Cheers to a new year! As 2017 makes its debut, we celebrate new beginnings and set our resolutions. Here’s to another year of exploring, learning, and growing!
For those celebrating New Years eve right now – be safe and have fun. To those waking up right now, happy and successful 2017!
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Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)
Most people make resolutions at the turn of the year—lose the weight, eat better, work on relationships with friends and family, etc. But how many people think about creating resolutions for their business? The New Year is a great time to improve yourself both personally and professionally, break out of your comfort zone, experiment with new ideas, and take on new challenges. Here is a list of New Year’s resolutions that could help enhance your business in 2017.
Resolution 1: Consider Updating Your Look
The New Year is often a great time to try out a new haircut or wardrobe, so why not consider updating your business’s look as well? This doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul (in fact, we don’t recommend changing everything about your brand). Instead, think of a few simple updates you could incorporate to give your company a fresh and perhaps more functional style. This could be anything from revamping your home page to better optimize your mobile presence to adding a new feature to your blog. Think about what would benefit your business the most and then start there. Small and simple is key—no need to make a lot of major changes that might scare consumers away. Just show them you’re embracing the New Year and looking for ways to continue to improve your business.
Resolution 2: Collaborate With Sales
2017 is a great time to resolve to coordinate your marketing and sales teams so they’re not operating completely independently from one another. The Act-On blog suggests scheduling regular meetings between the two groups, creating a survey asking both sides to measure the other’s effectiveness, and planning out a comprehensive audit. Once both groups are on the same page about where they need to go, consider getting them together to brainstorm and then form a plan to best drive sales. As they say, two heads are better than one, and the input of two teams could be immeasurably valuable. You can learn more about how these departments can work together here.
Resolution 3: Up Your Blog Posting Game
Quality content has a major impact on SEO, so focusing on the quality of your blog posts is a great resolution for 2017. Review your analytics data and try to determine the type of content that has the most positive effect on revenue for your business. Look at various promotion channels, keyword rankings, etc. and try to put together a solid content strategy.
Specifically, in terms of blog posting, it’s always a good idea to post often, but make sure you’re posting quality content. Your posts should be “meaty”, or full of substance. There’s a time for short and sweet posts, but those aren’t usually the ones that get shared all over social media. Don’t wait until the last minute to come up with ideas as, most likely, they’ll end up lacking. Finally, don’t forget to promote your posts all over your various social media channels. Need an example? Check out this post by QuickSprout designed to help others learn from the author’s big mistake.
Resolution 4: Make Data Your Friend
While it may be tempting to jump from one new analytics tool to the next, consider finding one you like, sticking with it, and really learning its ins and outs. Too many business owners don’t take the time to truly learn how to use analytics, so they miss out on a lot of potential opportunities. Numbers don’t lie, and they can give you an incredible amount of insight into your company’s successes and failures. They can also save you a lot of wasted time and money spent on campaigns and strategies that just aren’t delivering.
Keep in mind, you should be looking to metrics before creating content to find out exactly what type gets the best results and/or attracts the most amount of people. Data can teach you everything you need to know about your buyers and their interactions, and it can help you make informed, data-driven decisions. Consider adopting CRM and marketing automation, just make sure you learn how to use it so its potential isn’t wasted.
Resolution 5: Get MORE Social
“Social media empowers you and your team to share your content, knowledge, and expertise with millions of people from all over the world.” The more you connect with others, the greater the potential for your business. So if you’re not already using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Instagram, your first step is to pick a couple of those platforms and start posting. However, for most of us, if you’re already pretty social, it’s time to start evaluating the relationships you have with your followers. While having a huge audience probably makes you feel pretty good, if you’re not engaging with them, most likely you’re leaving them feeling a little empty.
Try to make real connections with your followers by posting more mindful content, asking for feedback, and going Live, among other options. Listen to what they have to say then incorporate solutions and topics into your social realm. In addition, consider adding social media advertising to your marketing strategy. This is a proven strategy that results in more traffic to your site, higher conversions, and improved brand loyalty. Who doesn’t want to take advantage of that?
Resolution 6: Give Back
There’s never a bad time to give back to the community and, while Giving Tuesday is often a popular day to do it, starting a new year with a new charitable campaign sounds like a pretty good idea as well. Many businesses use the holidays to amp up their marketing and make as much money as they can. While we appreciate a good business strategy, it’s refreshing when a company goes out of their way to give back as well. Think about a charity that’s meaningful to you and that is also somehow related to your business and/or product(s). Come up with a goal and a time frame, and start advertising. Consumers are generally in the giving mood during the holidays, so not only should they respond positively to your act of goodwill, most likely they’ll thank you with increased traffic to your site and additional conversions. Plus, you can feel good that you’ve done something positive to help others.
