#keeping track of it on a spreadsheet hashtag PROGRAMMER

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I forgor to properly post an intro but I AM doing solo april camp nanowrimo (despite it having been taken out back and been shot. oh well there’s other websites!) with the characters one would expect and the story is about uhhhh well it’s hard to say but it centres on the fact that donal is getting married and eoin and mary are, of course, micromanaging the wedding for no reason. and the defender lodge can’t stop “accidentally” killing innocent people

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

The content creation tools every marketer needs to know

Like the Queen Elizabeth II of marketing, content isn’t letting go of its place on the throne any time soon.

It’s an all-important aspect of marketing campaigns, yet it’s not always a walk in the park to create compelling, engaging and results-driven content. That’s why there are hundreds of content creation tools available to help marketers master their content game.

What exactly are those tools? It would take us days to list out all of them, but we can tell you which ones we choose to use as well as sprinkle in some other popular options to give you a solid idea of what’s out there.

Without further ado, here’s our list of content creation tools, complete with a nod to the superstar picks that we use to create content for our clients.

For research:

When you’re just starting to develop your content strategy or work on a new piece of content, take advantage of research tools to get the ball rolling in a promising direction.

Atlas

Powered by Quartz, this tool has endless graphs, charts and data visualisations at the end of a simple search. It’s great for gathering background information for potential content ideas, as well as finding compelling data for content you’re currently working on.

BuzzSumo (our pick)

This content performance analysis tool makes it easy to identify the content that’s getting the most shares. Those high-performing pieces are not only the ones to beat, but they can also be great resources for planning and creating content.

Google Drive Research Tool (our pick)

Google now has a tool that allows you to conduct Google searches without ever leaving the Drive window, making it super convenient to find the information you’re looking for and keep on creating with little time lost.

Google Trends (our pick)

Everyone’s favorite search giant is a great source for researching trending topics and queries. You can use the data to brainstorm new content ideas, find popular keywords or see if your content is piggybacking on upward trending search phrases.

Sparktoro (our pick)

Self-identified as “a search engine for audience intelligence”, Sparktoro is the latest tool from Moz creator, Rand Fishkin. You can use this tool to discover the content – from websites and podcasts to social accounts and publications – that is successful in reaching your audience.

Trendspottr

If you’re willing to pay for your trend reports, this tool is a great way to identify popular topics, hashtags and phrases to nail down some relevant content ideas. You can also track emerging trends, pinpoint key influencers and study your target audience.

For SEO:

When your research dips into the SEO specifics, these tools will help you find the winning keywords.

BrightEdge

This content performance tool measures the content on your site and identifies where there’s room for SEO improvement.

MarketMuse (our pick)

Powered by artificial intelligence, MarketMuse analyses your content and highlights where keyword gaps exist. The reports identify which prominent keywords you’re missing so you know how to optimise your content for better rankings. We love this tool We use it to see how we stack up to competitors and apply the results to update and improve our content.

SEMrush (our pick)

This awesome keyword research tool helps marketers track keyword rankings across both paid and organic search campaigns. We use it religiously to identify the keywords we plan to use in each piece of content. I’ll be honest with you: SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is probably the most useful bookmark on my computer.

For content planning and management:

You have to keep track of what you create for your marketing campaigns, and these project management platforms will help you stay organised from start to finish.

Airtable (our pick)

It works like a spreadsheet, but it also has the power of a database to help you organise all of your projects in one place. Plus, it’s easy on the eyes with grid, calendar, kanban and gallery viewing options, complete with beautiful (and extremely helpful) colour-coded tasks.

Evernote

This collaborative app for organisation helps marketing teams refine, plan, organise and prioritise every aspect of the content creation process.

G Suite (our pick)

With Gmail, docs, sheets and calendars designed for seamless collaboration, we can’t help but rely on Google to get our work done every day. The biggest benefits of planning and creating content in Google Drive is that everything saves automatically for peace of mind, and anyone can access it anywhere, making it easy for our different offices to operate as one united team.

HubSpot (our pick)

As a leader in the content marketing industry, HubSpot provides a comprehensive array of marketing services that help teams develop strategies, create content, manage distribution and analyse performance. These helpful tools help marketing teams organise and optimise their efforts. As a HubSpot partner, we take advantage of some of these services to boost our content creation and better help clients meet their goals.

