#YouDoNew - Google Analytics Academy
This week for #YouDoNew I began a project that will span a few weeks, but that I hope will have some lasting impact.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular and powerful website analytic tools available, and is completely free. I've had some experience with it for my own website, and notice that it is frequently listed as desirable knowledge on job postings for marketing, communications, and social media positions. My current knowledge of the software isn't enough for me to be competitive in the field, so when I learned through a Reddit thread that it's possible to become certified in Google Analytics, and for free at that, I added it to my list of things to do.
While looking for a new project for this week I remembered this certification and decided to give it a go. At the worst I've got some new resume fodder, and at best I can harness this powerful tool to get a better understanding of my website traffic and find new ways to gather and engage an audience.
I decided to start with the most basic courses, considering my limited knowledge. The lessons so far are delivered via easy-to-understand videos and interactive demonstrations. I particularly like that the videos are also transcribed, so that after watching I am able to read through the transcription to hone in on aspects that seem important, or that I didn't fully understand in the first watch-through.
It's been over a year since my last real lesson in anything, but note-taking is coming back to me easily, and I scored very well on the first evaluation.
There are four sections of the Google Analytics Academy, each broken down into three our four courses with four or five lessons per course. I plan to complete the lessons as time permits (I'm planning on at least one per day), and should finish in a few months at most. After that we'll see if the time spent on this project was worth it, but the fact that I'm putting in time and effort to learn something new is enough to keep me happy.
#YouDoNew - Week 5 - August 7 to 13