Which topics drew the most attention within the search industry this year? From infographics to quizzes to advice, our top 10 columns of the year covered all the bases.
How can you improve your organic search results? Columnist Jason Decker outlines four basic steps to make your listings more compelling to searchers and prospects.
Columnist Chris Silver Smith takes a look at what could be a recent policy shift in Google’s longstanding informal policy of granting court-ordered defamation removal requests.
You’ve probably heard sayings like, “Life’s about the journey, not the destination,” but have you thought about putting this philosophy to work in local search? Columnist Lydia Jorden explains how to optimize for this trend.
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google Paradise store: Source: Instagram Google holiday staircase: Source: Instagram Google wine gift: Source: Instagram Google […]
Columnist Jim Yu contends that to succeed in 2017, brands will need to coordinate organic and paid search marketing disciplines and understand how they can work together to build the relationship with customers.
Which stories got the SEO community fired up this year? Check out Search Engine Land’s top “All Things SEO” and “Link Week” columns of 2016 to find out!
Contributor Joy Hawkins warns about the likely unintended consequences of Google’s impending shutdown of Map Maker, calling for the search giant to create more transparency.
While long-term efforts are SEO mainstays, contributor Julian Connors suggests more short-term reactive strategies can also have significant rankings impact.
Product titles are among the most important factors influencing the performance of your Google Shopping campaigns. Contributor Andreas Reiffen shares data on how to optimize them.
Expanded text ads, the removal of the right rail in SERPs, and many other changes dominated the PPC world this past year. Read on to see Search Engine Land’s most popular paid search columns of 2016.
Publishers are asking questions about the effectiveness of Google’s AMP carousel. Columnist Barb Palser analyzed 235 million AMP search impressions to find answers.
Managing online citations, claimed and unclaimed listings, reviews and ratings, landing pages and data feeds for hundreds or thousands of locations has become time-consuming and costly for enterprise brands. Automating these processes can improve search rankings, increase productivity and lower CPCs due to better SEO. Marketing Land’s “Enterprise Local Marketing Automation Platforms” examines the market […]
So, your boss just told you that managing PPC is being added to your list of responsibilities. What to do? Columnist Pauline Jakober offers tips on how to get up to speed.
Which topics drew the most attention within the search industry this year? From infographics to quizzes to advice, our top 10 columns of the year on our sister site, Search Engine Land, covered all the bases.
Columnist Seth Price believes that the best martech sits at the intersection of old-school marketing and today’s digital technology, and next-gen CRMs that can manage this balance will help marketers connect with consumers in the most effective way possible.
Contributor Joy Hawkins warns about the likely unintended consequences of Google’s impending shutdown of Map Maker, calling for the search giant to create more transparency.
Columnist Megan Hannay takes a look at four big national brands that are taking advantage of local sponsorships and partnerships to connect with customers and communities.
What can behavioral science teach marketers about digital advertising? Contributor Peter Minnium dives into key learnings from behavioral scientists to help you know how to engage your prospects.
Using martech’s capabilities to deliver personalized content is great, but contributor Josh Todd challenges marketers to reap the rewards of true one-to-one messaging.
Publishers are asking questions about the effectiveness of Google’s AMP carousel. Columnist Barb Palser analyzed 235 million AMP search impressions to find answers.
Getting email right has never been so important. In an effort to always give you the most up-to-date, reliable marketing advice, Whereoware has updated their Email Optimization Checklist – Capture, Convince, Close to reflect new email best practices. Whereoware’s Email Optimization Checklist walks through tried and true techniques for crafting and sending emails that capture […]
Expanded text ads, the removal of the right rail in SERPs and many other changes dominated the PPC world this past year. Read on to see the most popular paid search columns of 2016 from our sister site, Search Engine Land.
So, your boss just told you that managing PPC is being added to your list of responsibilities. What to do? Columnist Pauline Jakober offers tips on how to get up to speed.
Hungry for some good local SEO content? Satisfy your hunger with the 10 most popular local search columns of the year from our sister site, Search Engine Land.
Even many of the titans of the internet could do with a bit of optimization of their mobile sites. Contributor Marcus Miller offers a comprehensive view of how to ensure you’re making the most of the opportunity to forge ahead.
Google released responsive ads in July and announced cross-device remarketing, display location extensions and store visits in late September. Columnist and Googler Matt Lawson answers the top questions we’ve received on these features.
