The end of the year is fast approaching and it’s time to take a look ahead. What do we have to look forward to in 2016? What trends are on the way out and which are here to stay? Anything new on the horizon? Well, slow down, I’ll fill you in.

While the whole point of Twitter is supposed to be real-time communication, sometimes we have to put the smartphone down and get other work done. Scheduling tweets can help you stay top-of-mind with customers when you’re busy elsewhere.

This week, Facebook announced Search FYI. Facebook search was updated with new features and better suggestions. After checking them out, I’ve got to say that it is a big improvement over the previous capabilities. Changes include better personalized search suggestions and the addition of public posts and conversations.  These changes could mean some very interesting things for content marketers.

If you’re new to the game, or heck –even if you’ve been around awhile, you probably have heard phrases like content marketing or SEO being thrown around all over the place. Also, if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of time blindly shaking your head going, “Sure, yeah, SEO super important. Oh, yeah, content marketing is where it’s at right now…” All the while feeling like you’re speaking in tongues. So, let’s break it down. What IS the difference between SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing? What do each of these things mean?

I know what you’re thinking. Great. Another business tip, trick, or tool that I “should be” doing already. As much as it may seem like there can’t possibly be another brick you should be adding to your pack, there is. Newsletters have been around for forever and there’s a reason for that. They work. If you don’t have a newsletter for your company, I think it’s time to reconsider.

We’re all talking and reading about social media and you may be wondering how much of the discussion is simply hype. You’ll hear strong opinions both ways, but the bottom line is:  How is YOUR bottom line doing?

We always push the importance of content marketing to businesses. Having articles and relevant content on your areas of expertise that you can link back to your website is a great asset. While we’re working hard to churn out new and relevant content on a weekly basis, it’s easy to overlook the great content that we’ve already produced. If you’re writing a blog (weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever) and/or publishing content online, your previous articles are still a great resource for your marketing campaign!

A large majority of social media networks are following the trend and becoming publishing platforms. Users are taking advantage of the opportunity to publish their original content to propel readers back to their own sites, businesses, products, etc. Social media marketing and content marketing are very much merged at this point. Platforms, like LinkedIn, who are encouraging content marketing with features like LinkedIn Pulse are also adding better analytics for publishers to able to better target readers and to have the ability to adapt their content to the preference of those readers.