CONTENT
5 Ecommerce Content Marketing Trends for 2016 (PracticalEcommerce)
The content team took a sneak peak into the e-commerce content marketing fads for 2016. While Practical Ecommerce’s list is one of many outlining major trends of the new year, our content team enjoyed this one especially, as the importance of unique, quality product descriptions is at the forefront of this list. Many hours were spent this year developing just that kind of content for clients! The team, however, was not too thrilled with the idea of “Machine Generated Content.” “While the vast majority of ecommerce related content created in 2016 will probably be written by humans, machine-generated content could become a hot topic and a possible solution to a nagging ecommerce problem, writing product descriptions,” writes ECommerce. “For mid-sized companies that have been struggling with product descriptions this trend might become vital.”
MARKETING
RIP Millennials: Marketing Will Be ‘Age Agnostic’ Next Year (Ad Age)
Could this be the end of Millennial-targeted marketing campaigns? One Hotwire PR study may think so, but we’re not convinced. In fact, we believe marketing to the YOLO generation – which makes up roughly one-fourth of the US population – will be a constant for a few more years: 66% of millennials in the US follow a company or brand on Twitter, and 64% like a company or brand on Facebook for the sole purpose of scoring a coupon or discount (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth).
SEO
The 5 Biggest SEO Lessons We Learned In 2015 (Forbes)
The Google mobile update on all mobile-related search queries in April had a definite impact on SEO. The algorithmic change led to a decrease in non mobile-friendly URLs on the first 3 pages of mobile search result pages, a slight increase in mobile friendly results, and a change applied mostly on non-branded terms. Jayson Demers, founder and CEO of AudienceBloom, lays out the biggest SEO lessons learned in 2015. As for 2016, the sky’s the limit.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Why Is Facebook Engagement Suddenly Dropping? (Contently)
Have you noticed your page engagement has been declining since May? You’re not alone. Large companies like Gawker, Refinery29 and even The New York Times have been seeing a shocking drop due to the introduction of Instant Articles. “Relying on Facebook as a source of readers, then, appears to be a Catch-22,” writes Contently. “Publishers can either lose engagement and referral traffic from Facebook, or they can embrace Instant Articles and have their content hosted directly on Facebook, thereby relinquishing control over it.” While Facebook is denying this claim, desktop referral traffic to BuzzFeed fell 41% over the last few months. Those numbers cannot be denied!
VIDEO
Just like holiday microsites, brands are now duking it out on YouTube to develop the biggest and most impressive viral video during the holiday season. This year, online retailer Zappos went above and beyond in Hanover, New Hampshire. “When we found out that the small town of Hanover is full of Zappos customers, we decided to say thank you with a special delivery – on every single doorstep.” While one commenter was quick to note that not EVERY single doorstep was gifted with a box full of goodies, pulling a stunt off this big takes quite a commitment! Kudos to Zappos for bringing unexpected joy to a small town this holiday season.