Vancouver, BC – December 11, 2019​ – ​Hootsuite​, the leader in social media management trusted by more than 18 million customers and employees at 80 percent of the Fortune 1000, today released its ‘​Social Media Trends 2020′ report. The company’s fourth annual report on global social trends reveals the biggest opportunities for brands to deliver winning social marketing strategies in the coming year.

“The new year is a time to refocus and energize your strategies for the year ahead,”

says ​Hootsuite VP Corporate Marketing Henk Campher​.

“The social trends we’ve identified at Hootsuite provide the sharpest tools needed to create the most exceptional and meaningful employee and customer experiences in 2020 and beyond.”

Brands are starting to act more like people on social, sometimes interacting one-on-one and sometimes in groups. The key is for organizations to make the experience seamless across both worlds.

Brands are also taking a stand on the most important issues facing our planet, becoming beacons of trust to their employees, who in turn are using social to amplify their company purpose.

And TikTok, the short-format video sharing platform, is shaking up the social media landscape in unexpected and delightful ways. Even if TikTok’s Gen-Z user base isn’t your target, marketers should think about diversifying their audience targeting beyond just the major social platforms.

Campher further added,

“Combined, these trends represent tremendous new opportunities for brands to establish deeper, more authentic, and longer-lasting connections with customers, with social at the center of everything they do,”

Hootsuite’s 2020 social trends for businesses large and small

1. Brands strike a balance between public and private engagement

The rise of private behaviors like 1:1 and group messaging has not diminished the importance of public social media feeds, which remain a critical space for brand discovery and customer acquisition. The key is ​creating multi-touch, personalized, and ​seamless experiences across both worlds, while balancing automation at scale and human connection to build deeper customer relationships.

2. Employers take center stage in a divided world

As our world becomes increasingly divided, employees are looking to their organizations to take a stand. Globally, employers are significantly more trusted than NGOs, businesses, government, and the media. Progressive organizations will take advantage of this new role, building strong internal cultures while amplifying their company’s purpose with employee and customer advocacy.

3. TikTok shakes up the status quo

With more than 800 million monthly active users and a median age of 16-24, TikTok continues its incredible rise. Whether or not it lasts, TikTok’s popularity brings valuable insight into the future of social culture, content, and collaboration. Social marketers should keep an eye on TikTok while using these insights to adapt their strategies on established networks for the next generation on social.

4. Social marketing and performance marketing collide

As social marketers face pressure to expand the scope of their skill sets, established champions of brand awareness and community building must also become fluent in performance marketing, finding a balance between driving short-term conversions and long-term strategies to build brand equity, customer happiness, and differentiation.

5. The social proof gap closes

New social commerce features are bridging the top and bottom of the sales funnel, creating a wealth of data around the conversion side of the customer journey. This bottom-of-the-funnel data can now be added to brand awareness activities, giving an invaluable holistic view of how people move through the entire buying journey.

Conducted in the third quarter of 2019, Hootsuite’s ​’Social Media Trends 2020′ report is based on a survey of more than 3,100 marketers and interviews with industry specialists. The research report includes not only the trends but also Hootsuite’s recommendations for seizing the opportunities that the trends represent, along with comprehensive examples of best-in-class brands getting it right. Hootsuite’s 2020 Social Trends report can be found ​here​.

Hootsuite is the leader in social media management, trusted by more than 18 million customers and employees at more than 80 percent of the Fortune 1000.

The post Hootsuite social trends report for 2020 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com

The post Digital Marketing News: TikTok Influencer Engagement Data, Google Post-Page & Brin, Reddit Grows Userbase, & Digital Ad Spend Rises appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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As new businesses spring up each day, the competition for the reader’s attention heightens. Staying on top of the latest SEO trends will enable you to meet specific requirements that search engines use to rank websites.

Google makes hundreds of changes to its search algorithms every year. While most changes are minor, they could affect your search ranking. These are some of the SEO trends I expect to see in 2020.

1. Voice search: People search how they speak

“Google, can you find the nearest taco place near me?”

There were 33 million voice search queries in 2017 alone. Data from March 2019 shows that 20% of mobile queries are voice searches.

As voice search becomes increasingly popular, more people will type search queries the same way they speak.

Notice that most of these search queries are long-tail and very specific? Users want an accurate answer to the exact question they asked.

Users who search long-tail keywords are in the consideration stage and are more likely to convert than someone in the awareness stage.

Bullet lists Increase your chances of ranking for voice queries, and most voice queries are local. Hence, optimize your website for local SEO.

2. Featured snippets will continue to dominate search results

A featured snippet is a summary of an answer to a search query. Google displays it at the top of the SERP result, above paid and organic ads.