Trello

As a web-based project management application, Trello is another popular option for keeping track of content creation workflows. It provides a visual overview of tasks via various boards, cards and lists. It can be a little hectic before you know what you’re doing, but many teams do find a good productivity flow with the app.

For analytics:

When it’s time to see how your content is performing, you can utilise many of the same platforms you used to research topics and keywords in the beginning.

Google Analytics (our pick)

Is there anything Google can’t do for us? It’s a little unsettling, but the search giant is incredibly useful for content marketers. You can use Google Analytics to track and report social media and website traffic, offering your brand or clients insights on how their content is driving those visitors. The data also helps us measure conversion rates and make relevant changes to continually improve our content creation services.

Kissmetrics

Founded by Neil Patel, Kissmetrics is a customer intelligence platform that offers real-time data to help marketers better understand consumer behavior and drive higher levels of user engagement. Using behavioral analytics, Kissmetrics can help marketers track engaged users, landing page performance, conversion rates and more.

Parse.ly

This predictive analytics tool can track author and topic performance, measure audience attention and identify web trends. It helps marketers act on the topics and types of content that are driving the most audience engagement.

SEMrush (our pick)

SEMrush to the rescue again, with features like domain comparison, competitive analysis, brand monitoring, content analyser, position tracking and more. We use these insights to get an idea of what’s working and where we need to make improvements.

For social:

When you’re in charge of managing social media accounts for a company, your life becomes a whole lot easier when you enlist help from digital tools to plan calendars, schedule posts and create visuals.

Bannersnack

This free online banner creator makes it easy for social media teams to create professional-looking banner ads without needing to lean on a graphic designer. You can make them entirely custom or work with the platform’s pre-made templates to guide your creation. The tool also allows you to save time by making multiple banners of various sizes at once.

Biteable

Biteable will turn your brand into a video star in a flash. It allows you to create social videos ready for sharing in just minutes. With thousands of styles and templates to choose from, it’s easy to bring your vision to life and maintain your brand personality at the same time.

Canva

The fast-paced nature of social media makes it difficult to use graphic designers for every post. That’s why our social team takes advantage of Canva, which is a web-based, more simplified version of the programmes that professional designers use. You can create plenty of social graphics appropriately sized for each platform. However, the features, templates and libraries you’ll have access to will depend on if you use the paid or free version.

Crello

With a similar feel to Canva, this simple tool helps marketers quickly create designs for social posts, banners and ads. The platform will also automatically resize images to meet the requirements of various social media platforms.

HootSuite (our pick)

HootSuite is one of the industry’s best social media management platforms. You can use it to manage Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube profiles through scheduling posts, monitoring social conversations and tracking ROI.

Pablo

Pablo is another tool used to create visuals for social posts, especially for images with copy overlays. You can install the Pablo app on your browser, which allows you to highlight copy on your screen, send the phrase to Pablo and then pair it with an image. No more forgetting those perfect phrases or quotes! They’ll be ready to post in an engaging, visual way in just seconds. The app has its own Creative Commons library with plenty of images to choose from, and users can also upload their own photos.

Sprout Social (our pick)

On par with HootSuite, Sprout Social is another industry favourite.The social media management software features solutions like content planning and publishing, campaign and conversion management, post measurement and optimisation, social listening and more.

For writing:

While all writers add their own nuances to the process, there are some helping hands for topic generation and editing, as well as platform options for where the words will live as they begin to flow.

Google Docs (our pick)

If you’re still writing in Microsoft Word, it’s time to consider an upgrade that makes tracking document history and collaborating on edits a far more seamless process. Most of us on the editorial team write content in Google Docs before uploading the copy to our internal editing, delivery and tracking system. Doing so makes it easy to share the content with others on the team, and ensures we can access the copy whether we’re working in the office or remotely. We even deliver copy to some clients via Google Docs, which makes it easy for them to suggest changes to drafts and share them with our team.

Hemingway App

What would you give to get Ernest Hemingway’s opinion on your writing? As the namesake of this free online editing program, Hemingway App may be the closest you’re gonna get. The app reviews your writing to identify readability level, catch mistakes and suggest areas for improvement. It can pinpoint poor grammar, passive voice, hard-to-read sentences and more. Simply paste your copy into the app and it’ll go to town. While we use peer editing, some writers may choose to use this tool on their own accord before sending the copy to the assigned editor.

HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator (our pick)

This blog topic generator helps writers when they hit a wall and struggle to come up with new content ideas. Simply enter a few keywords you want to focus on, and the HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator will produce several titles and topics to spark inspiration. While you may not choose the exact title generated, it can be a helpful way to get the gears going again.

Unicheck

Authenticity is the name of the game, so make sure you haven’t borrowed a few too many of someone else’s words. This online plagiarism checker ensures your content is entirely original by scanning copy for unwanted similarities.

For images:

Visuals are key for engaging your target audience, but blurry, cheesy or clearly staged photos just won’t do. Use these tools to source and edit the top-quality imagery that will enhance your content.

Acorn

This image editor for macOS 10.11 and later is an optimal choice if you don’t want to use Photoshop to edit photography.

Adobe Photoshop (our pick)

This is the premiere tool for creating and editing images, making it the obvious choice for our in-house design and video teams.

GIPHY (our pick)

Remember all those GIFs we hilariously sprinkle into our blog posts? 99 percent of the time they come from GIPHY. It’s a free online library of every GIF imaginable. You simply search for the GIF you’re looking for, and when you find the winning one you can simply drag and drop.

On a somewhat related note: No one really knows the truth so I say pronounce GIF however makes you happy.

Pixabay

Pixabay is a community-based online library that offers over 1.6 million royalty-free stock photos and videos that are uploaded by the platform’s users. It’s a great option for those who don’t have the budget to pay for photography.

Pixlr Editor

This desktop photo app is the closest you can get to Photoshop in your browser. Pixlr Editor allows you to edit photos with a suspiciously similar editing interface to Photoshop, and includes filters, layers and masks for advanced editing purposes.

Shutterstock (our pick)

This library of over 200 million images is a top choice for stock photography. With such a varied and extensive selection, you have a good chance of finding exactly what you need for every piece of content.

Twenty20 (our pick)

When you want images that have a more authentic feel than classic stock imagery, Twenty20 is the place to go. The images have a more real-world aura with artsy touches that make them totally Instagram worthy. With millions of images to choose from, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.

Unsplash

Unsplash is another resource for high-resolution stock photos with an eclectic array of collections to explore. Many of the images are even free to download and use in your content.

For design:

Infographics, eBooks, whitepapers, case studies and plenty of other content require professional formatting to truly drive results. Along with the aforementioned options for images, these tools help designers work their magic.

Adobe Creative Cloud (our pick)

Adobe is the leader in design software, and Creative Cloud (CC) is the package of creative apps that every graphic designer masters. CC is essentially a collection of the world’s best apps and services for video, design, photography and web content creation. With Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects and other design programs, you can create the stellar, professionally designed content your audience is more likely to engage with.

Canva

This online design program can do much more than social posts, making it a great resource for marketers who need visuals pronto. Plus, it’s more fitting for a beginner skill level when compared to Adobe CC.

Easel.ly

This simple infographic maker has plenty of pre-made templates to create infographics in a short amount of time. The free version offers access to only a limited selection of images and templates, so it may be worth registering for a pro account if you plan to make several infographics.

Infogram

If you need a faster turnaround or don’t have graphic designers on your team, you can use this visual content tool to create infographics, charts and data visualisations in minutes. There are plenty of templates and customisation options so you can create an original piece of content that still follows brand guidelines. As a free and intuitive platform, Infogram is especially ideal if Adobe’s monthly subscription cost is too high for your budget or if you’re working at a beginner skill level.

Skitch

Powered by Evernote, Skitch is a tool loved by many designers and visual learners. It allows you to easily take screenshots of your whole screen or designated portions of it, which is a super helpful feature for those working on a PC. You can then annotate screenshots and images with highlights, sketches, arrows and text when you need to brainstorm ideas or easily share your thoughts with other team members.

The Noun Project

Designers use this extensive library of icons to save time creating the illustrations themselves. The free account requires users to give credit to the icon creator or purchase the royalty-free version.

Venngage

This free infographic maker helps you create professional graphics in little time. You can choose from over 100 templates, add charts and visuals and then customise your design with your brand fonts and colors.

For video:

Videos are more powerful than static images, so you’ll want to make sure you have the tools to create such impactful content.

