My Digital Marketing Predictions for 2016 and a review of 2015.
Writing 13 new posts on here totalling just over 8,000 words. I set myself a goal of writing one post a month which I'm pleased to say I've been able to stick to. The lesson here is to set yourself realistic goals.
Attended BrightonSEO. More on that fantastic day in September here.
Qualified as a fitness instructor. Random I know, but you can read about that here.
Bought my first house. More on that here.
Won 'Best Newcomer of the Year' at work. Thanks Optix!
• This will be the year of the smartwatch. Although there are already watches available to buy the release of Apple's smartwatch will push them mainstream.
The Apple Watch came and then rather faded. For now it's anecdotal but they haven't made the massive impact that I was perhaps expecting. In it's place we seem to have a variety of other smarter watches, perhaps most noticeably the rise of other wearable tech such as FitBit.
• Google Glass will finally fade from the mainstream.
• Mobile and tablet devices are going to continue to gain an increasing market share.
This seems to already have happened. See this rather good article from Smart Insights here.
• The internet will go nuts when on October 21, 2015, will be the very same date when Marty McFly went back to the future.
This happened in a big way. And the world compared our 2015 to their 2015. What, no hoverboards?! We'll just have to make do with revolutionary technology instead.
Paid advertising on social media channels is going to increase as brands find it gradually more difficult to engage with fans organically.
Again, for me personally we've had to persuade multiple clients to start advertising to pay to promote content. Organic reach is getting tougher - due to the likes of Edgerank on the one hand and an increasing sea of voices on the other.
Live Penguin updates will be a wake up call for websites.
Once Google come back from their Christmas holidays the Penguin update will finally be running constantly rather than with periodic refreshes. Naturally this is going to massively impact on SERP's. I'm expecting clients to start paying a much greater attention to what their backlinks are and how frequently they should be monitoring them as their rankings get shaken up.
Not just regular blog posts, but I think video is going to the one to look out for in the year ahead with businesses increasingly creating content on there. Whether it's vlogs, ads or guides it seems like a sensible place to be investing your time.
Paid advertising will become increasingly targeted.
For certain industries you can already target Facebook ads to an insanely specific levels; like people whose insurance is up for renewal. It makes sense to take advantage of these new roll-outs as quickly as possible before everyone else climbs on board.
As big businesses invest more into their digital experience, the rest of the world will follow. That means though offering trying to offer your customers the very best. That means fast load times, excellent customer service, informative and good quality content; as well as the products and services you actually sell. So, many markets are becoming increasingly saturated with competitors, so you need to do what you can to stand out.
So, let's see what 2016 has in store.