5 New Year’s resolutions you should definitely keep

Happy New Year! The New Year is a great time to re-evaluate everything, including your digital marketing. Did you achieve what you planned last year and are you in a bit of a rut? Now’s your chance to make changes in 2017 and here are a few ideas to help you.

1. Keep up with Google

Why?

Because Google likes to make changes to its algorithm all the time to keep us on our toes. However, all of these changes are made for good reason – to improve user experience. It helps users to discover the best content they are looking for.

So, Wish challenge you to keep up with those changes. We don’t just mean staying up-to-date with the news about the latest changes. We also mean having the highest quality content to make Google’s algorithm happy, resulting in more people being able to find you.

How?

You could consider reorganising your content library into topic areas as SEO is favouring topics over keywords. That will help to increase your search traffic, because you’ll have a larger pool of relevant keywords and phrases to be discovered.

It is a good idea to regularly review and refresh your content strategy. Not only does it prevent your content from getting stale, but it will also help you to keep up with what people are searching for, which in turn will help you keep pace with Google. Lastly, keeping a blog and adding new blog posts regularly is a great way to keep posting new content to your website for google to crawl.

Have a look at this helpful resource: 8 Interesting Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Google’s Algorithm.

 2. Improve your design 

Why?

Because visual content is high on the list in Marketing. It’s 40x more likely to be shared on social media AND when a relevant image is paired with information, people retain 55% more of that information after three days.

How?

Communicate with your design or marketing agency and invest in matching the correct imagery with your brand. You can also keep self-educate yourself on the design front. For example, here is The Non-Designer’s Essential Glossary of Web Design Terms.

3. Invest in video

Why?

Video Marketing saw a lot of growth in 2016. First of all, by investing in and experimenting with video, you will be joining the trend of 2017 in adding more video content. Also, did you now that audiences are 10x more likely to engage with video content, so embed, share, or comment – more than text-only blogs, or related social posts. On top of that, using video in email marketing can have double the click-through rate.

Other than that, look at these impressive numbers. Is there need to say anymore?

• 4x as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.
• 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook, or YouTube videos a week.
• Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.

How?

Starting a video content strategy depends on your knowledge. Find out which platforms are the best for your marketing needs and learn about the different ways video marketing works. You might also want to consider experimenting with instant video options, like Facebook Live, and Instagram. These casual formats help audiences to relate to your brand by giving them a behind-the-scenes look at what you do.

These useful resources may be of help:

• 7 of the Best Pieces of Free Video Editing Software
• How to Live Stream Successfully: A Preparation Checklist for Marketers
• 7 Video Techniques For a Limited Budget

4. Develop a mobile strategy

Why?

2016 was a pivotal year for mobile, and it’s only going to get more important in 2017. If you have yet to invest in a mobile strategy, then it’s time to sit down and develop one.

The use of voice search via mobile and personal assistant devices is on the rise, with Google Voice Search queries seeing a 3400% increase since 2008. Plus, we’ve witnessed the launch of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages, where certain pages are optimised for mobile in a way that allows them to load instantly.

The average person checks their mobile up to 85 times a day and more and more people are shopping online across multiple devices (i.e. researching on mobile and then purchasing on desktop). Each time they do, they require information that can be identified and consumed at a glance. If your mobile site is slow, or confusing, then you’ve lost them immediately.

How?

When it comes to mobile optimisation, a lot of it is to do with SEO. If your content isn’t optimised for mobile platforms and searches, your ranking could be affected.

Start by brushing up on your SEO and learning more about Google’s algorithm.  And lastly, Hubspot have a great guide for simple mobile optimisation. Check it out here.

Here are a few other helpful resources

• Voice Search Strategy: What Marketers Need to Know Now
• Google’s AMP: A Marketer’s Guide to Accelerated Mobile Pages
• How to Display Site Content Only Your Mobile Viewers Can See

5. Keep up-to-date

Why?

It can be easy to get caught up with what your business is doing that you forget to pay attention to what everyone else is doing. Everything is changing around you. But, it’s important for every business and company to stay on top of industry news and up to date with what their competitors are doing.

How?

Do a little research. What are competitors doing on social media? Do they update their content regularly? What websites do you find interesting and informative? Make sure you follow, or like these sources on their social media channels, subscribe to their newsletters, bookmark their websites so you can check them regularly.

We hope you have a great start to 2017 and remember that Wish can help you with any of your marketing resolutions for 2017.