Top 13 digital skills to learn and be employable in Cameroon

As Cameroonians, the more we grow older as graduates, the more we are realizing the faults of our education system. Digital skills are fast rising and every Cameroonian should consider mastering at least one. Recall, a major call for October 2016 strike in the North west and Southwest regions of Cameroon was called by teachers to denounce this limiting education system that graduate students every year without the necessary employability skills. The result of which is years upon years of unsuccessful job search.

Digital skills are so far the most accessible to everyone including Cameroonians and it does not matter how old your are, religion, or race. Everyone can increase their chances of being easily employed by leveraging on acquiring new skills; Digital skills!

What a digital skills?

If you had the feeling that this was hard, then you will be surprised how simply this is. Digital skills simply refer to one’s ability to use a digital device, like a computer or a smartphone, and the software that comes with it to create useful information. Knowing what software to use for what purpose to use it is more like digital literacy.

You can find a more comprehensive definition here. So what are these skills that you should really be craving for?

1. Basic computing skills

Nowadays, practically every youth in Cameroon has access and can conveniently use a smartphone. Smartphones are more common than PCs, yet that should not stop your from learning basic computing.

By basic computing here, I mean you should at least be able to use most common word processors like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc., or spreadsheet packages like Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, etc. You can advance by including presentation packages like Microsoft PowerPoint and Database packages like Microsoft Access.

Start your basic computing skills learning here.

2. Sales skills

How many times do people try to sell you something per day, or have you tried selling something to someone? The smartest and mist successful people are those that learned how to make sales. For your information, you can sell anything now. I mean anything, your just need to find someone who needs what you have.

If you do not produce anything, you can as well sell the things that others are producing for a very fair commission returns.

3. Graphic designing skills

Graphic designing is all about using software packages to create graphical images. These images include logos, posters, flyers, letterheads, infographics, etc. The graphical image can be printed after the design or just be published online.

If you wished to become a vector graphics designer, you should consider learning things like CorelDRAW, Inkscape, etc. But if you choose to become a raster graphics editor, you should learn Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, etc

If you are limited by time and still however want to learn graphic designing, you can resort to an online graphic tool such as Canva. You can check for more such free graphic design tools here

4. Content creation skills

If you reached here, just know that, this post in itself is content. I am creating content around this particular topic, digital skills to learn so as to be employable in Cameroon. People, businesses, organizations need content that can drive sales and engage their customers on a daily basis.

Your job as a content creator is to understand your business and the needs of your clients, what interests them and create stories around those interests. That is how you keep them talking about the business. Can you do that?

5. E-commerce skills

The world is fast changing and everything is becoming monetized. Even your old shirts can be valuable to someone else. If you are creative enough to make your own stuff, it is much better, however, you can still sell anything else without needing to produce it. E-commerce just simply means selling goods online. The goods can be physical, virtual or downloadable.

Setting up a store can be as easy as signing up for a vendor account on Amazon, Shopify, and many others or a little complex as building your own e-commerce store. What ever option you take will be as good as learning how to sell.

If you are considering setting up your ecommerce store now, leave us a message and we will assist you.

6. Video / audio editing

It is just like content creation mentioned earlier, the difference is, you do not have to write, you can make or edit videos and audio. You should first ask yourself this, What interest’s my audience, Fun or Education?

Employing an expert in a company is way too expensive, so learning this perfect digital skill can really bring you some cash. Businesses are looking for more ways to reach their audience and videos and audios are one way they are succeeding, so join the trend and start making some videos.

7. Copywriting skills

Do not mistake this for copyrighting. Copywriting is a way of writing text for the sole purpose of advertisement or marketing. If you are good at writing, with an additional flare to capture the attention of the audience to a something, or a product, Then copywriting can be your thing. What you need to focus on here are catchy words which depend solely on the interests of your audience.

8. Social media marketing skills

Industry leaders (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) have over 1B active users. It’s no surprise social media is the second most efficient traffic channel. The goal is SMM is to create shareable and engaging content for the audience. This is work on itself, and businesses want to keep an eye on the products and services they produce. As an SMM expert you role is to engage with the businesses clients, bring more clients from social media and give detail statistics on the results of the campaigns so that management can take better informed decisions.

The social media algorithms are changing everyday, demanding more and more effort to stay at the top and be visible to a wider number of people. If you can master this, then you are good to go as an SMM expert. If you have a business and you are reading this, leave us a message to help you grow your business over social media.

9. Ghost writing skills

If you enjoy reading, well not for books with over 500 pages. Ask yourself, how many people wrote it? Well, it is obvious, because the authors are already written at the cover page. Well, They are more authors to books than what actually appears on the front page. They are called ghost writers.

With ghost writing, you are paid to contribute to the writing of a book with a condition that your name will not appear in it, no matter how the book succeeds in the market. That is write, because each and everyone of us have a piece of information that is required to make a whole piece.

10. Research and data entry skills

The internet is vast so as the amount of information available for reference work. So the thing is not every expert out they has enough time to scout for information on the internet, even in the library. But if you can get the information for him, trust me, you going to be making some good sums of money. You don’t need to strain yourself figuring out what he wants he gives you every detail and sometimes, you can be lucky enough for the author to tell you where to get the information.

11. Cybersecurity skills

Practically everything now is done with the use of the internet and it has given rise to another form of malicious activities, notably, cybersecurity. Whether you want to start a new career in cybersecurity or just learn the techniques you need to remain save while connected to the global network, cybersecurity is a key digital skills that everyone needs, so do businesses that highly depend on the internet.

Start with the basics and Learn how hackers gain access to our devices, how they use their access, and how they can be detected and removed from systems. The more familiar you are with these things, the better equipped you’ll be for keeping yourself safe online.

12. Search engine optimization skills

All business are trying as hard as they can to have a presence on the internet, the search engines are not just letting them be so visible. The smarter companies are now employing SEO experts to make this possible thereby promoting the continues need of SEO experts. Somehow, SEO goes with content creation.

As an SEO expert, you know the keywords, most used words on search engines and you know exactly how to play around those words and provide content for a business. By maximizing on a company’s SEO, you are increasing the number of visitors and by constantly employing Call-To-Action, you can easily turn those visitors to paying customers. All that a business needs.

13. Email Marketing skills

If you are looking at this as an outdated way of marketing, please have a rethink. Statistics show a twice-high user base of users having emails at about 4.9billion users. Secondly, users love emails: welcome emails show an 82% open rate and 49% of users would like to receive weekly promo emails. See here. To win as an email marketer, you must learn the very basics of personalization, that is, you should write an email to someone as if you knew the person. By addressing him, that way, you gain his interest.

Conclusion

To learn any of these digital skills is a matter of will? You can start learning the very basics on Google and if you prefer the video explanations, you can always try Youtube. The key point to take home here is that, Digital Skills are becoming very essential to your very survival. When companies do recruitment now, they always like to know whether or not you have the very basics of computing as more work is now computerized. In my next post, i will be telling you where to learn all these courses at very affordable prices, or even start learning the basics completely free.