By Nikita Geldenhuys

Content marketing courses in South Africa

Vega School, Red & Yellow School, and the AAA School of Advertising are some of the educational institutions offering content marketing as a part of their broader courses. The digital marketing and training company, BlueMagnet, also presents a two-day content and social media marketing course.

Students are showing interest in these sections of the courses, says Alex Sudheim, senior lecturer in Copywriting at Vega School, an educational brand of The Independent Institute of Education. Vega’s Digital Marketing short learning programme, which covers content marketing, amongst other subjects, is also drawing professional interest.

“Content marketing is the creation of authentic, original communications that creates brand equity without shoving the brand down the consumers’ throats. Since this is the fundamental purpose of Creative Brand Communication (CBC), [a course Vega School offers], content marketing plays a large role in the way in which we teach.”

Wendy Shepherd, Copywriting lecturer at Red & Yellow School, tells media update that content marketing is an integral and essential part of the school’s Copywriting programme. “I teach SEO, content creation, transmedia narrative, and social media writing across several projects – both theory and practical – at beginners and advanced levels,” she says.

Shepherd also collaborates with a digital design colleague to provide training in Information Architecture and supplementary digital design, optimisation, and UX. The aim is to stimulate a more complete understanding of the purpose and objectives of content marketing.

The AAA School of Advertising’s digital marketing course includes a content marketing component. “We do not teach how to do content but we allude to its importance,” explains Cecilia Andrews, the faculty head of marketing communication at the school’s Johannesburg campus.

Students and professionals need access to more content marketing education

More education is vital to keep South Africa up-to-date with the worldwide growth of content marketing as a practice. Jessica Rose McEndoo, head of the content strategy and social media department at BlueMagnet, stresses that content marketing is vital to the survival of businesses, both in South Africa and globally.

“There is a definite space in South Africa [for content marketing to grow]. We are hearing about data-driven content everywhere and moving forward the next generation of digital millennials, who are hitting the workplace next year, would do well to master content marketing as a skill to produce clever content – with measurable results that will ultimately feed into businesses’ bottom line.”

Chantelle Booysen-Fourie, the Marketing Association of South Africa’s portfolio manager of communications, events and strategic partnerships, agrees there is a need for more content marketing courses locally.

Booysen-Fourie, who is a designated Chartered Marketer, points out that most learning modules do not show students how to make content marketing media platforms and content marketing part of their integrated marketing communications strategy.

“There is a dire need for young marketers to understand what content marketing is and also that it is not something that should exist on its own. It should be approached within the auspices of the greater marketing communications strategy.”

Sudheim says the demand for content marketing is still small, but that could change. It may be a new, niche practice now, but when content marketing specialists start receiving recognition, the demand for these skills could increase. This, Sudheim says, will result in increased supply of courses to meet it.

Copywriting courses can’t replace content marketing training, but they help

Content marketing is often considered as a form of copywriting, or even journalism. But there’s more to content marketing than just that, Booysen-Fourie tells media update. Journalism and copywriting may be elements of content marketing, but “they are not THE elements”. A good journalist may not be a good content marketer, for instance.

The two disciplines might go hand in hand, as Andrews explains: “I think that content marketing is a strategic communication issue. It deals with what should be said and how – and thus it seems to fall more in line with copywriting. The problem is how does a copywriter create content that is strategically correct, or how does a strategist create copy that is compelling and interesting.”

Copywriting and journalism might, however, be good places to start your content marketing career. The three disciples have much in common, Sudheim explains: “All three disciplines demand a rich imagination; a flair for storytelling; and the ability to create compelling, original, and authentic narrative of the more lateral kind.”

How South Africa can improve access to content marketing education

Recognising the country’s existing content marketing talent is one of the first steps. “I think that the best content marketers should be identified and that South African marketers who do this well should be given a platform to teach others,” Booysen-Fourie advises.

McEndoo sums up what needs to happen next: “South African brands are starting to wake up to the importance of content marketing. In 2015, the biggest investment in the top brands was content, and in 2016, content shone through again. The question now is how do South African businesses align their strategies to take advantage with quality content.”

In many industries, content marketing has become an essential marketing practice for brands. And, as Shepherd explains, the way the future of commerce is moving, Africa will be left behind if there aren't more courses made available to train people in this discipline.

“The internet is only getting bigger and the market more demanding.”

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Interested in content marketing? Read which 2016 content marketing trends made it into 2017 in our article, Five content marketing trends that survived 2016.