Digital Trends 2013

Have you Analyzed Your Data?

To ride the crest of a marketing wave, a company must first know when the tide is coming in; that’s where big data becomes crucial. Big data – the vast collections of individual data points that form a bigger picture when properly analyzed – can be an astonishingly powerful tool. Google looks at big data when it looks at billions of searches a day to find out what people most want to know, for example. Anyone who’s ever had the disconcerting experience of being mind-read by a search engine has seen big data in action.

Data itself is meaningless without the right analytics, and those tools have become increasingly accessible, even to small companies. Simple, cloud-based tools cost a fraction of traditional solutions that involved a big IT budget and sophisticated gathering techniques. Sole proprietorships and mid-sized businesses can now take advantage of the wisdom of the crowd – and they must, if they hope to keep up with their competition.

Where’s the Content?

Search engines are driving another major trend for 2013: a move away from filler text and toward content-rich pages. Thanks to Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes over the past two years, the keyword-stuffed filler that drew clicks but offered little value to readers has plummeted in the search engine’s rankings.

That’s left digital marketers and CMOs hungry for content that differentiates their pages from pure SEO filler. Search engine optimization has taken on new meaning; as search engines change what they’re looking for, SEO must evolve from the standard keyword density and meta tags. Work with writers to create a style guide that gives the company a unique voice that’s consistent across newsletters, ads and blogs.