4 Ways to Give Your Business a Digital Tune-up in 2019

Derek Walter

All businesses are digital in some aspect. Everything from a traditional downtown storefront to a startup drone delivery service touches the digital realm. Between finding new customers and staying connected to current ones, there is much to consider for your business strategy in the new year. Here’s how to digitally tune up your business in 2019.

1. Give your digital platforms a review.

Spring cleaning is the common home ritual to take stock of how things are organized and generally spruce things up. The new year is a good time to embark on such an endeavor for your business. Ensuring that your website is clean, responsive and easy to navigate is essential. Whether you’ve outsourced this to an agency or opted for one of the do-it-yourself services, you should take some time to consider the look of your website, which is often your first and best impression to the world.

Broken links, missized images and outdated design are all turnoffs to website visitors. Connect with your agency or ask someone on your team to give recommendations if you’re unsure where you should be headed with your web presence.

2. Yes, you probably should pivot to video.

The trend of “pivoting to video” might’ve become overused, but video offers a number of distinct advantages. Cisco research predicts that by 2019, video will claim more than 80 percent of web traffic – and most companies already have video as part of their digital marketing strategy. Video can often better engage and tell a story than a whitepaper or blog post, and can be repurposed and shared across multiple platforms.

But as with most trends, the pendulum can swing fast. While the trends are worth watching, make sure they’re a part, not the totality, of your digital strategy.

3. Think about your social media strategy.

A good social media strategy requires more work than just sending out a few posts here and there. The major platforms are established entities that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The key is to determine how social plays a part in your overall business. If it’s a source of new customers, or if continued engagement is important to the nature of your business, then it’s worth focusing more attention on it.

There’s been some buzz about businesses dropping off of Facebook. Entrepreneur Damon Brown claimed that leaving social media increased his bottom line. However, if your brand has a loyal following or offers products that do well on a specific platform, it makes sense to stay the course.

The moving target of discovery by algorithms is always a challenge, as it is to determine how much time to invest in these platforms. It’s wise to do a re-evaluation for 2019, but avoid rash decisions based on the latest bad headlines.

4. Great content still matters.

Given that I run a content marketing agency, my bias is on full display here. However, there still are many good reasons why creating content on your digital platforms is essential. A recent Forbes report indicates that longer-form, higher-quality content will be even more important in the years ahead.

Customers don’t want generic filler content designed to populate the page with nonsense language. Just as any good publication does, you want to provide customers and readers with value so they feel like they learned something useful.