Thursday, January 15, 2015
Here are 7 digital marketing trends social media managers should know
Google will rely heavily on social media signals for SEO
With the organic online marketing ecosystem growing, it’s no surprise that Google is relying more on social media signals to inform its search engine rankings. For many teams, the duties of people who works on SEO and those who work on social media are separate; however, this is all about to change. The two may still officially belong to separate teams, but social media marketers will need to be more informed on the SEO strategist’s agenda, so that the SEO strategy can assist with content promotion. The SEO strategist will then need to know how to work with social media marketers in order to receive the social signals it needs to make sure their company ranks on top inGoogle’s SERPs.
Content marketing will be the solution to Facebook’s algorithm change
While there’s no problem in using social media to promote your business, it’s important to know how much promotion is too much. Facebook’s new algorithm for its News Feed calls for timely posts about information that provides value to your social media audience. In other words, sophisticated content marketing is now the way to get engagement on Facebook. The businesses who already have a solid content marketing strategy have an advantage on the shift in Facebook’s new algorithm—they can select content from their blog to feature on the business Page. However, if your business doesn’t have a content marketing strategy or a blog, but wants to maintain a strong Facebook presence, it may be time to create a content marketing strategy for Facebook.
Websites need to be more mobile-friendly
You’ve probably heard, but everyone needs to make sure their websites are optimized for mobile. According to statista, mobile phone internet user penetration worldwide will be 52.4% in 2015. Which means this year optimizing your website for mobile should be at the top of your 2015 digital marketing to-do list. Social media managers need to be aware of this to ensure the format of any promotions they do (especially those that include driving people to their company websites) are optimized for mobile. On top of that, any images used on social media should also be viewable on mobile for optimized user experience.
The new Twitter search engine will push for Tweets to be more optimized
Twitter recently released one of its long-standing goals, the new and more powerful Twitter search engine. This new search engine will allow people to search through every Tweet ever published, which means the way you structure your Tweets is more important now than ever in the history of the microblogging social network. Including hashtags, images, and links in your Tweets will make sure that your Tweets show up higher in Twitter’s search engine results. Think of this new search engine as Google: including the right keywords in your Tweets will allow you to be more visible in search queries.
Social media data will inform marketing decisions
You’ve heard plenty of good reasons to use more social media data in your marketing. But social media data is pretty complex and hard to put into action. A recent survey conducted by Hootsuite found that 60% of global organizations struggle to turn social data into actionable tactics. However, this year is the year that social media marketers shift gears and add another hat to their collection: the social media analyst hat. With this hat on, you can use the social media data collected through your social media tools, and analyze this information to inform marketing and business decisions. For example, social media data can help you create customer personas to boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, as well as the kind of language prospects use around your product.
A testing culture will be implemented in all digital marketing teams
Do you have a team that works on testing landing pages, website layout, online ads and emails every day? If yes, that’s great! If no, then keep reading. Testing new landing pages, different website layouts, online ads, and email copy, allows you to make more out of your existing traffic, increase conversions and improve the user experience. You can conduct A/B tests that compare two versions of a web page to see which performs better. The one that performs the best will be the one implemented. For example, you can do this for social media ads by testing several versions of the call to action used in the ad. Investing in A/B testing can have a massive impact on lead generation, traffic, and revenue.
The online experience will shift to a more “human experience”
Google and Facebook have made changes to their platforms to push businesses to focus more on the “human experience.” This shift will drive digital marketers to think more about the user experience, their target audience, and the way they market their products and business. For social media marketers, your social media posts will need to be more relevant, provide more value to your audience, and the engagement needs to be more “human.”
This year is going to see a lot of change in how people consume marketing online. The trends listed above are just a handful of the trends that social media marketers need to know. The need to stay on top of growing digital marketing trends will allow social media marketers to make sure their efforts on social media will provide the ROI that supports all of the digital marketing efforts for their business. And if you feel like you’re missing out, don’t worry—we’ll be right here to help you catch up on the latest trends in social media.
Questions? ---
1. Provide your feedback and thoughts from reading the article.
2. Do you know of any more digital marketing trends that social media marketers need to be aware of? Add them in the comments below.
