Developing your periphery skills | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

There’s always more to learn when it comes to fields within the web industry, and this means there are even more opportunities to build on your success and stand out from the crowd. Whilst most web professionals specialise in one area, developing your complementary skills not only makes you more attractive to clients and employers, but also helps you find inspiration and even develop related hobbies.

Map out your main area of expertise

It’s best to do this as a bubble diagram as it can get quite messy. If you’re a web designer for example, you might want to add things like responsive design, WordPress, Photoshop and so on. Then number them in terms of which you enjoy the most, which will give you an idea of where you might want to expand your skills. If you’ve prioritised Photoshop, you might want to learn more about illustrating or creating your own fonts. If you’ve rated responsive design highly, it may be a good idea to learn more about mobile frameworks or optimisation.

Don’t worry if there’s nothing that immediately jumps out or springs to mind; it’s likely you’d just benefit more from looking further afield, and this can be done by looking at the periphery skills you already have some expertise in and want to build on.

Identify the periphery skills you already have

A good place to start is LinkedIn. What have you been endorsed for? What skills are shown within the projects you’ve worked on? What skills do you have listed? If you have a portfolio, look at the skills you’ve expressed in that too. If you’ve ever wanted to take on a project but ended up abandoning the idea because you weren’t confident enough, pick out the skills you need to develop from that.

Make a list of the skills you have and rank them according to your experience in them and how confident you’d be to take on a professional job with that at the core.

You might want to consider:

  • Web development (e.g. programming languages, experience with specific software, platforms and frameworks)
  • Web design (e.g. specific techniques, software, design and front-end development cross-over)
  • Search engine optimisation (e.g. knowledge of current strategies, knowledge of penalty triggers, confidence in explaining decisions and recommendations)
  • Marketing (e.g. promotion, branding, selling)
  • General business skills (e.g. budgeting, organising, networking)
  • Photography (e.g. DSLR experience, photo editing, lighting techniques)
  • Graphic design and print skills (e.g. designing and sizing for print, software, illustration skills)

Ideally, the skills you choose to concentrate on will not only be interesting to you on a personal level but also compliment your work. However, even if you rarely use your periphery skills, they will still help you make better decisions, often subconsciously.

Getting started

Once you’ve made a short list of skills, narrow it down to just one choice. You can always give yourself a timeframe to learn and understand it before moving on to something else if you only want a basic grounding or you’re interested in a lot of different areas.

Identifying the best place to start is crucial to avoid losing heart or giving up altogether, especially as periphery web skills can have very different starting points. In areas that are slower to change, such as general business skills, a highly rated book can kick-start your learning. In fields that are very fast-paced, such as SEO, you’ll benefit much more from one or two trusted websites (such as Moz.com) that publish regular articles as even online posts from a few months ago can be wildly out of date. There are plenty of websites where you can learn to code for free, such as Codecademy, and YouTube is great for video tutorials across a wide range of topics. If you’re looking to learn something quite complex from scratch, like photography, try checking out local courses in your area.

Set aims and goals

Ideally a periphery skill should be something you’re naturally self-motivated to develop because it genuinely interests you. However, if you’re using it for job purposes or you don’t have much spare time, it’s best to set yourself some goals so you have something to aim for and an idea of the level you want to reach. You may even find that you end up liking another field more than your current one! Your aims could be as specific as ‘Be able to code X myself’, or as vague as ‘Learn more about composition’ or ‘Illustrate something and be happy with the final result’. It’s your decision.

Periphery skills broaden your appeal and competitiveness in the market as well as helping you rejuvenate your interest in the web industry and improve your main skills. It’s still productive, but you have more control than bosses or clients give you and a lot more leeway to explore.

(Image credits: Stephan Ridgway and INPIVIC Family).

What are your periphery skills and how do you plan to develop them? Let us know in the comments.

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