As the new year begins there have been a lot of reflections on the past year and lessons to learn. Perhaps with the increasing trends towards a preference for visual marketing and visual social media there are a number of takeaways and lessons to learn. Kevan Lee, Maria Ignatova, Demian Farnsworth among others show us how we can better apply our content marketing and visual social media strategies. Shari Thurow emphasizes key aspects to conversion optimization in designing pages and websites.

Content Marketing & Media

Fanpage.it media agency developed a video to tackle the issue of violence against women. Their video – What happens when you put a boy in front of a girl and ask him to slap her? Has made it to the top of viral videos. With over 28 million views the video provides a perspective on the issue from the view point of kids.

SEO among top skills for professionals in 2015

Maria Ignatova reflects on the potential in demand skill sets for professionals in 2015 by reflecting on the hot skills of 2014. SEO is likely to be very much in demand this year according to her list.

10 things to try on social media in 2015

Buffer complied a list of things it learned from their social media experiments over the past year. The article provides a comprehensive list of statistics and lessons that worked for them and provides the basis for potential experiments that you can run on your social media accounts.

Snapchat users love its TV ads

A Milward Brown Digital study (commissioned by Snapchat) found that users of Snapchat enjoy their ads. 60% said that liked the click to watch 20 sec ads that show in peoples “Our Story” feeds. 44% said they liked the ads shown as “Brand Stories”. To get an idea of the implications in using visual social media to target college students on smartphones, consider this. Those who saw Universal Pictures “Brand Story” ad for the movie “Ouija” were 13% more likely to buy move tickets on opening weekend.

Content Marketing Know How

16 Stats That Explain Why Adaptive Content Matters Right Now

Demian Farnsworth takes us into the world of adaptive content and provides examples and interesting stats to encourage us to think of ways in which this could apply to your business.

17 Ideas On How To Do Clever Content Marketing

Cari Bennette provides insights into how we can tap into the virtually endless supply of content already available to engage in smarter content marketing.

What Lego Can Teach All Web Marketers

Gianluca Fiorelli grapples with the issue that SEO’s face – that of focusing only on what concerns them which is everything SEO. He looks to Lego for lessons to learn from.

How To Make User-Friendly (And Search-Engine Friendly) Scannable Content

Shari Thurow says –

“The irony of being a usability professional is understanding that overlooking the obvious is something most users do. Designers, developers, content writers, and other web professionals are so heavily involved in their responsibilities on a website that they overlook obvious (and even essential) content guidelines.”

Easy to read, easy to scan need to be top priorities to keep your visitors on your site and Shari provides the simple ways to do so.

Cool Tools I Have Discovered

Presentio.us – A tool to create and share presentations
Find Guidelines – A collection of branding guides for some the biggest brands online