A new year is here. Now is the perfect time to check in on the latest trends in content marketing. Don’t get stuck in rut caused by old and outdated tactics. Be ready to reinvigorate your content strategies with these hot trends.

Big changes are happening to LinkedIn Groups. According to a September post on the LinkedIn blog, a new LinkedIn Group experience is being rolled out, and all groups on both mobile and desktop are being switched to the new format automatically.

People love instant results. It’s natural to want to see confirmation that your efforts are paying off, and to want to see it immediately. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t always work that way. When you join a gym, you don’t get an instant six pack. When you sign up for a cooking class, the knowledge of how to make delectable and delicate souffles isn’t automatically downloaded into your brain.

Social is huge. According to Pew Research Center, 69 percent of U.S. adults use at least one social media site. That figure is even higher among younger age groups; 88 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 use social media, and 78 percent of people between the ages of 30 and 49 do.

Imagine you’ve just moved to a new city. You’re excited to be there, and you think your life will really improve because of it. You also have a lot of questions. You need to know how to set up your utilities, where the best restaurants are, which highways have the least traffic, and so much more. If you don’t start finding answers quickly, you may start to get overwhelmed. Your old city will start looking better and better. Life wasn’t perfect there, but at least you knew what you were doing. Eventually, you might decide to move back.

Digital advertising has become an essential tool for insurance marketing – but it hasn’t replaced direct mail. It probably won’t anytime soon, either. Even in the digital age, direct mail offers advantages that online advertising simply can’t.

Are you keeping up with the latest internet trends? Kleiner Perkins has released the 2018 Internet Trends Report by Mary Meeker. The in-depth report is 294 pages long and chock-full of important information. Here are the top 10 takeaways for marketers.

Is your website secure? If you don’t use HTTPS, Google says it’s not – and starting this July, it will inform your audience of this fact.

If you want to build an audience and get seen on Twitter, you need to use hashtags. They’re how users who don’t already follow you can find your tweets – but only if you pick the right term. There’s an art to choosing hashtags.

Think you have your content writing strategy figured out? You may need to think again. The SEO rules have changed. Experts now say that Google page rank is no longer a leading metric, and content clusters are more important than ever. Are you confused yet? Read on …