It would be rude of me to start the first blog of 2019 without wishing you all a very Happy New Year!
Well here we are, on the 12 month countdown to 2020! Maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard to believe we are almost 20 years into the new millennium. So much has changed in terms of technology and communication and with it, society as a whole has also changed.
It would be nice to see those changes as ‘advancements’ and ‘enhancements’ to how we live and do business, but in truth the huge growth in technology has been a double-edged sword in many ways. However, that’s a blog for another day and this blog is all about positivity for the year ahead!
The last few years have seen huge changes in how we do business and, in particular, how we market ourselves and communicate with our stakeholders. Most businesses have embraced the online world in at least some way, be it a website, social media platform or email marketing.
Not every business is necessarily comfortable with being online, but they are savvy enough to understand that the wheel keeps turning and you have to roll with it. After all, if you’re not moving forward…
For me, 2018 was a major year of change in how businesses went about their digital marketing and social media marketing. It was the year that businesses started to understand that the best way to showcase online was by showing some personality.
Marketing is no longer about just selling goods and services, it’s about storytelling.
It’s about showing who you are and what’s important to you. It’s about relationship building, and the only way to for a business to do that is to take responsibility for their online presence.
It’s not enough to just pay someone in-house or otherwise to ‘do your social’. It has to be about more than that. There has to be joined up thinking and contributions to what forms your online marketing plan. The best social media content is when it’s real and authentic and, to achieve that, everybody in an organisation needs to be on board.
So, last year saw me delivering a huge amount of Digital Marketing training sessions all over the country to all different types of industries. All of the businesses attending these sessions wanted to get a better understanding of how to manage their brands online.
They understood the importance of taking some control to help grow their business’ online presence.
We covered everything from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Blogging, Organic SEO, Paid SEO, Email Marketing to the basics of content creation including picture and video editing, keywords and hashtags! And they weren’t the only ones learning – along the way, I was too.
That’s the interesting thing about Digital Marketing – there’s no such thing as an expert. It’s a constantly changing and evolving field of study and, in truth, it moves so fast that we’re always playing catch up.
So, whatever your goals for 2019 might be, do yourself and your business a favour and get yourself online! Do a course, do some YouTubing – just do something to improve your Digital Marketing skills! I promise it will be worth it!
Karen Twomey is a Digital Marketing Consultant with Communications Hub and specialises in providing Digital Marketing and Social Media Training for businesses. For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie
