10 Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for You and Us. PART I

PART I (5 first Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions)

We said goodbye to 2016 and we have started a new year. For many people January 1st is just another day and the only change is the calendar. For others the first day of the new year is a new beginning and it’s time to make New Year’s Resolutions being ready for accomplish their goals.

At 4ContentMedia we have our Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions, hoping that this newborn Marketing Agency grows… WITH YOU.

Our first and everlasting Resolution is staying on top about marketing and web trends, consumer trends, audience trends.

Never stop searching and learning!

As Jayson Demers says on Forbes Marketing is a field dominated by those with the foresight to plan ahead, anticipate changes, and jump on trends before your competitors do.

Our 5 First Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for You and Us

#1 Organize Your Ideas and Put Them Into Practice

Leverage those moments when ideas come up and write them. They can be strategies, new outlooks or content ideas.

Then create your own organization system because we all are different. I tried bullet journal system and it worked for me.

Don’t wait until the last minute to write great posts because anyone can write it before you and receive the merits of what you didn’t decide to write.

And don’t wait either to implement those innovative strategies or changes or whatever you think will improve your digital marketing.

Don’ let others get ahead of you. 

Set deadlines, timings, a planned calendar. Be your own coach!

You can use a WordPress plugin like WP Content Calendar, sophisticated online tools like Trello to join ideas and tasks or the free but efficient Google Calendar.

#2 Be Natural, Free, Fresh. Be You!

Many content creators, journalists, copywriters and bloggers wonder why their content doesn’t work.  It may be because they are not being natural, because they try to please readers or because they constrict themselves, fearing reproaches and rejection.

The result? A “packaged” not memorable content  that readers will forget… and avoid.

Henneke Duistermaat describes herself as an irreverent copywriter and marketer. She has written two blogs with 5 star reviews from readers, her blog posts have lots of comments and she’s also a regular contributor to popular blogs and publications like Kissmetrics, Forbes, Copyblogger or Entrepeneur among others.

Indeed, she’s not politically correct but she’s a successful woman who lives off her work, loves what she does and does what she want.

When you are yourself, you feel free. And that freedom allows flow your creativity.

#3 Go Mobile

This isn’t new. We all know that more and more people access our websites through mobile devices.

From a 53% in 2013 to 65% in 2015 (2016 stats will be ready in 2017).

Is your website optimized for mobile? And I don’t talk just about responsive themes. You must consider readability and usability: Short paragraphs, legible text, bigger fonts, buttons and links, “zoomable” text and visual content, ready to enlarge when users pinch them.

Or even a mobile optimized layout display (forgetting those tons of unresponsive banners) to improve your readers mobile experience.

According to Think Google, people are five times more likely to leave a mobile site that isn’t mobile-friendly.

Try Google Pagespeed Insights, Mobile Friendly Test , Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool and embrace Google AMP (there is a WordPress plugin)

Because AMP might be a ranking factor very soon.

#4 Create Really Remarkable Content 

Long-form content has replaced the 300 words posts. And this might be paradoxical, knowing that readers scan our content (if they read it, because we know that 8 of out people read the headline but only 2 out of 10 will read the content ).

Attention spam has fallen and users skip content that they consider as “content noise”, but… long-format content works!

According a study by SERPIQ the top 10 results in Google contained more than 2,000 words.

Buzzsumo found that longer posts get more shares.

You will find it contradictory. People scan content but they like long-format pieces? They don’t read content but lengthy content works?

Here is the explanation: Readers consider that long-form content is a more in-depth content. And they also consider that somehow they will find what they’re searching for. Nobody would dare to write a long post with usefulness information. In short: The more content, the more possibilities to find something useful.

But don’t think you have to write long pieces just to exceed 2000 words. Long-format content really works when it is valuable and relevant for your target audience.

It also depends on the industry:

(Click to see larger)

#5 Give Prominence to Your Users/Customers 

User Generated Content is becoming more and more relevant … and not just for campaigns or contest!

I would like to talk about UGC from several outlooks.

FIRST

People rely more on other people than on brands:

• 92% of consumers trust recommendations from others, even people they don’t know, over branded content.
• 70% say that online reviews are their second-most-trusted source.
• 47% of U.S. readers consult blogs to keep tabs on trends and ideas

In fact, 85% of users find other users’ content more influential than brand content. (visual content).

Encourage your users and customers to share their thoughts, experiences, reviews, pictures with your products.

Surely not all of them will be compliments… But that’s what builds credibility  and not all those dubious five stars that many webs proudly display, trying to make people believe they are real…

As a customer (and not marketer), I have seen lots of websites with products or services with excellent ratings that are clearly fake and even weird reviews!

Do you think they can fool savvy customers? Do you think that is the way to build trust and credibility?

SECOND

Granted, UGC is a great strategy to build trust, increase brand awareness and users/customers engagement.

We have seen successful User Generated Content campaigns like these:

Mark up your Macchiato, doodle on your doppio, craft your cappuccino. #WhiteCupContest http://t.co/IRoNiMKMXU pic.twitter.com/pgw0Wbu3ZN

— Starbucks (@Starbucks) April 28, 2014

I'd love to #ShareaCoke with #Batman! @DavidYacayates @sfwheeler15 @Allen_Gould @ocean363 @AprilBecher @cwbourque pic.twitter.com/rypj0OAWhb

— Rich Piechowski (@Piech42) February 4, 2016

So here comes a suggestion that is also a Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolution:

Why limit UGC to campaigns? Why don’t embrace User Generated Content on a steady basis, integrating it with our own content in our blogs and webs?

In 2009 and 2014 Burberry’s launched a micro-site (the burberry.com subdomain is still alive) called Art of the Trench, featuring pictures of people wearing the iconic trench coat.

This groundbreaking campaign made luxury closer to people and also created brand awareness  and sales increase, among other achievements.

So I ask again, why don’t give prominence to customers consistently? It works, people want to be featured and feel unique. They want their 15 minutes of fame.. who doesn’t? It would be an excellent way to build and increase brand awareness, authenticity and customers loyalty.

What are your 2017 Digital Marketing New Year’s Resolutions? We would like to read your resolutions, ideas, suggestions, predictions (if you are a visionary), experiences…

WE WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY 2017!