The Digital Skills Training Agency

For businesses based in County Durham, Tyne & Wear and Northumberland

This is a learning-packed opportunity for you to gain TWO qualifications to benefit your business! These fully-funded courses take place over a Friday, Saturday and Sunday to allow you to come out of your business so you can work on your business.

Going for Growth (NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Developing Enterprise Skills)

Going for Growth is designed to use your own business as the case study so that everything you do and everything you learn has a practical application to your business. This will directly influence the growth of your business profits. This certificate allows you to meet other like-minded SME businesses, giving you time that you might not have in your day-to-day life to set goals for you and your business.

Digital Hype (NCFE Level 2 Award in Digital Promotion for Business)

As a part of this programme, you will be shown the process for measuring the effectiveness of digital content that you created to market your business. With these combined skills you will be able to; decide which the right digital platforms are for you, how to create the best content and how to see what works well and build on that so you can get the best results from your business.

How much does it cost?

This residential course is fully-funded. We pay for your hotel, food and refreshments throughout the training.

Who can get this course fully funded?

• SME businesses based in the Tees Valley (SME business are those that employ less than 249 employees)
• Owners, Managers or employees of that business

Come get charged up! Come along for something to eat, a bit of cake and all the help you need with your technology!

Our ‘tech coffee morning’ is perfect for anyone who feels they aren’t using their phone, tablet or laptop to it’s fullest potential. We’ll be sharing some top tips as well as answering your questions about how to get ‘charged up’ with knowledge so you can be confident about your kit.

We’ve met lots of great businesses, that want to take their business to the next level, but are hampered by technology. So we’ve brought our famous ‘explain things simply’ method to the very equipment that you need to be able to use every day.

In this short half-day session, we’ve built a list of things we’re commonly asked how to do, and we’ll be on-hand to answer any of your other questions. We’ll show you things like –

• Making sure you’re backing your data up
• Shortcuts for your device to make using it simple
• Using your browser to get around the internet, safely and securely
• Making sure the transactions you make are safe (shopping, internet banking etc.)

Are your emails being opened? That’s what it’s all about, right?

⭐ Come find out how to get more people to open your emails ⭐

Sending out an email to 10,000 people and having no one open it is pointless (and soul-destroying, to be honest ) – in this creative, practical and FUN workshop, we look at how to get your more business from your emails!

Bring along your list of email addresses (we’ll send you instruction on how to get them into a super-simple document) and you’ll be guided through how to build and send an effective email ⭐ that gets results! ⭐

We explain why you shouldn’t be using Outlook, GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo to send your emails – and how you’ll be able to get more sales from your emails by changing the way you’re creating, thinking about and sending them.

We’ll also help you understand what GDPR means to your emails and how to maximise this to your benefit!

By attending this practical workshop, you will:

• Create and configure your MailChimp account
• Be guided through the advanced DNS configuration to help inbox delivery
• Create an email list (database of recipients)
• Measure the effectiveness of that campaign with analytic reporting

To make sure that you get the most of this session, please come prepared with;

• A laptop to access MailChimp
• The username and password for your account
• Your existing customer/client contact list

The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) workshop is designed for businesses to better understand how search engines, like Google, approach their website, understand what topics it covers and whether to serve that businesses website as a solution to a query that a searcher has when using search engines.

On this practical workshop, learners will be shown how to use tools that SEOs use to check opportunities to optimise pages and sites – you will have the opportunity to run these checks yourself, on any site, while supported by an experienced SEO trainer who will give you advice and guidance on how to make the most of the results you find.

This workshop introduces and explores topics including –

• Using SEO tools
• Ensuring your site is set up for success
• On-page optimisation
• Competitor analysis
• Choosing the right keywords