Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:38 — 28.3MB) | Embed
As we wrap 2016, it’s a good time to look back and reflect on the fact that there have been more updates in the past year in terms of SEO, Google, Facebook, Twitter than the past 3 years combined, all which affect how we market and do business on the internet.
Platforms such as Google and Facebook have introduced new tools that take digital marketing to the next level and that makes reaching our target audience a whole lot easier.
In today’s Marketing Drive we’re not talking about the 2017 trends but rather the 2016 changes and how that will affect how we think about our activity in the digital marketing industry. These are my personal observations from my day to day work and client work that span these different digital marketing platforms.
2016 has been a great year for Honeypot Marketing, thanks to everyone for subscribing to The Marketing Drive YouTube channel and podcast. Happy New Year!
In The Marketing Drive Episode 22 we’re talking about:
Video Transcription
Welcome to the marketing drive. I’m Dan Nedelko and it is the end of the year. On today’s marketing drive I wanted to talk a little bit about, not trends because I don’t like the word trends. But for 2016 especially, in the world of digital marketing, there has been full of changes this particular year from my observations.
Working day to day in digital marketing on client work, our own projects, using all of the different channels in the platforms that we use, this year has seen some really substantial changes. Now you can probably look back every single year and say the same thing but I feel that this year there was a huge maturity that happened on a lot of social media platform.
1.Google
Starting with the big ‘G’, Google introduced the caffeine platform. I’m probably going to miss a couple of these milestones, such as Penguin 3 and Penguin 4, but I think how I’m going to hit on the generalities of it. So we saw the caffeine platform which really underpins Google’s infrastructure roll-out and that really put an end to your “google update”. Since that happens now in almost real time, those rankings move around.
There are thousands of thousands of PageRank algorithm updates that happen. They’ve said over a thousand, so I actually would trust that would be the case given the size and scale of the search engine itself, and the number of people working on it and the platform is running on.
What I would say is very effectively and I have been involved with a number of projects who you know we’re living in a state of denial about what penguin means? Why is content important? Why SEO and just site development best practices are extremely important? And they got penalized for it. A lot of old-world thinking about what content means? Is content important for the user? Which it absolutely is and the holistic approach of SEO which I think is often forgotten.
So that’s google, it’s going to be mobile – mobile first, mobile app development, search optimization in app. So iTunes Store, Google Play, taking into account that google now has google pixel which is going to be a probably a rising kind of star for google, but again just on the mobile front is really tailoring a mobile experience primarily rather than secondarily, and moving into the app development space, and really understanding when you design pages specifically on your site whether they’re lead acquisition pages or information pages or anchor pages, the device is important for the layout of your content and how people interact with that.
Obviously, screen size is a massive issue. Smaller screen sizes should have content tailored for people and understanding how people use devices. When you’re mobile you’re typically on-the-go. You’re not going to read a five-page document right. You may watch a video it needs to be scan-able all of those types of things.
2. Facebook
The next biggest player in the game, in the industry, is Facebook. Facebook has come a long way in 2016 in particular. Facebook went from having, what I would call a fairly embryonic advertising platform into having something very sophisticated and obviously they’ve been pouring tons of resources into it.
3. Twitter
Twitter had an interesting year and fascinating to watch. We weren’t sure where Twitter was going to end up but it has turned into a media outlet for politics and current events. It gave Twitter a snowflake status, and no it’s not going to “beat Facebook”, they’re just two different things altogether.
4. Snapchat
Continue to double down on the vertical video world and continue to expand to the millennial crowd. I think we are going to see a lot more brands and brand engaging stories and I’m hoping Snap will work n their distribution model for smaller and medium size businesses to make it worth it for them in interact there.You’re also going to see Snapchat introduces features that will allow the brand to interact and schedule content on snap channels would be a very welcome thing.
5. Bing and Yahoo
I’m not entirely sure. Your going to see Bing with the maturity of Windows 10 and Xbox
In summary:
Again, no trends! These are my observations that I think you will see happen in 2017 in a real tactile way. Happy New Year and happy 2017. It’s been a fascinating and great year at Honeypot Marketing. You’re going to see the introduction to the Knows Network and I’m super excited about that. We are going to start doubling down on our own projects and community.
The ups, the downs of agency life. How to build your agency successfully.
Every day we’re launching, reviewing and optimizing marketing campaigns.
How to survive as an effective marketer without losing your sanity. Marketer Knows is a community for marketers who are in the trenches each and every day.