It’s that time of year, so you’ve surely seen lots of articles about what’s going to change in 2014, predictions, wishes, what’s going to be more important, etc. etc., and if you’re anything like me you love them all.
There is nothing quite like looking forward to the holidays and taking a deep breath from your job to assess your success and make plans for the future. If you’re in the midst of this reflection and have found that you’re in need of a really good 2014 SEO and search New Year resolutions article, I’ve got you covered.
Top Online Marketing Topics You May Want to Work on 2014
As discussed above, there are going to be a lot of new and cool things you can do with online marketing next year, and you absolutely need to get yourself fluent on some of those changes and use them to your advantage. But what about all the old stuff? What about the simple things you’ve constantly been putting off? Anything you can improve upon there? I came up with a few ideas:
- Getting involved with Twitter Chats; both creating your own and participating in others.
Twitter chats have been around for a while, but there are still a large number of businesses ignoring the opportunities they can offer. Joining as well as hosting a Twitter chat is an excellent way to network and make connections with not only others in your industry, but consumers who are clearly very interested in learning more about what you do. It’s just another outlet to show people you know your stuff.
If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter chats, they are essentially a conversation between Twitter users that all use the same hashtag to keep track (I like to use Twubs to keep all Twitter chats organized). They occur at a specific time (whoever is hosting the chat will usually choose a time and market the chat well before it happens), and can range from a general topic with no real agenda, to Twitter chats about a specific event, to chats that feature a speaker/expert answering questions.
- Whatever happened to that contest you wanted to throw?
It’s a simple idea and you’ve surely heard of the benefits of holding a contest before—increase social connections, generate user content, build links and visibility, encourage conversation and comments, etc.—but this is one thing businesses are always putting on the backburner. Holding a contest definitely doesn’t come without a lot of work, but it’s something many businesses should try at least once to see how it works.
- Optimizing your LinkedIn page—don’t just keep it stagnant.
In this case I’m not necessarily talking about a personal LinkedIn profile page (although that’s important to keep up to date as well). Business LinkedIn pages can be optimized through keyword usage/research, targeted pages and hyperlinked banners, creating and posting videos, etc. yet many companies just let it sit. It doesn’t have to just be a page where people can connect with you if they’re trying to look for open jobs. You can draw in customers and clients with an optimized LinkedIn page! There is always a lot of talk about the individual LinkedIn profile, but your company page can be successful too.
- Are you done counting links yet?
We all know we shouldn’t worry too much about link building since it is becoming less and less important, but link building still drives many content departments for many companies. It’s a force of habit, and the idea of always getting links on new sites is therefore still appealing. The truth is, we need to work to make link building a perk in 2014 as opposed to the end goal. A great way to do this is to evaluate your writers on quality content, the authority of the sites where they are writing, the social shares and attention a post gets, the frequency of writing, etc. In 2014, maybe don’t even mention the fact that having a lot of links on a variety of sites is a good thing—we’re moving away from this idea.
What are some things you think you and your company could improve upon in 2014? Do you have a particular strategy in place to make sure it happens and doesn’t get pushed to the side? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo Credit: bplanet | freedigitalphotos.net