They’ve been around for a few years and have led to significant changes in Google’s search engine result page. Almost half of all searches result in no clicks because users get the answers they need directly from SERPs. In fact, an Ahref study of 2 million featured snippets revealed that featured snippet gets more traffic than the first organic search result.

Aim for question-based search queries and keywords. Use questions from the “people also ask” section as it offers insight on related questions for a more in-depth answer.

3. More marketers will leverage influencers for SEO

17% of businesses spent over half of their entire marketing budget on influencers. The statistics highlight the importance of influencer marketing for companies, especially those in fashion, beauty, ecommerce, travel, and lifestyle.

Online users are overwhelmed with ads. They are looking for authentic information they can trust. Most times, the source of that information are reviews from influencers. They are more likely to trust information from an influencer than an ad.

So, what’s the relationship between influencer marketing and SEO? Working with an influencer helps you generate traffic, increase your online visibility and amplify your content reach.

Many companies do not see the return on their investment in influencer marketing because they don’t plan or execute their sponsored content properly. Your marketing fails if it doesn’t align with the needs of your audience.

To get the most bang for your buck, partner with influencers in your niche who already engage with your target audience. The backlinks you gain from influencer sites also show authority to Google and enhances your SEO efforts.

4. BERT is here to stay

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) enables anyone to train their own question answering system. This is the first major change Google has made to its search algorithm since RankBrain in 2014.

BERT will impact one in ten queries. SEO marketers who apply BERT models increase their chances of ranking on the first page for featured snippets in Google SERP.

BERT will have the most impact on conversational queries where prepositions like “to” and “for” matter to the meaning of the search query.

Just to clarify, you can’t optimize for BERT. Google uses BERT to improve its understanding of natural language.

But you can optimize for the intent behind search queries because intent matching is crucial to creating successful content.

Before writing copy, analyze the top ten content ranking on the first page of SERP for that specific keyword. Is the result informational, transactional or navigational? Create content that matches the user’s intent based on your analysis.

5. People will want digital experiences

44% of companies have moved to a digital-first approach to improve customer experience. Whereas, 56% of CEOs said the improvements led to revenue growth.

Page load speed is an important ranking factor. Great content means nothing if your web page doesn’t load quickly or you have a complex user interface.

Successful businesses understand that building a long-term relationship with customers hinges on customer experience, and customer experience invariably affects search ranking because only users who have a good user experience will spend time on your website.

Focus your user experience on helping customers find the information they need. Make it easy for visitors to proceed to the next step.

To provide the best user experience, you’ll need to wear the visitor’s shoes to identify roadblocks that cause poor experiences. Do not use complex words they do not understand. Lack of clarity in your messaging also increases the bounce rate and negatively impacts your site’s SEO.

6. Video will be the new king of content

Google loves video. It’s a crucial part of your SEO strategy and digital marketing efforts. According to a Forrester Research, video is 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of SERP than a web page with plain text. Also, 62% of Google universal searches include video.

Create helpful YouTube videos that support existing content on your website. It’s not a guarantee for first page results but you’ll enjoy higher traffic when Google indexes your video.

Embed videos on your website to get more traffic. Remember to optimize your video to your blog’s width. Add copy on the page to help Google understand what your video content is about.

7. Content length will determine search rankings

Only high-quality content can help you beat the competition to page 1 ranking. But you will also have to consider quantity alongside quality.

There’s a lot of arguments around the ideal length of a blog post. Research shows that the average length of the top 10 results is at least 2,000 words. That’s because web pages with long-form, high-quality content enjoy more visibility.

However, your content must comprehensively answer the question the user asked as well as questions related to the main search query.

Lengthy articles increase dwell time, which tells Google that users enjoy your content. You build authority and Google increases your ranking for the search query.

8. Mobile search will continue to take over

87% of internet users are on mobile phones and 40% of transactions occur on mobile. Google moved to mobile-first indexing on the 1st of July 2019 to improve the mobile search experience.

You can’t get far on search engine results if you haven’t optimized for mobile. Think beyond responsive designs to rich snippets.

If you’ve optimized for voice search, you’ve also optimized for mobile. Besides incorporating long-tail keywords for on-page SEO, modify the content structure and representation for technical SEO.

Conclusion

Just when you think you fully understand SEO, algorithm updates happen. Today’s SEO is a holistic process that requires both offline and online marketing strategies to succeed. Invest in SEO as a long-term strategy for lead generation and stay on top of the latest SEO trends to avoid getting left behind.

The post Top eight SEO trends for 2020 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com

Maliha Aqeel, Assistant Director of Brand, Marketing and Communications at Ernst & Young, is known for being a staunch advocate of the three C’s that drive brands: content, customer, and culture.

But when Maliha sat down with TopRank Marketing’s Joshua Nite for a Break Free B2B interview at Content Marketing World this past fall, she had one “C” at the top of her mind: culture, and its role as a driver for both employee and customer satisfaction.

