Social, Web And Search: It’s All About The Data, Big, Small Or Otherwise

There’s a lot of dialogue about social media, blogging, content marketing and more, used as a means to market a business or brand. The discussion is continuous because marketing has changed so much that businesses are scrambling to keep up. The ultimate goal for organizations is to have the continued ability to promote and market their company, and the changes are making this a challenge to say the least.

Digital Marketing

According to Adobe, the marketing industry has changed more in the past 2 years than it has in the last 50. THAT is huge! So, there are many companies that are playing catch-up in a very real and frantic sort of way. The thing about playing catch-up is, that at some point you expect to catch up and that usually happens. However, when things are moving as fast as the marketing industry is, while you are playing catch-up the pace continues to accelerate. This makes it so much tougher to catch up, but it is something that has to be done if one would like their business to survive this technology boom.

The acceleration toward digital marketing and progression away from traditional print media created an avenue for social media to take a foothold in the consciousness of everyone and this includes businesses. Social Media was just taking off a few years ago and it has now established itself as a huge part of the every day lives of individuals and businesses alike.

There are some businesses that recognized the importance of social media immediately, embraced it and is now thriving in that space. However, as with anything there are still organizations that have yet to see the importance of this media and are now lagging behind terribly. The companies that opted to task their major marketing efforts within the social media space to an intern or their neighbors teenager without bothering to embrace it and get to know more about the space are the organizations that will find themselves that much farther behind. As for the companies that were quick to embrace social, those are the organizations that will continue to move ahead in the space.

The companies that immediately recognized the importance of social media are diving head first into this evolving digital marketing space with a vengeance. These companies are the companies that have recognized that the social media honeymoon is over. Further, they’ve realized that it’s time to take social media to the next level. That next level is focused upon content, data and its relevancy to their organization.

Data Data, big, small or otherwise is the driving force behind having the ability to dominate the digital space or falling even father behind in this ever-transforming space. If you think about it, data is really not that new because traditional marketing utilized data to a certain degree for print campaigns and other non-digital media. The difference with data in the digital marketing space however is a bit different because it’s on a much larger scale due to the sheer volume.

Historically, those involved with traditional marketing have experienced challenges in areas of measurement of ROI. Data, big, small or otherwise provides the necessary information in which to bridge this gap. Data provides an avenue in which to measure the results of any marketing campaign and companies that have been more progressive in the digital marketing space are recognizing the importance of data in their digital marketing campaigns.

Data and companies focus on it will push one dimensional social media “experts” to step up their game in this digital marketing space, as more and more emphasis is placed on providing ROI for campaigns. Hence, we are moving away from social media that is not measurable to an area in which campaigns are calling for experts with the ability to go beyond just sharing and engaging, to analyzing the results of campaigns.

Measurable content is a huge component of the continued growth of social, search, web and visual content. It is actually one of the driving forces behind the growth in the digital marketing space.

The need for content that is measurable will continue to rise as the digital marketing space expands. So it is advisable that you brush up on your data and analytics because the maturation of social media just evolved into providing measurable content and analytics. So data and the ability to measure it will become more and more important as the digital marketing space evolves.

As organizations gain control over their big data and create the ability to effectively utilize smaller concentrations of data effectively they will start to realize the importance it will play in analysis and the measurement of ROI. Essentially data, big, small and otherwise is very important and will gain more importance as organizations realize that data is the key to dominating the digital marketing space.

Big Data

Data will continue to create a quandary for organizations and marketers as it continues to grow. Digital marketers that realize the importance of data and have recognized the shift in the digital marketing space to utilizing data will be the segment of marketers that will thrive in this ever-evolving space.

As organizations recognize that their power to make more informed operational decisions due to analyzing data, the demand for digital marketers with this ability will increase exponentially. So, goodbye social media gurus, it’s been fun but social media playtime is officially over, because it’s time to analyze some data.

As usual, I welcome comment, good, bad, ugly or indifferent. So you can follow and circle me on Google+, Facebook and or Twitter.

Source:

Adobe Digital Survey Report