It’s habit. As one year comes to an end, planning and setting goals for the next year begins. Even if you aren’t an official resolution maker, the feeling of a fresh new year can spark inspiration for improvement. As digital marketers, there is always room for improvement, especially when it comes to discovering different ways to enhance rankings, new forms of content, and tools to help enhance user experience. This new year is no different.

While lists being altered, and some resolutions already broken, the following are resolutions digital marketers will want to keep for 2016.

Make Mobile First

Improving mobile user experience should be the first and most important thing on your digital marketing resolution list. Mobile is predicted to eventually take over desktop and offers a completely different user experience, one we must adapt and market to. That’s why this year is even more important than last for developing friendlier mobile responsive websites.

BIA/Kelsey Forecast

Increase conversions and design a better mobile experience in 2016 with these tips for mobile improvement:

• Test the Mobile Design and Functionality: By last spring a majority of websites became mobile-friendly. This year, work on re-testing the mobile layout to see what kind of design users respond best to on mobile. Test different images, headlines, and opt-in forms to see which result in the most mobile conversions.
• Make Sense Out of Mobile Commerce:  eMarketer predicts sales figures to reach 153.5 billion for mobile commerce in 2019. Make your mobile experience, especially commerce a priority now, so you don’t miss out on a part of that revenue later. Product images should fit inside mobile devices, without having to scroll left and right, along with the product description. The checkout process should also be simplified, without requiring too many steps.
• Respond to Voice Search: As voice search grows, the need for mobile-specific keywords will rise, along with traffic. Start preparing content to match voice search now.

Increase Engagement

Sure, we all hope to login and see 100 new comments and 500 new shares, except I’m not referring to engagement you receive. In 2016, think of engagement differently and work on increasing the engagement between customers and fans.

Respond, be more timely, and react to each customer’s concerns and engagements regularly. If reviews are left, whether good or bad, respond to them and give a real face to the company. For example, leaving your name at the end of a comment not only gives customers a reference point, but also makes them feel like their voice is being heard by a real person. Avoid hiding behind a desktop in 2016 and engage more frequently as a human representing a company.

Try New Social Media Ads

There’s plenty of opportunity to succeed with social media advertising in 2016. With Instagram opening their ad placement to just about any business and Facebook releasing new ad types, 2016 is a great year to revamp your social advertising campaigns.

• Create a New Test Budget: Design a budget specifically for testing different social media ads in 2016. Adjust the advertising budget to test multiple platforms to see if more success if received on Instagram, versus Twitter Ads, or Facebook.
• Try New Local Ads: Do you have a storefront? Experiment with more locally-driven advertisements and define better targeting with Local Awareness advertisements on Facebook. The new Local ads have a call-to-action button to help connect your business page with a local audience and drive offline sales.
• Use More Video: Design ads that use video instead of images. Hubspot created an infographic stating 52% of global marketing professionals claim video is the best form of content for ROI. Adding more videos to your social advertisements can help increase engagement and overall ROI.

React Based on Data

There is no need to shut down the whole marketing company over one month of low traffic. Look through all of the data, check analytics, and use tools like Authority Labs to analyze how you can improve what a brand looks like and ranks online. Without knowing website traffic, ranking details, or social media engagement stats, you don’t know exactly where improvement needs to be made against what’s working effectively. This year use data more than ever to control your next move and assist with improving the overall online brand.

Stay Ahead of the Times

Getting all of your updates from the same source each day can cause you to miss out on new and trending topics. Subscribe to a variety of industry blogs to change up your daily news source.

Try subscribing to the following blogs to keep up to date with the newest in digital marketing:

• Hubspot: Anything and everything digital marketing related is covered in the Hubspot blog.
• Hootsuite: With a focus on social, Hootsuite covers a wide range of topics and includes tips for mastering social media.
• Authority Labs: Not only do we cover trending digital marketing topics, but the Authority Labs blog has helpful tips and interviews with some of the industry’s best SEOs.
• Content Marketing Institute: Get the latest content marketing news and tips from the Content marketing Institute.

Create More Content, Create Quality Content

In an online world full of content, it can be a competitive atmosphere to get your content seen. The more quality content created, shared, and promoted, the more likely you are to have content seen, as well as the brand.

Content Marketing Institute found 88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy. In 2016, define a solid content marketing strategy and stick to it. Do thorough research to not only come up with a content marketing strategy, but to define the keywords and topics your audience is looking for.

Authority Labs has a great keyword tool that even shows non-provided keywords. Being able to dig through non-provided keywords will let you place the terms your audience is actually looking for throughout content, as well as spark new topic ideas to improve search rankings for 2016.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Tools

It can be a little scary trying new tools. When Basecamp made their big upgrade I was hesitant because the platform was dramatically different than what I was used to. After a few months passed, I finally gave in to the new and upgraded version. Turns out the new Basecamp saved me a tremendous amount of time with reporting on projects.

Don’t bash a new tool, or a new upgrade, until you’ve given it a chance. You’ll be surprised at how much time you could be saving and how helpful new tools can be.

Here’s a few tools to try this year:

• Get Response: An award winning email marketing service where you can design the email, landing page, and webinar all in one place.
• Sprout Social: Manage all of your social media accounts in one place, along with scheduling, analytics, and more.
• ZooBurst: Want to branch out and create new content this year? Try creating a 3D Pop Up book with ZooBurst for websites and blogs.
• Airstory: Designed to help content marketers and writers write content more effectively.
• Authority Labs: Track website rankings in Google, Yahoo!, and Bing daily. Our automated SERP tracking saves you time and helps you respond quickly to ranking changes.

Build Solid Connections Within the Industry

The digital marketing industry is a big one. With a community as big as ours it’s important to reach out to each other, share information, and build a long lasting relationship with fellow industry peeps. When we work together we help the digital marketing world evolve even faster, so why not come together and make the cyber world and its technology advance like we’ve never seen before.

What are some of your 2016 resolutions? Comment below with your top digital marketing resolutions.