Adobe Creative Cloud (our pick)

Much like our in-house designers, our video team relies on several Abode programmes to produce such high-quality content. Photoshop is the go-to for image editing, while Premiere is the top choice for video editing. Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects are great tools for creating motion graphics and Cinema works best for 3D animation.

Magisto

If you need a professional-quality video pronto, Magisto can help you create branded videos in no time. The video editor allows you to work with captions, themes, special effects, commercially licensed music and other features to create an original piece of video content.

RawShorts

Ideal for beginners, this online programme allows users to create video content in just one or two hours. RawShorts utilises AI to turn your text into an animated video that’s easy to share via social profiles or landing pages. There are a variety of pre-made templates, plus a drag-and-drop feature to easily insert text, images and other elements.

Wideo

This online video creation platform enables users to create, edit and share professional animated videos – even if they have zero experience in creating such content. There are pre-made templates to use for explainer videos, presentations, product promos and demos, brand stories and more.

For email:

When your content strategy involves email marketing, you’ll need to write stellar copy and create the right templates to deliver engaging content to inboxes on the reg.

BEE

BEE is a simple and quick way to design great-looking emails. The intuitive platform has drag-and-drop features, plus the end result looks great on mobile as well as web browsers.

Mailchimp (our pick)

This veteran email marketing service helps marketers create and distribute automated campaigns. You can choose the template that best suits your needs, and then customise the content with your own copy and images. Mailchimp also provides helpful data and success reports to help you track your email campaign.

Salesforce Pardot (our pick)

Pardot is a B2B marketing automation service that helps marketers create more leads and generate conversions. Among Pardot’s offerings is an intuitive email builder with automated engagement studios, optimised sending and personalised messaging to help marketers utilise email marketing to its fullest potential.

With a jam-packed toolbox, you’ll be ready to create content like the marketing hero you were born to be.

from http://bit.ly/36uQ74n

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The best tools for automating your SEO

Here’s a fact: effective SEO results require hard work and effort.

Anyone who has been in the SEO game for more than a few days knows that earning your website a place in search results is no piece of cake.

Not only do you need to carefully plan and execute your strategies, you also need to be on the lookout for changes in algorithms and other tweaks.

But the fact that SEO requires dedication doesn’t mean you can’t use tools and software to simplify the process, especially when you work with several large websites.

SEO automation means making the search engine optimization process automatic through the use of tools, software and other programs that reduce human labor.

The entire SEO process is far too complicated for all of it to be automated, but certain aspects of SEO definitely can be. And this can free up considerable time for other creative and administrative work.

The key here is to understand what you can automate and what you can’t (or shouldn’t) automate. For example, tasks like site monitoring and data collection should be automated so that information is collected on the go. A professional then needs to take decisions based on the data collected.

However, SEO processes like content creation and organic link building should not be automated because not only would you end up with low-quality content, you could also get penalized for building spammy links.

Your best bet is to find a combination of tools and software that helps you get the job done in minimal time.

So, if you’re thinking of automating your SEO, here are some of the best tools that can help you with specific areas.

SEMrush for advanced keyword research and tracking

Keyword research is the foundation of any good SEO programme. After all, the goal is for your audience to find you through search. While a free tool like Google Keyword Planner is a great place to start, SEMrush is one tool that would save you a lot of time and effort when it comes to keyword research.

With the SEMrush keyword research tool, you can identify your competitor’s best keywords, observe position changes in domains, uncover long tail keywords for your own site and for PPC campaigns.

Combining the Keyword Magic tool and Keyword Analyzer allows you to carry out keyword research faster than you would with a combination of tools. You can easily sort through thousands of keywords and uncover long tail keywords without dealing with multiple spreadsheets.

The keyword analyzer sorts selected keywords according to volume, KD, and click potential. Using the Keyword Magic Tool, you can select a combination of phrases and the tool will suggest long tail combinations with the exact phrases people search for.

If you work with clients, then the SEMrush Report builder comes in handy for creating custom reports. All you have to do is select widgets relevant to your report and customize the settings. The report builder automatically updates the information whenever you need to generate a report.

You can also schedule the reports, or use them as templates for future reports.

Cyfe for all-in-one monitoring

One of the pains of SEO is that there is always so much information to track. From keeping an eye on analytics, to monitoring your rankings and catching up on advertising campaigns, there can be a lot of logging in and out of several dashboards.

This is where Cyfe comes in. Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard that allows you to keep track of important marketing metrics including SEO and SEM metrics. Cyfe’s strength lies in its ability to pull in data from several sources into one dashboard, giving you an eagle eye view of all your SEO efforts.

Cyfe’s pre-built widgets allows for easy monitoring of any metrics you may want to track. With the Moz widget, for example, you can monitor a website’s authority in search without the need for a paid Moz account.

By adding a widget for Google Search Console, you would receive updates on your site performance in Google search. You could also monitor your site’s performance across different search engines.

Another place Cyfe excels is in competitor tracking. With the Cyfe competitor dashboard and RSS feeds, you can monitor your competitor’s content, email and social media strategies at a glance.

Once you have configured all of your dashboard widgets, you can set up rule-based SMS alerts, allowing you to continue with business as usual, knowing you’ll get a mobile push notification when anomalies that demand human attention arise.

Screaming Frog SEO spider for site crawls and audits

The bottom line in SEO is knowing what to fix on your site to boost performance in search. That means you need an excellent site audit process, especially one that you can put on repeat. For this, Screaming Frog SEO spider is a great choice.

Screaming Frog is a web crawling tool that checks for broken links, audits redirects, analyses page titles, meta data and discovers duplicate content. It can also generate XML sitemaps and integrates with Google Analytics, and you can even set it up for regularly scheduled crawls.

If you have ever tried to perform these activities manually, you would know how tedious they can be, especially for large websites. Screaming Frog saves you the time.

To generate a sitemap, all you have to do is crawl a site completely, and select the XML sitemap option. The tool also comes in handy when searching for and replacing links on your website.

Ahrefs for backlink analysis

The best way to jumpstart your SEO effort is to get backlinks from reputable websites. Ahrefs is one tool that can help you keep an eye on how well your efforts are paying off. The tool crawls 6 billion web pages daily and has an index of 3 trillion known URLs, making it the perfect option for backlink analysis.

With Ahrefs, you can automatically set the tool to monitor how well you are ranking in search, using the recently rebooted Rank Tracker tool. You can also get alerts for new keywords, new/lost backlinks and brand mentions.

Keeping an eye on the competition is also easy, as you can find content attracting the most backlinks in your niche and spy on your competitors to know where their links are coming from.

Conclusion

SEO is a tough nut, and there’s no magic way to automate all of it. To get the best results, you’ll still need to put in the required time and effort. What you can (and should) do, though, is to arm yourself with excellent tools that make the job easier and faster.

The SEMrush keyword research tool is a great option for intelligent keyword research while Ahrefs helps you track down your backlinks effortlessly.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider helps you stay up to date with your site performance through in-depth crawling, and for monitoring all your site metrics in one place, you can rely on Cyfe.

Which tools do you use to automate your SEO? Share your recommendations in the comments!

The best tools for automating your SEO syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

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2018 Marketing predictions you need to keep an eye on

Seven predictions to act on for your future marketing plans

The start of 2018 is in sight, So, it’s the start of seasonal predictions about the forthcoming year’s marketing and branding trends.

In this article, I gaze into the crystal ball to make seven predictions relating to 2018’s marketing trends. These cover trends in audience engagement, branding and advertising. For more coverage of digital marketing, see Dave Chaffey’s Marketing trends 2018 article .

Prediction 1: Personalisation gets even more savvy

Marketers have long understood that consumers are preoccupied with one question: “what’s in it for me”?  Accordingly, personalization through the use of big data has become one of sales and marketing’s important campaign considerations.

Stub Hub lists all my favourite artists and venues first

For example, StubHub, an online ticket exchange operated by eBay, reported a 42% improvement with a personalized call to action.  IDC forecasts that by the end of 2018, the big data industry will be worth $102bn.

On a practical level, many dynamic sites featuring smart marketing automation have superseded older static site content. (According to Smart Insights Improving Engagement Report 2018, dynamic content insertion is used by 4 in 10 marketers. However, some pundits warn of the danger when excessive personalization becomes less direct, it loses some of its potency. The good news is that digital marketers are fast to respond and adapt to consumer needs and fears. Therefore I predict that personalization will become more subtle, relevant and ultimately savvy.

Prediction 2: Pansexual Marketing

In July 2017, the UK Advertising Standard’s Association report, ‘Depictions Perceptions and Harm’ suggested harmful stereotypes in advertising limit choices, aspirations, and opportunities for children, young people, and adults. The guidelines require brands to adhere to new standards to replace hackneyed stereotypical gender roles and characteristics.

Fearless Girl, a statue in Wall Street created by McCann New York for State Street Global Advisors, is meant to encourage more financial companies to put women in leadership positions. In August, UK Clarks shoes came under fire for launching ‘Dolly Babes’ shoes for girls and ‘Leaders’ for boys. One month later, in a bid to eradicate gender stereotypes, John Lewis removed gender-specific labels from its children’s clothing.  (John Lewis also suffered a Twitter backlash).

Despite further anticipated reprisals, towards the end of 2018, brands will introduce more gender-neutral marketing campaigns.  I predict that these will feature progressive slogans and hashtags targeted towards cross-gender segments.  All these initiatives and more will help lend general support to 2018’s celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Prediction 3: Grittier #nofilter storytelling

Expect a sharper shift towards live video. In the race to ensure credibility with cynical audiences, during 2018 many brands will aim to be more personable through engaging live video via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Increased user involvement in commenting, liking, videoing, sharing and connecting to events such as featured interviewers with key influencers (such as celebrities) will further help marketing campaigns become exceptionally popular.

To address the global trend towards demanding substance over superficiality (including hostility towards ‘fake news’ in politics and commerce) rather than just slickly produced, yet ultimately bland brand storytelling videos using stock photography, expect content to have a more ‘genuine’ user-produced flavour.  Equally, expect B2B brands to produce longer length copy featuring ‘relevant real life’ examples, as opposed to ‘airbrushed’ wishy-washy corporate hogwash.

Prediction 4: Improved management enhances micro-moments

Back in 2015 Google advocated the appeal of micro-moments providing relevant content in real time.  Whilst many brands have since adopted the approach, the relentless pressure on marketing departments to push out more and more content has, in far too many cases, diluted its effectiveness.  That’s why I predict that in 2018, marketers will further refine micro-moment management in terms of frequency and depth of customer support and experience campaigns across devices. Thanks to a deeper understanding of digital psychology, marketers will become increasingly sophisticated in remaining responsive when delivering timely content, without appearing overly intrusive.

Prediction 5: Social messaging apps dominate social networking

Each day four billion users worldwide use social apps. By 2018 an estimated two billion messages will be sent through so-called over-the-top (OTT) apps.

By next year social messaging will play an even greater role in everyday interactions. It’s all down to social messaging offering a relatively secure instant, real-time connection which is popular with millennials demanding transparency and collaboration.  Businesses too will steadily depend on social messaging as an immediate direct communications tool - especially when dealing with overseas customers.

However traditional social networking platforms like Facebook are far from being out of the picture.  Facebook ads already lead to brand chats.  As a result, customers are solving problems quickly and efficiently.  Which brings me to a further prediction:  Gazing even further ahead than 2018, I predict that eventually, Facebook will completely integrate WhatsApp (which it has owned since 2014) into a completely new exciting iteration of its service.

Prediction 6: Pop-ups finally burst

Following many years of futurists predicting the definitive demise of pop-up adverts and interstitials, during 2018 more mainstream brand advertising ‘pops’ will finally burst. This move has partly been prompted by Google’s initiative to penalize pop-ups on smartphone. Perhaps penalties for desktop pop-ups will follow in 2018. Gradually, the pop-ups will be replaced by more astutely designed cross-device responsive native advertisements.  Providing the new native advertising is transparent, with users appreciating that content is sponsored and is relevant, and campaigns are designed to minimise disruption to the user experience, 2018 is on track to be native advertising’s most successful year yet.

Prediction 7: Tech brands become a channel for spiritual expression

My final prediction concerns a wider aspect of professional marketing.  Once only nerds were excited by tech brands.  Today everyone is a potential coder.  Rather than purely traditional written and graphic creativity delighting marketers, algorithms measuring and targeting response are supposedly just as exhilarating.  With so much data overwhelming the senses, 2018 will see marketers turning to technology to take spiritual breathers from the day-to-day grind of spreadsheets and impossible to reach targets. Therefore between meetings with stressed out colleagues, marketers will reach for tech apps offering digital mindfulness programmes or CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Training).

Ah… now breathe…only three months ‘till your new year marketing resolutions.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/digital-strategy-development/2018-marketing-predictions/