Whether you’ve just lost your job, had your hours cut back or you work from home, you probably have a lot more time now that your country or city has gone into lockdown.
While it sucks that you can’t go outside, it does mean that you now have time to focus on a project you always postpone, learn that skill you’ve always wanted to know or take that course you bought a year ago.
The best thing you can do for yourself during this time is invest in yourself!
And it’s totally fine if you don’t always feel like self-improvement right now. We’re all going through a hard time, and we all have to find a way to deal with this.
But when you get a creative moment or an urge to be productive, USE IT! Jump on that feeling and elevate your skills. It’s going to help you feel more productive and might make you feel better overall. It will definitely help you in the long run.
There are a ton of skills you can learn or practice while you’re stuck at home. The internet is full of amazing masterclasses, virtual summits and courses to help you improve your skillset.
First things first: Figure out What You Want to Do and Why
The best way to decide what skill you want to learn, is to figure out why you want to learn it.
- Are you trying to uplevel your professional skills so you’ll be able to charge more in the future?
- Do you want to change careers?
- Do you want to learn a fun skill for a new hobby?
It’s really important to figure out your WHY before you figure out your WHAT.
This will not only help you find the best resource for the skill you want to learn, it will also help you determine if you’re willing to spend money on it.
If you’re trying to learn how to knit, you’re probably good watching some YouTube tutorials and getting to work. There are a ton of free resources out there for easy and fun skills, so if you are trying to get into a new hobby, that’s probably your best bet.
If you want to change careers or uplevel your skills, it’s a bit more important to vet the resources you want to use. There are a lot of cheap or free resources on the internet, but make sure you research who made them and read their testimonials.
It would be a shame if you ended up putting time or money into a course that doesn’t deliver what it promised.
So let’s look at some of the most useful professional online skills you should consider learning while you’re on lockdown.
1. Content Repurposing
The one skill that every business owner loves is content repurposing (even if some don’t know it yet). As a business owner, it’s a struggle to create new content all the time. And trust us, they don’t have to!
That last blog post was great, all the research is there, so reuse it! It can be repurposed into social media posts, a newsletter, a podcast or a YouTube video.
Not sure how or why that works?
Some people love to read, others love to listen or watch. Reusing the same content on different platforms just helps business owners reach a bigger audience.
And you have to promote it somehow, so why not repurpose some of those main points into social media posts to draw attention.
Once you’ve mastered this, you can pitch this skill to business owners and blow their mind. You’ll save them so much time, not only by taking over the task, but also by giving them tons and tons of content without spending hours coming up with new ideas.
2. Pinterest Management
You’ve probably used Pinterest in your personal life. Maybe you gathered travel inspiration, used it to decorate your house or gather recipes in one place.
But did you know that Pinterest is a great tool for business as well?
Pinterest is an amazing way to drive traffic to a website. It’s a great tool for bloggers and online shops.
And guess what? A lot of bloggers are still lacking in their Pinterest game, so learning how to use Pinterest for business is a super marketable skill!
Tailwind has some great free resources on their website. But if you’re serious about working as a Pinterest manager, we highly recommend taking a Pinterest course. There’s a lot of techniques and information that you need to learn before you can become truly successful.
If pinning for a living sounds fun to you, we have a great introduction on how to work online as a Pinterest manager in our free Work From Anywhere Virtual Summit from our favorite Pinterest guru. It will help you decide if this is for you!
3. Social Media Support
You probably know how to use your own social media, but managing social media as a business owner is a whole different animal. You need to put out valuable content regularly and engage with your audience consistently, all while running your business.
For a lot of business owners, social media management is one of the first things they outsource. Some just want someone to spend 15 minutes per day responding to DMs and comments, others want someone to take over the whole thing including content creation.
If you know how to rock the social media game, you’ll have businesses knocking down your door for help. Social media management is a very valuable skill to have!
There are ton of social media management courses out there, so it’s important to research your sources when you start to learn! There’s a great seminar on how to work online as a social media manager included in our free Virtual Summit as well, so feel free to watch it and use the info in your search!
4. SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Say what? When you search for something on Google, what you’re typing into the search box are called keywords. Google ranks websites based on the keywords they are using to show you the best matching results.
Websites and blogs want to rank high in these searches, so they need to use the keywords their ideal audience searches for in their writing. If done correctly, the website will appear in the top search results and will be the most visible.
This is not an easy task for most business owners. SEO is a complicated game, so if you can learn some great SEO skills, you’ll be golden! Especially if you want to work with bloggers, want to ghostwrite for businesses or want to develop websites, this is a very valuable skill to have.
MOZ is one of the leading SEO platforms and has some very good SEO courses on their website.
Normally these are paid, but they are offering their trainings free of charge due to the pandemic until the 31st of May. This is an amazing opportunity to learn from SEO experts!
5. Video or Podcast Editing
Now that everybody is moving online, more and more people are starting podcasts and doing videos. Editing either is not an easy task if you’re not used to it, so we’re seeing this is outsourced a lot these days.
If you enjoy being a bit techy, this could be a perfect skill to learn! It definitely takes a bit of practice, but it’s a super practical skill to have.
There is a great webinar from a video editor and a video from a podcast manager included in the Work From Anywhere Virtual Summit, so if either of these appeal to you, you can learn more about how to get started there!
6. There Is so Much More to Learn!
You have the time, so when you find the motivation, go for it! You don’t HAVE to learn a marketable skill, you can also go for a self-improvement course or something else that sounds fun to you!
Here is a list of some online course platforms that are currently offering discounts or free trials you can look into as well!
- Udemy has opened up a free learning center with great resources. Most of their other courses are super affordable as well, so make sure you look around.
- Coursera is offering a bunch of free courses.
- Skillshare is offering the first 2 months of membership for free
Upgrade Your Skills!
There are SO MANY more skills and careers that you can consider, we just can’t list them all here.
Luckily, we thought ahead and put together the free Work From Anywhere Virtual Summit where you can hear from experts in different online work careers. They share how they got where they are now and what you can do to get started yourself.
So if you feel that motivation coming on, jump on it and learn that new skill! Our Virtual Summit can be super helpful to decide what you want to learn, but if you already know, then go for it!
We want you to be successful and come out of this lockdown with exactly the right skills for your next steps forward. But remember, there is no right or wrong way to deal with this situation. So if you’re not in the mood, that’s fine too. These resources will still be here when you’re ready for it!
We’re excited to see what you decide!
Katinka van den Berg is a virtual assistant here to help businesses create a consistent online presence based on providing value to their customers. When she’s not assisting environmentally conscious businesses with their content creation and social media management needs, she loves to travel and explore new cultures.
She’s a content intern for Virtual Assistant Internship and a member of 90 Day VA and assists with everything from content creation and repurposing to social media and blog management. To see all the services she offers and how she can help you, check out her Facebook page here.
