Looking for some fresh tips to recharge your marketing batteries in 2015? Check out our handy dandy guide to upping your game and making your brand better than ever in the New Year.

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Embrace mobile!

2014 was the first time that mobile internet usage overtook desktop usage, and the disparity will only increase In 2015. As mobile payment technology and microlocation tools continue to advance, mobile will only become more prominent and important in the future. Are your website and content formatted for mobile? Are they responsive? Do they load quickly? If you answered ‘no’ to any of these things, you have some reason to be concerned about how easily users are able to interact with your brand on mobile devices. 2015 needs to be the year you make your site relevant and ready for mobile use for today’s mobile-content hungry consumers. For more specific tips about making your site more mobile-friendly, check out our post from July here.

 

Plan and Commit – Realistically

Rather than excitedly exclaiming, “I’m going to do a blog post 5 times a week and post to social media 6 times a day!” consider setting slightly more realistic goals so that you don’t burn out and find yourself creating a blog post just once a month. Set a goal that’s realistic and stick to it, whether it’s 1 post a week or 1 post a month – stick to it, and make posting regular fresh content a habit rather than an aspiration. By doing so, you’ll find that your readers are more engaged, and your search engine rankings are skyrocketing.

 

Stay Organized

Editorial calendars are one of the best things you can do for your web presence, ensuring that the content you produce is balanced, timely, and relevant to your company. There are tons of softwares available for this that are relatively inexpensive, but starting a calendar can be as easy as creating a Google Doc that you share with your team. For best results, plan your content at the beginning of each year by picking topics and events that you want to cover, and later plan specific posts and tweets at the beginning of each week or month. This helps you balance your posting, stay consistent, and cover what really matters.

 

Be Willing to Mix Things Up

Although it’s important to keep tried and true strategies that have worked for you in your business, don’t be afraid to branch out and embrace something new, such as video content or a new social media platform. Keeping great strategies is important, but accepting new ideas and implementing them can keep keep your brand relevant and fresh. Be willing to change up your editorial calendar if a great opportunity comes along, and be willing to change up your strategy as new technology is developed and becomes popular. In the words of Jen Gray, VP of Marketing at HelloWorld, “Set up your road map, but allow for a certain amount of experimentation.” Find a balance of the old and new, and don’t be afraid to be daring in your strategies!

 

 

Don’t make it look like you got Photoshop for Christmas

In an increasingly more visual web, beautiful design and graphics are helping marketers and brands to increase their engagement, and overall quality of posts. In a analyzation of post engagement from eMarketer.com, it was found that 87% of engagement came from social media posts that had photos – that’s nearly ALL engagement coming from photo posts! Now, before you rush over to PicMonkey to whip out some cute image of a cat with your company’s logo on it, take a minute to remember what really matters. Simply having a visual Facebook or Twitter post can actually hurt you rather than help you if it’s a low quality image or poorly done graphic that was created in haste. This year, commit to quality over quantity of posts, and only put out graphics that you’d be proud to have your name on. If needed, hire a graphic designer to help you create your posts and steer you in the right direction and maintain a consistent brand image across all your platforms.

 

What are your marketing resolutions for 2015?