From Hemingway to every other self help book ever written, there's a recurring theme of the value of listening. As marketers, we can get too focused on the messages that we are trying to put out into the market, but the reality is that messaging isn't a one-way street anymore: brands grow and thrive because of advocates and evangelists (not static outbound messaging), consumers demand transparency and expect change to follow feedback. We need to get back to the basics of communication and listen to the feedback, the criticism, the jokes, and the trends. What we call social media listening is the process of hearing what is being said and responding to it, from replying to a tweet to rolling out a new app. 

During the past year, we have seen in an unprecedented way, how much influence social media can have. From the White House to #metoo to #TakeAKnee, the breadth and depth of the reach of social media is expanding … and expanding … and expanding. There is now no denying the importance of social media and no excuse for not putting it to work for your business and your brand.

Okay, it didn’t exactly break the internet, but it made little splash in the world of SEO and content wonks: in December 2017, Google raised the allowed character limit for meta descriptions from 160 to 320. That’s right, baby, double the size. In a statement released at the time, Google said, “The fact that our snippets have gotten longer doesn’t change the fundamentals of writing a description tag. They should generally inform and interest users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. We now display slightly longer snippets.”

Hand drawn illustration, prominent typography and variable fonts, bright, bold colors are all trending in graphic design this year. If you missed out, read our previous blog “What’s Trending in Graphic Design Now.” But there are also a few other continuing and emerging trends —including original photography and image treatments, minimalism, retro and vintage looks, and minimalism.

Let’s explore those now.

Have you noticed the lowering of standards when it comes to content on the internet? From clumsily-typed texts to the blogs that never saw an editor and bargain basement content mill gibberish and keyword-stuffed nothingburgers, it feels like you can't walk two feet without running into a comma splice. In our haste to become content rich we are becoming content quality poor. But just because everyone else is doing it, does that mean you can slack off too? No.

The discipline of graphic design is not easily defined. It’s dynamic — always changing, fluid, and eager to embrace the next big thing (or to at least give it a try). And as design evolves, trends take shape. Last year, we saw the development of some distinct trends in design — particularly as related to the use of graphics for websites and social media. Some of these will still be hot in 2018, and there are some new trends emerging, too. Let’s take a look!

Social media monitoring can sometimes get lost in the jumbled word salad of social media marketing jargon: metrics, listening, analytics, intelligence, monitoring…They all sort of start to run together until you feel like you’re just too old for this whole thing. But you’re not. Social media monitoring is the act of tracking and watching what is being said about your brand specifically and your industry generally. Social media monitoring focuses on conversations, trends, and sentiment: what are people complaining about, celebrating and looking for in the context of your brand.

If you’re an inbound marketer, you know that sinking feeling. You wake up, stretch, start your coffee, and check your phone—only for your stomach to drop at that horrible phrase “algorithm change.” Depending on how long you’ve been in the game, you’ve ridden the ups and downs of the Facebook and Google algorithms as they throw constant wrenches into our carefully strategized content plans. Our friend Mark announced some changes last week, citing that one of Facebook’s major foci for 2018 is “making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent.”