While the basics of content creation — make it valuable and spread the word about it! — remain static through time, the specific tools and techniques get regular updates. Catch up on this year’s most interesting developments in this essential space.
Well, dear readers, we are mere hours away from officially making it through one of the more… unforgettable… years in recent memory. You sure were an interesting one, 2016, weren’t you? Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a *headdesk* way. And I’m not just referring to politics or pop culture. General ???-ness found its way into the online marketing industry, as well — as evidenced by some of our top content over the last 12 months.
Of course, it wasn’t all strange. Our tried-and-true MarTech Landscape, updated in March, blew minds all around and generated by far the most retweets, replies, favorites and clicks. Product announcements and redesigns were shared far and wide. Still, when one of the most major social networks has to own up to repeated miscalculations, and the tweeting habits of a presidential nominee turn hundreds of heads, you have to say to yourself… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
We tallied likes, favorites, shares, clicks, retweets and everything in between to come up with the list below. In continuing coverage of our most popular stories of 2016, may I present to you: The most engaging stories across Marketing Land’s Twitter and Facebook communities.
(Interesting thing to bear in mind: There was barely any content overlap between the two social communities. Different strokes for different folks!)
Methodology: Top tweets were identified by native Twitter analytics. Top Facebook posts were identified using Simply Measured analytics.
About The Author
Lauren Donovan has worked in online marketing since 2006, specializing in organic social media, cradle-to-grave community management, search and social creative, real-time journalism, holistic social befriending, as well as content aggregation, creation, and strategic syndication. She currently serves as Community Editor for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. You can find her on Twitter @beebow.
Both within the search industry and outside of it, 2016 was a year marked by change — and no change got more attention from our columnists than Google’s decision to eliminate the right rail ads from its desktop search results. Readers were clearly eager to learn as much as possible about how these changes would impact their campaigns, as two of our top 10 columns were focused on this topic.
The local search community also dealt with some major changes, as the Possum update caused a huge shake-up within local search results. Local search expert Joy Hawkins wrote the definitive article on this unannounced Google update, which impacted up to 64 percent of local SERPs. Her excellent coverage of this development earned her the top spot in 2016.
After the emotional roller coaster that was 2016, many people are ready for this year to be over. But for those of you brave enough to want to relive it, here are Search Engine Land’s top 10 columns of the year:
Methodology: Columns published in 2016 are ranked in order of page views measured by Google Analytics. Data includes all columns published through November 30, 2016. Social data provided by SharedCount.
About The Author
Jessica Thompson is Associate Features Editor at Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. She is a well-rounded digital media enthusiast with a keen interest in all things Internet marketing. Jessica earned her B.A. in English from Drew University and has since gone on to fill a wide variety of roles over the course of her career, including web designer, copywriter, editor, SEO consultant, online marketing specialist and marketing manager. Most recently, she worked at Advance Digital, where she conducted digital optimization training for journalists and provided high-level SEO and social media recommendations for 12 major regional news websites, including NJ.com.
Those working in the field of digital marketing have been utilizing marketing technology (martech) in some way since the dawn of the industry. As the field grows larger and more complex, technology solutions have been necessary in order to organize and make sense of the ever-growing amount of data at our fingertips.
Yet, in many ways, martech is still in its infancy. This past year saw an explosion of marketing technology solutions as Scott Brinker expanded his popular Marketing Technology Landscape infographic to include nearly 3,500 companies, up from ~2000 last year and ~1000 in 2014. This surge of martech — and the resulting interest from the digital marketing community — is part of what inspired us to launch this very site earlier this year.
Our talented columnists here on MarTech Today are boldly exploring this new frontier and imparting their knowledge and wisdom upon the rest of us. From making predictions about what the near-future holds to sharing advice on how best to utilize existing tools, these savvy marketers are illuminating all the ways in which technology can be harnessed to achieve our marketing goals.
Following are the top ten columns of the year on MarTech Today.
Jessica Thompson is Associate Features Editor at Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. She is a well-rounded digital media enthusiast with a keen interest in all things Internet marketing. Jessica earned her B.A. in English from Drew University and has since gone on to fill a wide variety of roles over the course of her career, including web designer, copywriter, editor, SEO consultant, online marketing specialist and marketing manager. Most recently, she worked at Advance Digital, where she conducted digital optimization training for journalists and provided high-level SEO and social media recommendations for 12 major regional news websites, including NJ.com.
Resolution 3: Up Your Blog Posting Game
Those working in the field of digital marketing have been utilizing marketing technology (martech) in some way since the dawn of the industry. As the field grows larger and more complex, technology solutions have been necessary in order to organize and make sense of the ever-growing amount of data at our fingertips.