Looking for the best content strategy courses to polish your digital marketing skills? You’re in the right place! As an increasing number of businesses recognize the importance of having a well-crafted content plan, content strategy courses are growing in popularity.
In this guide, we’ll explore what a content strategist does before looking at eight of the best content strategy courses available online right now. While many more options are available, we’ve aimed to cover a good cross-section of what’s out there, with variations depending on needs, budget, and time.
We’ll cover the following:
Ready to find a content strategy course that’s right for you? Then let’s go.
1. The best content strategy courses
Now that we know what a content strategist does, here are some of the best content strategy courses available right now. First up…
CareerFoundry Digital Marketing Program
CareerFoundry’s Digital Marketing Program at a glance:
Cost: $6900 (10% discount if you pay upfront)
Time commitment: 4 months (30-40 hours/week) or up to 7 months (15-20 hours/week)
Perks: 1:1 expert mentor and tutor and interview coaching
Unique selling point: No job within six months of graduating? You get your money back
Content marketing rarely stands alone, so it’s worth considering a broad digital marketing program that covers content strategy with other essential aspects of the field, such as social media management.
While CareerFoundry’s Digital Marketing Program covers many digital marketing topics, it places content strategy front and center as its first achievement. You’ll learn to write engaging blog articles and call-to-action (CTA) focused landing pages. All this involves researching a target audience to ensure content is geared toward their needs, meaning you’ll learn about that, too. The achievement also covers measuring success, with an introduction to key performance indicators (KPIs), why they are essential, and how to ensure that you’re measuring the right ones.
Topics on the content strategy course include:
- Digital marketing fundamentals
- Intro to content marketing
- Target market research
- Branding & buyer personas
- Blog writing
- Landing page creation
- Launching a website
- Portfolio case studies
Find out more:
- Check out success stories
- Admission criteria
- Whet your appetite with some online digital marketing events
ClickMinded Content Marketing Training
ClickMinded Content Marketing Training Course at a glance:
Cost: $997
Time commitment: 3 to 6 hours
Perks: Lifetime access to the course, including any future updates
Unique selling point: 14-day money-back guarantee
ClickMinded’s Content Marketing Training course is a good option for those wanting an intensive but manageable content strategy course. Specifically designed for busy professionals, it doesn’t require a massive time commitment.
ClickMinded’s course aims to be interactive and fun, with plenty of videos and quizzes to help keep you engaged. As you progress, follow Sophie Tahran, Content Strategist at the popular ride-hailing app, Lyft. She’ll teach you precisely how to produce content marketing campaigns that target leads at the point when they are most likely to convert into customers. Going beyond a mere introduction to the topic, this is a practical course with solid tips for real-world content strategy. Plus, you get a personalized certificate at the end.
Topics covered include:
- How content marketing fits into your business
- Discovering your target personas
- Crafting messages that convert
- Creating content that attracts traffic
- Creating content that turns traffic into leads
- Creating content that turns leads into customers
- Building a strategic content calendar from scratch
- Picking the appropriate channels for your content marketing
- Writing copy that converts
- Content marketing walkthroughs and templates
Find out more:
HubSpot Academy Content Marketing Course
HubSpot Academy’s Content Marketing Course at a glance:
Cost: Free
Time commitment: 12 lessons over about 8 hours
Perks: Videos, quizzes, and a certificate of completion
Unique selling point: Available in English, German, Spanish, and French. Also, did we mention that it’s free?
If you’re an inbound digital marketing professional or content producer looking to get up to speed on content marketing tactics without paying for it, check out HubSpot’s Content Marketing Course.
This video-based course (54 videos across 12 lessons) isn’t the most interactive. Still, for a free course, it covers plenty of topics. You’ll get the basics of producing effective, consistent content suitable for humans and search engines. It’s also a great jump-off point if you want to decide which aspects of content strategy interest you the most. The course can help inform your choices if you pursue a more comprehensive paid program later.
You will learn about the following:
- The power of storytelling
- Building a content creation framework
- Planning a long-term content strategy
- Generating content ideas
- Creating quality blog content
- Using blogging to rank #1 on Google
- Extending content value through repurposing
- Creating topic clusters and pillar pages
- How to create a successful video marketing strategy
- Building a guest blogging strategy
- Effectively promoting content
- Measuring and analyzing content
Find out more:
Learn more about HubSpot Academy
Explore the full range of HubSpot Academy courses
Content Marketing. Content that Sells!
