April 14, 2015 – A sold-out crowd welcomed Ethology’s Mike Corak to this month’s SEMpdx event. With experience building successful strategies over the years for companies like Coca-Cola, FedEx and Walt Disney, Mike walked us through all things digital as he shared the top trends for 2015 that deserve our attention.
- Customer experience is the next big thing – This brings together content strategy and user design.
- Content quality over quantity – Before creating any new content, take care of your existing content. Think ROT: redundant, outdated and trivial.
- Cooperative content takes center stage – Cooperative content includes a topical plan, user-generated content and employee-generated content.
- Video becomes de-facto – With new apps continuing to roll out, video shows no signs of slowing down. Find a way to tell your story with video.
- Paid social as important as organic – This is a mind shift for us, but nevertheless a new norm. If you want your message to be seen, be willing to pay a little money.
- Owned social comes roaring back – Start thinking about what you can be an expert at.
- Search teams up – Modern SEO is complex! It involves technical consultation, themes, content strategy, user experience and integration across multiple channels.
- Local gets it right – It’s critical to get that local ranking, yet we still see missing information in search results. Be sure you’re covering best practices – everything from local search platforms to aggregators to tactical integration and more.
Focus on these themes in 2015 and you’ll be well on your way to making effective gains in your digital marketing strategy and, ultimately, your bottom line.
Sarah is a search marketing consultant, helping clients improve ROI through paid search, SEO and social media initiatives. She is also the Official SEMpdx Event Blogger and can be found at all of the monthly events.
This is a great list Sarah! I certainly think customer experience is definitely the next big thing. With the recent roll-out of the Google mobile algorithm, I think it’s imperative to focus on providing the best user experience. Also this goes hand in hand with SEO. I was listening to a webinar last night with Michael Stricker, the US Marketing Director for SEMrush and he was saying that sites which are mobile friendly will certainly carry more weight than those that are not. This is something we certainly need to think about when developing an SEO strategy.