„Whether we’re working for someone, or we’re actively purchasing their products, or just engaging with their brand, it matters to us what others think,“ she says.

While many employees still see corporate culture as solely a function of HR, Maliha says this is not the case. She believes that all employees have a responsibility to help propagate and model a company’s values, both inside and outside the organization.

In particular, Maliha believes that marketers are key in cultivating and communicating corporate culture. „Marketers and communicators within organizations have to take the charge … Our job is to take all of those values and say, ‚Here’s how it could look. Here’s how the intangible becomes tangible,'“ she asserts.

[bctt tweet=“Marketers and communicators within organizations have to take the charge … Our job is to take all of those values and say, ‚Here’s how it could look. Here’s how the intangible becomes tangible.‘ @MalihaQ on #CorporateCulture #BreakFreeB2B“ username=“toprank“]

Learn how to score an A in building your (B)rand’s (C)ulture by watching Maliha’s interview, which also touches on important topics such as employee journey maps, the purported death of email, and an unlikely upside of social media.

Break Free B2B Interview with Maliha Aqeel

Use the following time markers to skip between topics. We’ve also included some valuable excerpts from the conversation below.

• 00:24 – The three C’s that drive your brand
• 00:39 – Company culture isn’t just an HR initiative
• 01:54 – B2B companies are starting to embrace culture
• 03:13 – You company must be considered before it can be preferred
• 04:24 – Who leads the charge towards a cultural change?
• 05:21 – Identifying the foundational values for your corporate culture
• 06:25 – Customers prefer to work with companies that share their values
• 09:40 – The rise of culture in the age of abundance
• 11:37 – Culture’s role in the fight for talent
• 13:22 – Marketing’s role in influencing culture
• 14:58 – Email is not dead (but we need to be smarter about how we use it)
• 16:25 – Segmenting your internal audiences
• 17:50 – Employee journey maps
• 19:17 – Building brands by breaking down silos
• 20:42 – Breaking free in B2B

Josh: Your presentation is on the three C’s that drive your B (or your brand), and that’s putting the focus on content, customer, and culture. What do you think we’re missing in that equation right now?

Maliha: Focus on culture. There’s still a misconception that culture is about only HR. But culture is something that’s pervasive throughout the organization, and why we choose to work somewhere, why we choose to engage with the brand.

It’s something that we can’t always see. It’s what I call the intangible because it’s aligned to our values. If your values are that you prefer a certain type of lifestyle, and a certain type of philanthropy or social causes, you automatically start to look for brands that align with those values because you believe that there’s something is common with them. And that applies in B2B as well, not just B2C.

I feel like that’s something marketers don’t always understand because we focus on knowing the customer, making sure our content is what they want, but we miss the values piece, and that’s where the gap can occur.

[bctt tweet=“Culture is something that’s pervasive throughout the organization, and why we choose to work somewhere, why we choose to engage with the brand. @MalihaQ on #CorporateCulture #BreakFreeB2B“ username=“toprank“]

Josh: Do you think there are B2B companies that are effectively developing culture?

Maliha: I think they are starting to. I’m not sure that all of them have quite cracked it yet. I certainly do see it at EY … When I joined, what I noticed was, there was a huge emphasis on our purpose, which is building a better working world. And everything that we were doing, we always remind ourselves that we were doing it for that purpose. The fact that the clients that choose to work with us … they believe that it’s important for companies to be part of building a better working world.

Josh: Who leads the charge towards better culture?

Maliha: I think that the charge is really led by the senior leadership. They have to set the tone from the top. The culture comes, in many organizations, it’s still top-down, and I think it’s going to take time for that to change. Because, just the way organizations are structured, the top-down approach works. So I think they have to set the tone.

But marketers and communicators within the organizations have to take the charge. And, they have to say, „Okay, we hear you, here’s how we think you should do it. And here’s how we can visualize that for you in the marketplace.“ Whether it’s visualizing to the campaigns that we run or visualizing it through the internal communications that we work on, our job is to take all of those values and say, „Here’s how it could look. Here’s how the intangible becomes tangible.“

Josh: Where do you think that corporate culture is going in the next five years? What do you think we’re going to see with brands?

Maliha: I think we’re going to start to see that there’s almost an integration of … marketing, HR, communications — there’s going to be an integration between them so that you don’t have silos, working on different things, in their own little nation. But, rather, it’s likely going to be a broader function within a brand. And each of them will be expected to partner and they will be held to account for partnering in the right way. Because no one department owns a brand experience. It’s owned by everyone.

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Series: Janine Wegner on Building Brand Thought Leadership With the Help of Influencers
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Amanda Todorovich on Creating Content that Pays Off

The post Break Free B2B Series: Maliha Aqeel on How to Ace B2B Company Culture appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

Source:: toprankblog.com