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ReplyDelete1) I completely agree that social media marketer's nee to keep up with everything that is going on, on the web. Most that websites need to be more friendly. It makes sense that mobile phone internet user penetration worldwide will be 52.4% in 2015. Everyone is always on their phone and how many times a day does someone say "Just Google it" and now that is so easy to get on your phone and open the internet and go to Google. Therefore the websites people are looking up on their phones definitely need to be more user friendly and easy to navigate on people's mobile phones/devices. The new twitter search engine is kind of scary to me, now that you can search up any tweet from anytime, it makes you aware that what you put up on social media is always out there which I think is something that a lot of people need to consider and especially young kids. It is really good that social media marketers have shifted gears and are going to be able to analyze more data from social media because that can make a big different of your customers or anyone visiting the website. Also testing the way people respond to different website layouts can be very helpful to all social media marketers. Shifting the online experience to a more human experience is great idea having the digital marketers think more about the people actually using the website will only end up being helpful which is great. 2) I believe a trend to be aware of is an opening video to the site, it can be to advertise or talk about what the company is about, but the video should be short and sweet, and also it can't make loading the site harder than it already is, therefore even putting an important video (to the user) on your website, you need to be aware of the user. Also the older generation is becoming more technology savvy and that is something to be aware of that everyone might not "just get it" because they didn't grow up with the technology.
ReplyDelete1. I strongly agree that any business owner or marketer needs to keep up with the changing and evolving world of the internet. One of the points that the article made is that websites need to become more mobile friendly – this is a true statement. If I am Googling something on my phone and come across a website that is not mobile friendly, this will aggravate me. One of the smartest things that a business can do is get an app made available for anyone with a smart phone. This is convenient, and this is what people want! If that cannot be done, the business should at least be able to make their website mobile friendly and easy to navigate around when being used on a mobile device. As said, 2015 is going to be one of the best years to put any business up on the internet – this being said, people need to get up, get out, and do it!
ReplyDelete2. I believe that the article seemed to cover most of the marketing trends that marketers need to be aware of. Although, I think that websites just need to make sure that they are user friendly. As the older generation becomes more computer friendly, they want easy to access websites and services. Businesses need to make sure they are doing this! This could include implementing easy to navigate pages, search bars, help buttons, etc.
1) I agree that business owners and social marketing media managers need to keep up with the social media trends. With the majority of people having smart phones it's so easy to have the internet at our finger tips no matter where you are. Personally I do not like how so many people rely on social media these days. I also do not like the direction social media is taking the world today, but from a business point of view you would be silly to not be connected to social media. I find that people these days are thriving more and more on the need to know about others information. People are wasting so much time on social media. It is a great way for any business to get their name out in the public. With so many people having technology at their finger tips websites should become more mobile friendly or at lease give them the option to continue with the regular layout or convert to the mobile view.
ReplyDelete2) Since I'm not into or on any social media sites, I think this article has covered the main online points to be aware of. Although with technology evolving so quickly, just when you think you have covered all the main points there will be more soon to come.
1. in this article I am learning that people are always trying to find the easy way or the quickest way to do things. This is why social media marketers must change there ways to service their customers(the public). This article states how technology is constantly changing and the social media marketers must keep up. This articles shows that every step they take can be critical, and can have an impact on technology and how the world sees it. People are becoming more accustom that using technology is the human interaction of today's world. So as long as the social media marketers can satisfies these needs the consumer will be happy.
ReplyDelete2. I believe this article covers the most important digital marketing trends. As long as each company stays to date, nothing will change until the next 'big thing' is released. Which in the technology world, it is happening on a daily basis.
testing
ReplyDelete1. Business owners should be using social media to promote their business now a days because that is where most people spend their time. It makes sense that Google and other SEO's are trying to connect to the social marketing side so they can better find the answers society is looking. Most everyone has smart phones and, as it says, people are using their phones to find websites while out of the house or office. If the number of people using smart phones increases then it makes sense that one should make their webpage for mobile users. It can be frustrating to have to zoom in on the text when on your phone and accidentally clicking a different button and sending you to another part of the page.
