Advertisers should be careful and never miss important updates from Google, YouTube, Bing, Yandex, Facebook, etc. and impressive case studies published by popular brands. It takes time and dedication to keep up for both marketers and technical specialists. So, we decided to brainstorm and share with you how we catch a fish and save the time of the team for searching digital marketing news.
Keeping everything in order
A first and most important hack is to create a shared document where the team members post latest marketing news. In fact, we have a Google Sheet with a few sheets used by different departments: SEO, PPC, marketing, and so on. We even have a sheet named “GDN scripts”. Whatever works for your team is fine.
However, make sure to organise the list of marketing news. For example, we insist that all the updates have links to the official websites where they were released. Another important thing is to save each others time by tagging those specialists who can/should start implementing a new technology or recommendation in their work asap.
And last but not least, we regularly search for interesting websites to keep an eye on. Sometimes, editorial policies change and a chosen resource becomes less useful, while something new emerges. The aforementioned takes time, so let us help you get started and share some great places with news and analytics on ecommerce and digital marketing.
Dedicated websites
Mashable is a source for technology, digital culture, and entertaining content for the audience around the globe. Though it seems too much of everything, you will find top global marketing news there. We especially like their materials about companies, e.g. this one about Amazon’s first Black Friday deals – impressive stats to consider. So, think about joining 45 million of monthly users and either subscribe for email updates or follow them on social media.
Marketing Land covers almost everything you can imagine related to digital marketing: SMM, SEO, SEM, mobile, analytics, display, retail, and more. What is great is that they post digital marketing news on a daily basis. There, you can both learn new technologies and improve your soft skills. For instance, this short read provides easy-to-implement pieces of advice on how to build better agency-client relationships.
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Moz offers a comprehensive set of SEO tools and also has a blog with analytical articles, technology reviews, and research results. This is a good place to search for some actionable insights. Have you ever had a feeling that you create content for your boss? If so, you may be pleased to see the following piece of advice published on Moz.
One of our favorite British resources is SmartInsights. They publish a number of materials related to digital marketing from detailed how-tos to short digests of different updates. For example, we haven’t missed these updates in social media. They have also released digital marketing megatrends for 2018. This post is worth checking out.
You may add more websites to this list. Our SEO and PPC departments follow Search Engine Journal, content writers highly value publications on HubSpot, marketers actively discuss posts published on Ecommerce Times, and designers follow Awwwards and Telegraf.Design. Either way, select a few resources which content is easy-to-consume for you and stay tuned.
Online courses
As a marketer, you understand how rapidly this industry changes. So, continuous education seems as a necessity. A good thing is that the choice of educational content is vast. You can watch free YouTube videos, complete an online specialisation, study materials offered by companies, like Google, Facebook, etc. Below, we will share some resources that help us keep digital marketing fit.
If you need to understand or recall the basics of digital marketing, don’t miss a course offered by HubSpot Academy. You will learn how to attract traffic to your online store and turn visitors into customers. More digital marketing courses on Udemy are listed here.
No surprise that Coursera as well offers a number of options for digital marketers and technical specialists. They have a Digital Marketing Specialisation designed to help students master strategic marketing concepts and tools to ensure effective brand communication on the Web. Our content writers recommend a Content Strategy Specialisation: best practices, helpful communication strategies, tips and hints on how content can help brands stand out, and much more.
This one is definitely worth mentioning – Google Online Marketing Challenge. It helps students train their digital skills. Visit their website for more information because there is too much to say.
Influential bloggers
Well, some people like learning from peers. They prefer following particular bloggers, marketers, and businessmen to get inspired. Our marketers have mentioned some influential digital marketing experts in this post. Today, we would like to add some more.
Heidi Cohen is a chief content officer at Heidi Cohen’s Actionable Marketing Guide, speaker at top conferences, and creator of graduate-level marketing classes. Her blog is the place where she writes about basic actionable marketing, blogging, branding, career, ecommerce, lead generation, and more.
For advanced marketers, we recommend a website maintained by Jon Loomer. He is a founder of the Power Hitters Club for advanced Facebook marketers, a public speaker, and author of Facebook Pixel: 4-week training program. If you want to dive deeper into the ocean of Facebook advertising and catch a big fish, check out his blog regularly.
Linda Bustos is an author of the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog, speaker at industry events, and ecommerce consultant. She writes easy-to-read content based on her insights as well as hard data. And Linda focuses on ecommerce which is especially interesting to us. It is a good idea to follow her on Twitter where she shares her latest articles on different websites.
LinkedIn groups
LinkedIn is a place where you can find a specialist for your team and also monitor the news in the marketing industry. Here is a list of groups worth following by a digital marketer:
- Digital marketing is the group with a million of members who discuss all areas of the digital marketing industry.
- Inbound marketers – for marketing professionals is the place where professionals share insights on how to use SEO, social media, and inbound marketing tools to reach the target audience.
- Social media marketing gathers 1.7 million members who are actively engaged in social media. It is focused, productive, and useful.
- Content strategy is a discussion group for content specialists and UX professionals. They write and share meaningful posts and job offers in content creation.
- Ecommerce and online marketing experts is also an interesting group for marketers. The range of topics discussed there is wide: from AdWords advertising to CRM.
Takeaways
Of course, we don’t spend hours studying content on all the aforementioned resources. In truth, we mainly follow the updates on social media and read newsletters. However, some of our specialists focus on studying specific topics and then, they share their findings with the others. They attend conferences and meetups too. We have published a post about why to attend industry conferences and how to select the right one for you earlier this year. Our marketing team has as well selected a list of marketing conferences to attend in 2017.
We also strongly recommend you to monitor what digital marketing news and expert content your competitors share. This may not come as a surprise but other companies keep an eye on what is going on in the industry and even more, they create news and set trends. As a marketing team, we pay close attention to brand reports and studies, which provide us with valuable insights and inspire to conduct our own research. These are our findings regarding ecommerce in 15 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Check it out!
About the Authors
Promodo team
Marketing department
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