What We Read This Week (WWRTW) – December 2, 2017

About What We Read This Week (WWRTW): Each week, we share bits and bobs from around the web that 270netters have been reading this week. 

It’s been a busy week around 270net, as we’re all catching up from two days off last week for Thanksgiving while also wrapping up all our end-of-month tasks. And December is already shaping up to be an even busier month!

Despite all that, we did read a lot this week. Here’s a sampling:

“The Ideal Number of Characters, Hashtags & Emojis for Each Social Network [Infographic]” – Social Media Today

One question we often get asked by businesses wading into the social media marketing realm is just how much of everything to post on a social network. Word counts and hashtags are among the most common concerns for our clients. Because character limits and the impact of hashtags varies from platform to platform, this infographic is a great reference point for anyone looking to improve their social media game or break into a new channel.

“The Complete Guide to Direct Traffic in Google Analytics” – Moz

Direct traffic is one of those conundrums in SEO: How much of it actually is direct traffic, and how much is traffic that’s just lumped into a general bucket? This guide from Moz is great for giving all SEOs and business owners a starting point of fixes to make to help decrease some of the extraneous direct traffic.

“How To Adopt a Customer-Centric Strategy for Your Content” – Content Marketing Institute

Your customers are why you’re still in business, right? So shouldn’t your website content focus on helping them solve their problems? By taking a step back and really considering your customers’ needs, why they visit your business, you can create a content strategy that will bring in traffic and get you established as a thought leader in your industry. Here at 270net, we make sure our content marketing strategies focus on ways we can help your customers, because without them you no longer have a business.

“7 Mobile Apps for Editing and Enhancing Images” – Social Media Examiner

Images are crucial to social media posts that get noticed by followers, and a social media presence that serves your business goals. The 7 mobile apps listed in this piece are powerful and can help create beautiful, eye-catching images for your social media posts. We think #4, Pixomatic, looks the most intriguing and could really help turn an OK photo into something that stands out.

“What the SERPs Will Look Like In 2018” – Neil Patel

It’s the time of year where everyone seems to be making predictions of what digital marketing will look like in 2018. With Google’s frequent changes in algorithms and search appearance, it’s become a favorite guessing-game to try and figure out what will change next. The predictions in this piece make sense, with Google making subtle changes to boost revenue through PPC results and an emphasis on providing as much information in the search results as possible.