Keeping Up With Digital Marketing Trends

The digital marketing industry is characterised as being dynamic, rapidly changing and widely diverse, which can make it challenging to keep up with trends and industry news. However, in order to create highly successful marketing strategies it is crucial you are aware of and are acting in accordance with digital marketing trends. Whether this is in terms of Google algorithm updates, best practice in SEO or new technical tools. It’s easy for good practice to become outdated, and actually hinder your efforts, so staying aware has never been more important.

Blogs & News

The most obvious place to start when it comes to keeping up with digital marketing trends is by reading blogs and other relevant news articles. These publications update on a weekly, or even daily basis so you can be sure you’re reading the most up to date information. These blogs are written by industry experts who put technical updates in a way so that you can take the key updates away and apply them in your own organisation. Not only this, but reading blogs and industry news can give you some inspiration for your own blog, whether that be in terms of writing style or idea generation.

Some Of Our Favourites:

• Moz
• Marketing Land
• Search Engine Land
• Kiss Metrics
• Content Marketing Institute

Google alerts is a great tool to keep up to date with the most relevant news in the digital marketing industry. You can choose the specific topics your interested in, or if you have any particular social influencers you want to keep up with, and set Google Alerts for them too. Choose you search term, how frequently you’d like to receive the alerts – and you’re all ready to go! Simple as that.

LinkedIn & Twitter

Social media is another tool you can utilise to stay on top of digital marketing tools – after all, it is a major player in the digital marketing industry. Turn to LinkedIn as a starting point, see what your connections are talking about, sharing or perhaps even writing themselves. People love to share their own articles on LinkedIn, and you can get some great insights on there that you might not get elsewhere on the web. Find out how to optimise your LinkedIn profile here.

Twitter is another social media platform with a range of content to keep you up to date in the industry. Take a look through current trends, follow industry experts, make lists of these people and take a look at what they’re sharing/writing. Again, you find some great snippets of news or trends you might miss otherwise. However, it’s important to look past the ‘noise’ you commonly get on social media , or you could be spending a lot of time on there and not actually access much valuable information in return.

Your Team

One of the most valuable tools you have is your team and the people around you. Someone is always going to have read an article that you haven’t, so there will be something new for you to learn. Learning from other’s experience is something a blog can’t always teach you, so use your team members around you! Not only this, but if you and your team are going to be the people implementing and using the tools and strategies you’re reading about, discussing it together is only going to be beneficial to your relationships and the way you operate as a team.

Your Competitors

We’ve all heard of the phrase keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Your competitors are trying to succeed just as much as you are, so monitor their digital marketing strategies and activities, see how it works and if it’s something you can apply in your own efforts. Why not take a look at market leaders, their activities might give you some inspiration with how you can be more adventurous or reach more potential customers. Use your competitors as a source of inspiration!

Events / Conferences

By attending conferences and exhibitions you can really get ahead of the trend, and get in depth information on what you should be focussing your future marketing efforts on. Attending events and conferences lead by industry experts doesn’t only provide you with the opportunity to listen to talks on the latest trends, but with the chance to speak to other digital marketers in your field. Hear about their experiences, what’s worked for them and what hasn’t and see how you can use what you’ve learnt in your own organisation.

Come Up With A Strategy

So now you’ve got a range of ways you can keep up to date with digital marketing trends, but the hardest thing can be finding the time to schedule this in (and sticking to it). Come up with a strategy to keep up to date with the trends, and most importantly think about how you’re going to communicate and implement what you’ve learned.