With the holidays coming to a close and 2014 beginning, many take this time to reflect on the past year and develop plans for improvement in the year to come. While others are setting goals to spend more time with family and live a healthier lifestyle in the New Year, we asked our employees at Overit, a creative agency in Albany, NY, to share some trends they’re keeping an eye on in the New Year and goals they’ve set in 2014. What we came up with are resolutions that apply to almost any startup.
Content
As more marketers invest in content marketing in 2014, it becomes even harder for brands to stand out. We recommend setting specific goals for your content strategy and reevaluating the metrics you use to track its effectiveness. We also encourage brands to invest more in better understanding their target customers to produce content that will interest them and across the mediums they frequent. Don’t get stuck using the same channels all the time and explore new content experiences to attract and engage your customers.
Public Relations
We plan on more proactively updating and perfecting our LinkedIn profile. This particular platform has become an increasingly popular way for us to build relationships with reporters, for clients to learn more about the teams working on their accounts, and for potential clients to learn about our work.
We are always advising our clients to keep their social media profiles up to date and we plan to better apply this rule to our own profiles this year. By sharing company news and updates via LinkedIn, we will continue to build relationships with our business partners and showcase our talents to encourage new business opportunities down the road.
Social Media
Direct engagement is key when it comes to social media! That being said, we plan to devote even more time and effort on this through social accounts, such as Twitter or LinkedIn. Both individuals and brands can mutually benefit when they have conversations with others rather than broadcasting their own thoughts and agenda all of the time. Through direct messages, people will learn your name and you will portray a genuine interest in them as a person and brand.
SEO
In 2014 we want to get ourselves as well as our clients greater visibility on many social sharing platforms, such as Reddit and Digg. This will be done by creating unique and original, rich content including infographics, widgets, and mobile apps. Spending more time on the promotion of this type of content is a big goal for 2014 and will continue to help brands grow due to the increased visibility.
Design
To bring our web presences to the next level for 2014, we would like to integrate microvideo capabilities, such as Vine or Instagram, for unique storytelling and advertising experiences. Although these videos are mere seconds long, conveying a message through visuals can have a strong impact and leave lasting impressions on your audience.
Development
For 2014, we would like to expand our skillsets, including how to learn new programmatic languages as well as methods to continue to build large applications and amazing websites for every sector. In an industry that is always expanding and growing, such as digital marketing, it’s important to make sure we’re able to offer our clients the most up-to-date services available and we’re only able to do that as long as we’re constantly honing our skills.
What are your startup’s New Year’s resolutions?
Guest author Dan Dinsmore is the CEO at Overit.