Udemy’s Content Marketing. Content that Sells! course at a glance:
Cost: $84.99 (but with regular discounts of up to 80% and more)
Time commitment: 2.5 hours
Perks: Downloadable resources, lifetime access, and a certificate of completion
Unique selling point: Available on both desktop and mobile
Udemy’s Content Marketing course is a concise, 2.5-hour course created by Anton Voroniuk, a Google Academy Agency Trainer and CEO of SkillsBooster Digital Marketing Academy.
Although the course may seem short for the price, it’s packed with practical, hands-on exercises, which you should aim to complete to get the most out of it. While there are no prerequisites for enrolling, Udemy recommends having an active online project you’re working on to apply their lessons in the real world. It’s also one of the most up-to-date courses on our list, so you’ll soon be up to speed on the latest trends. Being so short, you shouldn’t expect to get the level of detail you might from a more comprehensive program, but it’s not a bad starting point.
You’ll learn how to:
- Create a content marketing strategy
- Find a target audience and create relevant content for it
- Form a content plan
- Create popular content that sells
- Get more subscribers and loyal customers
- Optimize content for good search engine visibility
- Master popular analysis services
- Search for popular keywords
Find out more:
Check out more Udemy content strategy courses
Linkedin Learning’s Content Creation: Strategy and Tools course
Linkedin Learning’s Content Creation Strategy and Tools course at a glance:
Cost: $19.99 subscription, or free if you sign up for a month’s trial
Time commitment: 40 minutes
Perks: Additional access to over 16,000 expert-led courses
Unique selling point: Practical tips on using key content tools, and an official certificate of completion to showcase on your LinkedIn profile
Linkedin Learning’s Content Creation Strategy and Tools is a punchy, practical 40-minute course that’ll teach you the basics of content creation using specific content marketing tools. These include Ubersuggest, Airtable, and Facebook Creator Studio.
Guided by social media marketing expert Joanna Yung, you’ll learn how different tools can help you with various elements of content strategy. This means everything from initial ideas generation to creating and polishing written, graphic, and video content.
The course is perfect for those with limited time who quickly need to get up to speed with content strategy and its associated tools. It’s also great if you’re looking for a one-stop shop for your learning needs. The subscription comes with access to Linkedin Learning’s complete library of over 16,000 courses.
You will learn about the following:
- Why strategic content creation matters
- The content creation process
- How to generate topic ideas using Ubersuggest
- Planning and organizing content with Airtable
- Using Wordtune to produce your copy
- Using Canva to create social media graphics
- Using Mojo to create video content
- Using Facebook Studio for automatic posting
Find out more:
Check out Linkedin Learning’s entire course library
Meet Joanna Yung
Start your free trial to get started
Google Digital Garage: Promote a Business with Content
Google Digital Garage’s Promote a Business with Content course at a glance:
Cost: Free
Time commitment: 4 modules across 3 hours
Perks: Focuses on social media as well as content creation
Unique selling point: You’ll be learning from Google themselves
Google is a big name in digital marketing, but did you know they offer a free content strategy course? Promote a Business with Content is part of Google’s Digital Garage broader digital marketing program and is designed to help budding content strategists get to grips with the concept.
The course is split into four modules, each of which is between 30 and 55 minutes long. Each is free and explores how social media, video, and other digital media can help businesses get noticed and connect with more customers.
While these topics are familiar territory for most digital marketers, you have the added comfort of knowing that you’re getting practical and easy-to-implement tips directly from Google themselves, whose algorithms—like them or not—play a fundamental role in the content ecosystem.
Topics you’ll learn about include:
- Getting noticed on social media (social media basics, goal setting)
- Diving into social media (long-term social media planning, content advertising, measuring success, and pitfalls to avoid)
- Making the most of video content (how to introduce video into your online strategy, managing videos on budgets, sharing and promoting content, and advertising on video-sharing sites)
- Getting started with content marketing (getting to know your customers, writing for online audiences, and more)
Find out more:
Read more about Google’s Digital Garage program
Explore more of Google’s Digital Garage courses
Sign up for Promote a Business with Content
Ahrefs Blogging for Business course
Ahrefs Blogging for Business course at a glance:
Cost: Free
Time commitment: 11 modules across 5 hours
Perks: Targeted learning on how to produce blog content
Unique selling point: The only course created and delivered by Tim Soulo, Ahrefs’ CMO.
Ahrefs provides powerful SEO and content marketing tools, so who better to learn from when it comes to content strategy?
Split into 40 lessons across 11 modules, the Ahrefs Blogging for Business course is a great way to dive deep specifically into the world of blog writing and content strategy in this area.
Led by Ahrefs’ head of marketing, Tim Soulo, the course covers everything you could hope to know about promoting yourself via your company’s blog. Since Ahrefs practices what it preaches and is excellent at using these tactics to promote its services, you can rest assured that you’re getting much more than just hot air and hype. The only downside is that blogging is just one aspect of content strategy, so you’ll need to take another course (or courses) to brush up on the other skills.
You’ll learn about the following:
- How to create a blogging strategy that attracts potential customers
- An introduction to the content marketing playbook that helped Ahrefs to grow their organic traffic
- How to get consistent traffic from search engines like Google
- How to come up with topics for your blog
- How best optimize your articles
- Techniques for blog promotion
Find out more:
Check out Ahrefs’ free content marketing and blogging tutorials on YouTube
Explore the full range of Ahrefs Academy free courses
Skillshare Data-Driven Content Strategy for Humans
Skillshare’s Full-Funnel Content: Data-Driven Content Strategy for Humans, at a glance:
Cost: $32/month subscription fee
Time commitment: 1 hour (but you can check out other courses on this topic)
Perks: Access to additional courses, community activities, and more
Unique selling point: The course focuses on the data analysis aspect of content strategy
Seeking a course packed with practical, actionable tips on how to use data to inform your content strategy? Then Skillshare’s Full-Funnel Content: Data-Driven Content Strategy for Humans is for you. Taking you through each stage of the content marketing process, the course focuses less on tactics and more on measuring ROI for each piece of content. This includes introducing some key tools you might use, such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, and Semrush. It may be a short course, packed with case studies, worksheets, and more, but it packs a punch!
You’ll learn about the following:
- Top-funnel strategy (to attract brand-new prospects to your business)
- Mid-funnel strategy (to teach leads about your brand, products, and services, and to encourage them to convert into paying customers)
- Post-funnel strategy (for building relationships with existing customers)
- An introduction to Google Analytics, UTM.io, Google search techniques, SEOQuake, and Semrush
- Case studies that help you understand and evaluate content strategies
Find out more:
Check out Skillshare’s entire catalog of content strategy courses
2. What does a content strategist do?
Before getting into the courses themselves, what does a content strategist do?
In short, a content strategist oversees content creation, publication, and promotion on behalf of an organization or brand. Sounds simple enough.
On paper, yes. But when you start digging a bit deeper, the content strategist’s role is more complex than it seems.
First of all, the definition of content can be broad. It might include anything from blog posts or user guides to email newsletters about the latest products and events to social media posts and video content. All these options can provide engaging, informative, or shareable ways to build an audience.
But it’s not just about creating highly consumable content. Content strategists also need to consider the effectiveness of what they’re producing. This means using data analytics and reporting tools to ensure their work has a demonstrable impact.
Finally, a content strategist must always be alert to new ways of thinking and the latest trends and technologies for content management, creation, and distribution. No mean feat! While content strategy requires lots of time, effort, and love, it can also be highly rewarding, and a lot of fun, too.
3. Next steps
So there have it… 8 of the best content strategy courses for 2024!
In this post, we’ve learned that a content strategist’s role is to produce compelling, targeted content—including videos, images, and the written word—optimized for search engines and social media. We’ve also learned that to produce high-quality content, digital marketers need a solid content strategy in place.
Now you have a taste of the different options—from quick, free courses offering high-level introductions to those that are more costly but also more comprehensive—you should be ready to take your research further.
See which courses fit your eye and fit your budget, and consider dipping a toe in with a free option before signing up for a paid program. Whatever happens, don’t be afraid to take those first steps. Before you know it, you’ll be well on the way to becoming a top-notch content strategist who knows their stuff!
Want to learn more about digital marketing? Enroll in this free, 5-day digital marketing short course or check out the following practical guides: