How DMND changed my life!
In 2011 I started my career as a freelance tourist guide in Cairo. As a fresh university graduate I was very enthusiastic about working in the Tourism sector. The daily routine was very satisfying to my passion, which was dealing with different people from different backgrounds every day. My ambition at that time was to create my own personal brand as a tourist guide and offer unique tours for tourists in Cairo without having to join a travel agency. By word of mouth and personal connections more tourists visiting Egypt or residing for business reasons started booking my tours and I got many positive feedbacks.
By time this was not enough for me and my ambition. I wanted to reach more tourists and the traditional way did not work efficiently anymore. At that point I decided to learn digital marketing to be able to create my own marketing campaign using the available social media networks on the internet. It was not easy at all finding the suitable course for me. On the one hand I did not have the time to join classes in a physical classroom. On the other hand online courses seemed to be very expensive to me.
One day while I was checking Facebook I bumped into that post that later changed everything about my career path. The Egyptian government has started an initiative called "The Future Work is Digital" (FWD) powered by ITIDA and in partnership with Udacity, the world-known online learning platform. The FWD initiative offers a free scholarship to obtain a nanodegree in digital marketing from Udacity - aka DMND - in only 18 weeks. "This is the right track", I thought and applied immediately. Within a couple of days I got accepted and started the program.
The design of the program and its content helped me study and stay on track without spending too much time weekly. By the end of the lessons I was very confident about my new skill in digital marketing so that I started to plan and create my own marketing campaign for my career. At first I was not sure about the outcome of the campaign but after 3 months I met the objective I have set for the campaign. Since this first success I have been creating my own digital marketing campaigns and moreover helping other freelance tourist guides to create their own campaigns.