an online marketer should have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. We give you a list of 10 simple points:
- Getting the most out of online marketing: SEO, SEM, e-mail marketing, content marketing, social networks, web analytics… Any online marketing tool requires certain technical knowledge that we will never understand if we do not know the basics of web programming.
- Use online marketing software to the maximum level: web pages, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, browser element inspector, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Generally, the advanced functions of these tools require some technical knowledge.
- To be able to communicate properly with other profiles of the team such as web developers or layout designers: Have you ever talked to one of these profiles and felt lost or did not get the expected result because he did not understand you? With basic programming skills, you will be able to speak their language and better understand the limitations that exist on the web.
- Lose the fear of looking at the source code of a page and interpret what we are seeing: Sometimes, something can be apparently well designed, but poorly coded. If you don’t look at the code, you’ll never figure it out.
- Implement fundamental web elements for online marketing without the need for a web developer: Not relying on third parties to make changes and implement improvements will allow us to work faster, our work to be more efficient and your business to grow faster. For example, with Google Tag Manager we will be able to configure Google Analytics events without the need for a web developer.
- Better understand the concepts of on-site SEO optimization. An important part of search engine optimization requires coding the contents of a web site following some guidelines, which are set by public programming standards, but which you will never understand if you do not know how to program. For example, do you know how to code an article title to make it more relevant for SEO?
- Knowing how to analyze whether a website is well coded or not: in the online sector there are those who take advantage of the lack of technical knowledge of marketing professionals to deliver poor quality work. There are free tools such as the w3c validator that allow you to validate the code, but if you do not have a minimum knowledge of web programming, you will hardly be able to interpret it.
- Learn how to use web testing tools and understand the diagnosis: For example, microdata testing, fundamental for SEO and Content Marketing nowadays or tools that will allow you to know if your website is optimized for mobile devices.
- Get more out of WYSIWYG editors: There are operations that a text editor cannot solve and it is necessary to chop up some pieces of code. Or it may happen that the editor introduces too much code, which slows down the loading of the pages. This can be cleaned up if necessary. For example, there are times in WordPress when you encounter a line break that is not appropriate or a whole block of text in bold.
- More career opportunities in a job market where a lot of flexibility is demanded: Knowing programming, nowadays, is a clear advantage in any marketing CV. At Reinicia, it’s the first thing we teach everyone who starts working in our team. HTML and CSS are the gateway to the world of web programming.
Would you like to take the leap and have a differential advantage among marketing and communication professionals?
We have a course where you’ll discover how fun and surprisingly easy it is to learn to code. But let’s face it, you won’t be able to master HTML and CSS and you won’t be able to set up an online store, but you will have some basic knowledge that can serve you throughout your professional career and maybe open up your curiosity and other job opportunities.
