With 2015 nearly behind us, we usually take this time of year to reflect. Sometimes during this period of deliberate musing, people often think back about their adventures, successes, failed ventures and diets. Maybe you’re woefully guilty of watching way too many cat videos this year. While this may be true, a few things happened in the web presence marketing sphere worth further reflection. (But, who are we kidding? We loved those cat videos, too.)
If you weren’t able to keep up with all the changes that occurred over the last 12 months, fear not. We’ll break it down to some essential elements of digital marketing: search engine optimization, social media marketing and content marketing.
Let’s get down to brass tax, shall we?
Search Engine Optimization (For All!)
Google’s been busy this year. Not only did they announce a parent company, a new artificial intelligence branch to their search engine, the king of autocomplete search had some unexpected hiccups with its Google Drive going down earlier this fall.
In spite of the evolution and growing pains (and gains) for Google, small businesses may implement search engine optimization for their own websites with their own content marketing strategy. Though content marketing is an important digital marketing faucet for long term results, putting aside a budget for search engine marketing has still proven the best path to travel to see an immediate increase in website traffic.
Another significant milestone in search optimization this year happened with Google’s mobile-friendly update. This search engine update required sites to be mobile responsive or “mobile-friendly” or otherwise suffer the consequences. We predict further mobile and tablet-focused updates for 2016 as well.
Social Media Marketing (It Doesn’t Just Stay in Vegas)
No matter the residence of your business (or if you’re an e-commerce company), your content and search engine strategy will always benefit outreach and social engagement. With Facebook’s testing of new reactions and Twitter’s Moments and polls, social media is a voice with which to reckon your digital marketing strategy.
Still wary of the social media platforms? We have some Facebook best practices and other social media marketing optimization tools to get you started. If you have any more questions about social media and how to use it in your web marketing or your brand building, we always answer our phones (during regular office hours, of course).
Content Marketing (Still Good to be the King)
Content, as the saying goes, is king. Videos and graphics will always be powerful and easily consumable but content fuels the Google bots ravenous appetite for quality onsite content. Yield your content marketing wisely when you go into the new year. If you want to focus more on video and infographics, that’s cool, we plan on doing that, too, but never underestimate the power of words put in the correct order. Whatever your 2016 web presence marketing budget allows, make room for.
1. Blogging
2. Guest blogging
3. Industry-specific case studies
4. “How To” guides
5. Infographics
6. Informational articles
2015 was a whirlwind of web things and pertinent web presence opportunities. We’re looking forward to all the new things 2016 will throw our way. Are you?
(P.S. This cat video is our personal favorite for 2015.)
