• By michelle
• In digital marketing

Digital Marketing Tools for a Successful 2017

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new year…and I’m feeling good!”

Ok, so maybe those aren’t Michael Bublé’s exact words, but as 2017 begins, we are definitely feeling good! That’s  because we will be continuing to use a few of our favorite marketing tools and systems in our 2017 strategy to ensure everything from content creation to social media posting goes off without a hitch.

We think these tools and systems would also benefit you, so we’re going to share them with you.

Give them a try and, fingers crossed, you’ll have a little more extra time on your hands, reduce a little of your work-related stress, and hopefully, help you make more money this year.

Keep reading to discover a few of the digital marketing tools we will be using in 2017.

Monitor Your SEO Strategy

Staying on top of the latest SEO trends and ensuring your content is optimized are enough work as is. That’s why we recommend using a tool, like SEO Moz, to keep track of your SEO strategy.

From website errors and competitive research to finding new SEO opportunities and local search, Moz Pro software gives you actionable insights to improve your SEO strategy.

Use the MOZ tool, and you will be able to…

• Track your global rankings.

• Monitor your visibility score.

• Track competitor rankings.

• Improve your local rankings score.

• Do extensive keyword research.

• Monitor mobile rankings.

• Enhance your link-building strategy.

• Identify the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) features that drive traffic to your site.

With improved performance, both you and your clients’ content will notice increased online traffic, more conversions, and, ultimately, more sales.

Not to worry if you’re not an SEO expert. SEO Moz is a tool that’s easy to use, allowing  even beginner SEO users to build and enhance their online search presence.

Check out SEO Moz!

Find Content Inspiration

If you’re tired of writing about the same old stuff, the Answer the Public tool is something you’ll want to implement in your strategy this year.

This tool helps spark content ideas using autosuggest results provided by Google & Bing  search engines.

Simply type in a topical keyword as shown below and click the “get questions” button.

Answer the Public will then spit out tons of the hottest questions people have been asking about your topic online.

With the click of a button, you’ll have at least 100 new topics to use for your marketing content.

Tip: We’ve found great success using these ideas as content headlines. Pull a handful of these questions, write content, and if you have the time, test different headlines to see which questions generate the most views.

Manage Projects and People More Efficiently

You could have the best marketing ideas in the world or produce the most awesome product known to mankind, but if your employees are a bunch of squirrels and your project management procedures are disorganized, you’ll never reach your full potential.

That’s why having  a system in place to schedule projects, manage people, and keep your work organized is important.

There are dozens of project management tools—from Asana to Basecamp—to streamline workload. We’ve tried many different platforms, and our #1 pick is Teamwork.

This tool allows us to accelerate our team’s performance by assigning tasks, communicating, and tracking progress all in one place.

Teamwork systematically lays out daily, weekly, or monthly tasks and assigns them to individual employees or contractors.

Using a calendar system, it’s easy to see if you are ahead of or behind schedule.

On top of organizing tasks, the program has a messaging system that makes it easy to communicate with team members. This way we don’t have to rely on searching through emails to find a particular conversation.

Another great feature is the ability to monitor the progress of individual tasks by setting up project folders in your main dashboard.

Once you’ve set up project folders, you’ll have access to different tabs as seen in the above picture. This allows you to keep all the information (including messages, file uploads, or links) for individual projects in one easy-to-view place.

Add a little more organization into your life this year and give Teamwork a try!

Create an Editorial Calendar

There’s nothing worse than sitting at your desk thinking, “What the heck am I going to write about this week?”

When you fail to plan your content, you end up wasting precious time, and you’re just producing content for content’s sake.

Not a good idea.

That’s why we advise using an editorial calendar.

Each month, we block off time to brainstorm content ideas for the following month or two.  Having this time allows us to compile a set list of content topics so we know what content pieces are needed and are prepared when it’s time to start writing.

Doing this also ensures we always come up with quality content topic ideas, and gives us the time necessary to produce content that is engaging and insightful.

Implement an editorial calendar for your business, and you will be able to…

• End writer’s block – If you already know what you’re writing about, writer’s block is no longer a problem.

• Stay current – Planning your content out ahead of time allows you to stay current while promoting company milestones, holidays, or cultural events.

• Manage projects more efficiently – Planning ahead helps keep you on track with your writing goals.

• Write more consistently – An editorial calendar is great for helping people develop consistency.

• Reduce stress – Having a system in place tells you what you will write, keeps you on track, and helps you get ahead of the game to quickly reduces stress.

If you’re not sure how to get started with creating an editorial calendar, check out these awesome examples.

Automate Your Social Media Efforts

Imagine for a minute that you lived in a world where you had a team of robots who required zero compensation, happily took care of your busywork, and didn’t complain that you brought the wrong kind of donuts in for a breakroom snack.

It’s every business owner’s dream, right?

Well, you don’t have to dream any longer because there are online tools you can use that will cut down on the amount of time you spend on silly things like scheduling your social media posts.

There are numerous scheduling tools out there, but we prefer Hootsuite.

Hootsuite saves you time by managing all of your social media marketing efforts from a single dashboard. Use this tool, and you get everything you need to manage all your social profiles and automatically find and schedule effective social content.

The best part…you can use Hootsuite for FREE!

Let Hootsuite save you time, measure your social ROI, and help you protect your brand on social platforms this year.

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