As 2011 winds to a close (which frankly is hard to believe since it was just January!) we decided to roll out what will be our annual Digital Marketing Insights for the following year. Our Insights will focus on the three areas that make up our agency offering of helping companies improve their online brand visibility: search engine marketing, custom content creation and blogging, and social media marketing.

These Insights aren’t designed to be earth-shattering, but rather to plant an idea in your head for how you might think about marketing next year. We hope they help you see the importance of brand visibility and help guide you in your decision making surrounding online brand presence.

We’ve listed our Insights below, and embedded the SlideShare below, which contains more detail on our thoughts.

Search Engine Marketing

  • Google will continue to make algorithm changes that center on ‘fresh’ content
  • Google+, and pages for Google+, will emerge as important SEO tools for businesses
  • Microsoft will acquire Yahoo and make some inroads in search marketing share of business
  • Social media will continue to play a significant role in search visibility (SEO)

Content Creation and Blogging

  • Content will be promoted from ‘King’ to ‘Emperor’ status
  • Active blogs will continue to boost online brand visibility
  • Content curation will continue to enjoy strong growth
  • More and more websites will adapt a blog format

Social Media Marketing

  • Facebook will continue to dominate the consumer social media networking landscape
  • Facebook is becoming an ecommerce platform that brands shouldn’t ignore
  • Twitter will continue to evolve their advertising offering; creating opportunity
  • Social media will chip away at traditional marketing budgets to play a greater role in lead generation

It’s been an exciting year in digital marketing and we’re excited about the opportunities that lay ahead in 2012 for marketers. While they say that nobody likes change save for a wet baby, we do believe that the changes taking place in digital marketing are good ones, and if embraced can lead to tremendous opportunity.

2012 Digital Marketing Insights