ReplyDelete2. Something that could be considered for digital marketing for 2015 is of the wearable computers people are starting to have more often (ex. watches). More people will be using this technology so websites shouldn't just be smart phone friendly but "watch" friendly. These have smaller screens so traditional websites might be harder to read.
As illustrated by many of the points in the article, online marketing is really changing. It almost seems that traditional methods of online marketing, while still being very important, are becoming like previous methods of marketing. Old. Nowadays, it almost seems that traditional webpages, ads ect. are almost useless as the focus has shifted to interactive, social media, mobile phone based marketing. While this is not a bad thing, it does mean lots of companies will have to make huge changes in the way that they market things. What I mean by that, is that people are so connected woth each other, if one person finds a flaw in a product, everybody knows immediately. Companies are going to have to be a lot more with the things that they do as if they mess up, people will call them on it almost immediately.
ReplyDelete2. I am not really into any social media sites heavily so don't really know of any new and crazy social media things.
ReplyDeleteI personally believed that those changes will dramatically change the way we use and perceived social media until now. From my point of view, changes related to improve the user experience, like building more mobile friendly website and implementing a marketing testing culture are positive. Conversely, other trends related to digging inside to our privacy of our social media content sound to me really scary.
ReplyDeleteFrom the consumer perspective trends that help us to maximize our social media experience are welcome. having more friendly mobile sites will help more people to get integrated to the social media from the commodity of their own cellphones. Similarly, from the business perspective the idea to test e@marketing campaigns with the users are extremely beneficial for business in terms of saving money, time and effort.
On the other hand, trends related to violating our privacy by taking more information of our content and turn them into data to be used for marketing purpose is extremely scary for me. This scenario makes me feel unsafe when using the social media. At the end, your content will be any more you content, somebody behind the scene will used for marketing purpose.
Finally, if I have to add another current trend that is happening in the social media, I could talk about the integration of social media with real media. Saying that, I am referring to the new tendency of provoking more real contact and interaction between member of a particular social members. For instance, there is a social media for singles that based on you location and person that you are interest on, the site will offer you a selection of people who live near you and are interested in meeting you personally. In other word, what social media are looking now is integrate the virtual interaction with the real and live interaction.
1.) Smart phones are the way of the world now, so businesses must keep up with technology to ensure people can access the most up to date information and trends via their phones. Things are changing on a daily basis which can be difficult to keep up with. Social media marketers now realize that they must meet the needs of all ages, economic means and technological abilities, including the older generation that did not grow up with this technology. Social media marketers are utilizing pictures and video to provide instant gratification by promoting contests and draws through linking face book and tweeting.
ReplyDelete2.) With the newly publicized change of access to personal information, I hope Canada does not turn into a "Big Brother" situation. Some information needs to remain private!
1. I agree that business need to marketing on social media. Majority of people are on social media sites. Since a lot of people have iPhones or smartphones that makes it easy for them to access websites on their phones, which is why businesses need to make their sites mobile friendly. Now that the older generations are getting more into social media, businesses will be targeting everyone. Which is better for getting new customers.
ReplyDelete1) It is extremely important for all businesses wanting to reach the top with their business to keep up with the trends that are happening and changing in the world and in their customer base. Social Media has become one of the biggest phenomenon’s in this generation and is one of the biggest growing things the world will see. No matter the age or geography people everywhere are on social media constantly and get promoted businesses through many different forms of social media. Businesses should see the impact social media can have on their sales and this article is pretty much spot on to how they should be adapting to the social media world. User friendly is probably one of the biggest points they should work on and be aware of because it is easy for people to get frustrated trying to figure something out and give up. If the businesses website is user friendly and easy to work with they will see that users returning to their website will be higher. I think it is one of the best ways to promote a business and extremely cost efficient and effective.
ReplyDelete2) The article seems to have covered most of the important social media trends. The ones that I am aware of and use such as Facebook, twitter were mentioned, and another huge social media trend right now would be Instagram. With how fast social media is becoming and how much it is growing businesses just need to be aware of the ongoing changes and be able to keep up with them.