If you had a great year in 2012, well done! If your digital marketing campaign was successful the previous year, you increased your targeted traffic ten fold, and you have new customers, don’t think you can sit back in 2013 and the same success will carry over. While it’s always great to have a successful marketing year, in reality the digital world is driven by momentum.

The time you are wasting doing nothing is the time your competitors are taking to get ahead of you. Your internet marketing strategy should always be tight, aligned to your business objectives, and flexible so that you can make amends for all the changes during the year. How can you stay ahead and make sure you have another successful digital marketing year?

Find below a couple of ways you can use to make sure you are always at the top of your online marketing campaign and that will help you so that you don’t lose any momentum.

New trends and technologies

The digital world is changing at the speed of light and many new trends online will be introduced. As we are moving closer to the fact that we don’t need paper anymore to do business and only digital devices (smartphones, tablets), find new ways for your target audience to utilize your services and products digitally is becoming very important. Expect to see an explosion of social commerce channels throughout 2013. Also have a look at Google+ as I believe it will take off and make huge jumps this year,  because of all the integration Google is doing on their own social platform, you can expect to see this network in full swing in 2013.

Content is still king

It’s getting more chaotic everyday online. Content is still the best way to increase your visibility online and to engage with your target audience. Offer your customers regular fresh interesting content that they will want to share with their own social media circles. Not only will this build credibility for you, it really helps your organic SEO efforts. It’s a fact that Google loves websites that consistently publishes good content. Make your content magnetic, and you will be rewarded for it.

Stay way from anything spam related

Google has been very active over the last couple of months with all their algorithm updates to fight spam. As more people are getting online, and more content gets spread digitally, I believe Google will release more updates this year to dump all the spam from their results. Google’s algorithm has very strict penalties for any site with black hat SEO and spam tactics. Help your reputation and SEO and do your SEO the right way.

Go local

Local search on Google is becoming more important everyday. Google is going to make their local search results a big factor in their algorithm. As a result of all the new mobile devices popping up and many mobile users are using Google to search for local results, mobile and local search is starting to work together. Take advantage of this as it’s busy happening.

Use rich media with your social media campaign

Marketing on the social web using rich media such as video is gaining momentum. Videos and audio have always been a big draw for new clients. Create short how to videos and podcasts that you can use on your blog, website, and social media profiles. The nice thing about using videos is that you can upload your videos on your own YouTube channel and then use that video on all your other channels to promote it including your blog and website. The nice thing is that if you use video and audio in your campaign, it’s also mobile compatible.

2012 has been a great year for many. Focus on making your social media campaign better this year so that you can look back with a smile in January 2014 at the year that has passed.