Is it high time for content marketing to be taught at a college level?

Having basic knowledge about any job profile is the first criteria while hiring the right talent for any role in any field. And most of such basic skills are taught in colleges, which are polished on the job.

However, among a plethora of courses and specialised subjects in colleges, content marketing is a skill that is rarely taught despite this stream of marketing being vast as it transcends across all the mediums.

On-the-job experience usually gets you every required skill to discharge your duties but the basics seem to be always missing. This is as true as learning a language and its grammar, which if acquired at a tender age remains forever.

Basics in content marketing are the trickiest. Even experts often fail to draw a clear distinction among a pure-play content initiative by a brand, a branded content piece, a long-form advertisement and just a brand placement within a piece of content.

Gayatri Makhijani

“Industry knowledge and examples are lacking and we need to bundle and combine this together to bring this to students. And while a full-time formal course may not be essential for this, a part-time certification would be useful,” said Gayatri Makhijani, Lead, Media, Digital Marketing and Social Media, Intel India. “We can also consider bringing this as a module in higher education courses.”

While some skills are taught in colleges, some come with experience. But there are a few things that come naturally, such as critical and creative thinking, which make a person a perfect fit to be a successful content marketer. Sometimes, educational training makes one discover that knack.

Neena Dasgupta

Neena Dasgupta, CEO and Director at Zirca Digital Solutions, believes starting early will help in being intuitive towards understanding the audience and crafting a great story to engage people.

Hitesh Dhingra

But Hitesh Dhingra, Founder and MD, The Man Company, feels that it can be a bit premature and challenging to decide at a college level whether you are interested in content marketing.

“Most of things that one learns in college are based on theory and once you enter the real world, we unlearn and learn again. That’s the mantra I have always followed—Learn, Unlearn and Learn again. Once you know the basics of marketing, which a college teaches you beautifully, it can be applied to any area of marketing. One needs to give oneself some time and learn in the field, which area you really enjoy and your is head into; the rest you learn on the job.”

Formal education or training at a college level does not always give directions to your career but helps develop skills required to perform your job functions.

Naila Patel

Naila Patel, Executive Creative Director of Mirum India, said, “When we get freshers in the team, there is a lot of handholding to be done. Even people who graduated from top institutes in the country need to be coached in basics when it comes to writing for digital. A course in content marketing or specialisation at the college level would help.”

Content Marketing is a very broad term and can have a lot of specialisations that can be included in it.

Sajni Masturlal

According to Sajni Masturlal, Head of Content at Wakefit.co, “Courses at a college level could give someone a basic understanding of certain fundamentals, but every brand has a different journey and the best way to learn what works for a brand is by actually creating content and evaluating the impact it has had on the brand on different fronts such as ROI, brand awareness and recall value.”

Even as brands have been riding on content for decades, several factors such as media fragmentation and reducing attention span of the audience have brought this stream to the forefront.

Many other aspects of content marketing such as finding the right content partner and picking the best content for your brand comes after you know A-Z of your brand.

Madhura Ranade

Madhura Ranade, Head Branded Content and Partnerships, Isobar India, said, “We are in the age of the ‘content creator’. Days and personal experiences are planned basis what is most “instagrammable”. For such a generation, creation comes naturally. While most of us take pictures of our food first, there are some that really understand the pulse of the creator and the viewer. The fun lies in finding the right creator or content for the brand and the correct opportunity for fitment. I don’t think one needs to learn this in theory. This space is evolving daily. As long as one develops the basic understanding of target audiences, media planning, SEO, and storytelling, it will help establish a foundation for someone looking to build their career in content marketing.”

Darshan Bhatt

Darshan Bhatt, CEO, GoQuest Digital Studios, goes further and calls for the need to train people with skills needed to perform at the highest level. “Look at this course as a parallel to vocational courses,” he said.