The missing link in your client relationships
Plus: The metric that influenced search rankings the most this year
In a data-driven world that knows everything about everyone’s behaviors, why is the shift to connection still unclear?
Let’s discuss how to overcome this block for deeper client relationships, deeper trust, and better results in the coming year.
Today’s agenda:
🧑💻 The trick to understanding your customers
📱 Expert social media predictions for 2024
🔎 What mattered most to Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) in 2023?
💼 Briefly — our quick news roundup
⏱️ Up & coming
🔗 With so much data, why is it still hard to connect?
Today’s marketers have mistaken information for intimacy, says award-winning marketer and cultural translator Marcus Collins.
All of the data we have on our clients—engagement, traffic, purchases, queries—can reveal interests, desires, and pain points, but that still doesn’t show us who these people really are.
How to establish intimacy
See the world through their eyes—and set aside your biases and ethnocentrisms
Approach your discoveries with “cultural empathy” to see your clients as people
Consider the why behind their behaviors and what they are feeling that makes them see things in a certain way/act a certain way
Consider how they view the world and how they see themselves in the bigger picture
🍔 Collins uses examples from a McDonald’s research project to illustrate these points: The fast-food company sent their advertising agency on a road trip throughout the U.S. to reveal “fan truths”—including beliefs and language that drive the fandom.
🍟 They discovered “cultural practices” that the company could not have known without getting to know its fans, and resulted in marketing successes like secret menus and adult Happy Meals.
⭐ What can you do to get to know your clients better?
💻 What’s your social strategy in 2024?
Search Engine Journal spoke with social media experts to get their thoughts on where we should focus our strategies in the New Year.
Here’s what they said (in a nutshell):
Focus on thought leadership and relationship-building content to earn trust and credibility
Leverage AI for solutions/ideas based on social data you provide
Short-form video content is extremely popular on social media—learn how to best use it for your business/industry
Keep an eye on up-and-coming platforms—and which ones are on their way out (looking at you, X)
Consumers are still prioritizing meaningful, community-centered content and real connections
Read all 12 expert predictions here.
👀 The metric that boosted search rankings most this year
Out of Google’s 200+ page ranking factors, including content quality, page speed, user experience, etc., many SEO experts believed authoritative content was No. 1.
But a Hootsuite survey of 405 SEO professionals who “constantly” track their websites and analyze rankings found that 39% of participants say trustworthiness is the primary metric resulting in a high Google ranking in 2023.
🧪 How trust is measured:
Author info
Backlinks
Citations
Reviews
Content quality
Website security
Engagement
🤔 Using this information, what can you add to your website/pages to improve your ranking in 2024?
Tips: Customer reviews, updated content, author bios, optimized images
Briefly
🧠 A supercomputer that rivals the rate of operations in the human brain is set to go online next year in hopes to better understand how the brain works
📖 New study emphasizes the power of plain language for your content
📉 Fed lowers its inflation predictions for 2024, predicts it will reach 2% index target by 2026
👉 Check out the 10 fastest growing brands in 2023, plus the breakdowns by generation
🏠 Last Thursday saw one of the biggest two-day drops in mortgage rates in “decades”
Up & Coming
European Union lawmakers reached a deal on the AI Act, a landmark bill that would prohibit certain uses of the technology and require greater transparency.
The AI Act was first proposed in 2021, and still may take a while before it’s fully enforced. Stay tuned.