Boost Your Data Literacy
Analysts often feel extraordinarily overwhelmed when it comes to collecting data. Those feelings take on a new level when they are required to learn new skills for managing data. Marketers have more ways to process data, analyze data and report insights that support their organizational objectives. This can make it challenging to determine the best starting point for learning how to extract insights from data and develop data literacy with their current tool set.
Fortunately, opportunities for learning data literacy are on the rise, with a growing number of online courses focusing on the key concepts that drive meaningful business outcomes. Many resources exist now for marketing training (some are covered here). There are further resources that can increase your data literacy. Some courses are free certifications, while others are training supplements for tools and mentorship programs for concepts associated with data such as cybersecurity, agile development and other cloud services.
Excel remains a widely used tool, so learning resources exist seemingly everywhere, such as LinkedIn’s Education Center and continuing education programs such as University of Delaware Professional & Continuing Studies. One great course for touching up your Excel skills is Analyzing Data with Excel from IBM. This five- week course covers several features in the tool. Another is from a developer bootcamp called freeCodeCamp. The course, called MS Excel Tutorial for Beginners, offers the basics for using Excel, including the latest features.
When it comes to databases, marketers are more than familiar with SQL. Data has reinvigorated ways to query databases. Yet despite the overwhelming variety of database options, many firms rely on data hosted within SQL tables. SQL has been around the corporate tech block, so in a fast-paced tech world, it is a workhorse as familiar as Excel. It is no wonder people are rediscovering the logic of SQL joins and queries in their training choices.
There are numerous platforms for learning SQL. Microsoft, for example, offers Azure SQL Fundamentals, a course featuring free certification vouchers for participants in its cloud-based SQL labs and learning paths. The course is one of five modules Microsoft offers in support of its Azure services. There are other live training and certifications available from Microsoft (You can click here for schedules and information). The free CodeCamp bootcamp also offers an SQL course online.
Python has become extremely popular in business because of its broad use for constructing apps, websites, chatbots and data models for machine learning. Created 20 years ago, it quickly caught on with programmers due to its readability and ease of use. Python is as adept at solving issues in mathematics, engineering and deep learning as it is in manipulating and visualizing data.
Like SQL, there are sources aplenty for strengthening your data modeling skills in Python. Many are aimed at developer audiences, but many more are offering courses straightforward enough to allow a marketing analyst to understand what can be done with data brought into a Python environment. They include IBM Data Science Professional Certification (which also includes SQL in its sessions) and Datacamp, which specializes in courses for data engineers, programmers and data scientists (Python for Marketing) .
When it comes to R Programming, the sky’s the limit for what kinds of courses exist. The use of R has been dramatically extended, thanks to data practitioners who found applications for research and very academic statistics through R, and then created packages to expand the usability of the language. Now there is an R course tailored for many subjects and providing compelling applications in real world cases.
Marketers can start with a DataCamp certification program called the DataCamp Career Track, which includes hands-on projects and quizzes. Another resource is DataQuest (Data Analyst in R).
