January 10, 2018 7 min read

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Last year pretty much blew by. But, in 2018, you have an opportunity to start fresh, using new marketing strategies and proven tactical tools. What worked in 2017? What didn't? What must be changed to increase traffic, leads, revenue and, of course, value?

Related: 4 Trends That Will Shape (or Continue to Shape) Content Marketing in 2018

With updates in Facebook's and Google’s algorithms in 2017, content marketing has changed considerably. For instance, it's become harder to have content with clickbait titles show up on Google searches and Facebook feeds.

This means that your content marketing, at both the strategic and execution levels, must adapt to those changes. Here are some ideas for how to do that:

1. Strategy

On a strategic level, Joe Lazauskas of Contently predicts three major trends:

The first is increased engagement with viewers, using content strategies that are in alignment with organizational needs and audience acceptance. This would require a content audit, a competitive analysis and an activation strategy to upport the underlying strategies.

Second is originality in content strategies, which is key for standing out among the tons of content available. This doesn't mean that once a topic has already been covered, it's not a good idea to create and publish your own take on the issue. The key is to focus on your brand's uniqueness.

Third is a "quality-over-quantity" feel, which should come naturally. You don't need to publish 100 blog contents per day, for example, unless you're an online publisher like BuzzFeed. Carefully develop breakthrough pieces of content, not just mediocre ones.

Related: The Best Technology Tools for Content Marketing

2. Execution

On an execution level, using the right tools could make a huge difference in your marketing efforts. When selecting those tools, keep in mind that each will ideally come with detailed analytics using specific metrics.

With the six tools discussed below, you can plan, design, create, schedule, publish, reuse, innovate and track your content so no one piece of it goes unpublished and each is primed to bring new leads and, eventually, revenue.

1. Buffer is the granddaddy of social media schedulers. You can connect all your social accounts (Twitter, Facebook Profile/Page/Group, LinkedIn Profile/Page, Google+ Profile/Page, Pinterest, and Instagram). Here, Buffer's central hX works best and ensures ROI. Its Canva-like add-on image-editing app, Pablo, is a useful and practical tool.

2. Almighty.Press is a disruptive content-discovery tool that allows you to identify pre-viral contents. You can then track and be notified about keywords of your choice, and curate and schedule them for publication before similar contents saturate the web. This intuitive platform connects users with real-time news feeds from reputable content providers around the world.

Using Google Trends and BuzzSumo for finding viral content is a thing of the past, because they measure already viral contents. Almighty.Press's algorithms, called "Almighty Force," track, locate and curate pre-viral contents. "Pre-viral" means content that is in the process of becoming viral. It's like an "early warning" of viral content, and is an incredibly useful tool for marketers.

3. GrooveJar. Many online businesses have a conversion rate below 3 percent; this means an average of 97 percent of website traffic is lost. GrooveJar’s easy-to-customize pop-up apps are designed to increase email sign ups. Its Collect & Convert feature strategically sends out customized email templates to get those visitors coming back.

The solution focuses on website traffic that would normally be lost (the aforementioned 97 percent) by urging these visitors to leave an email address, so your online business can have a chance to retarget them. In addition to using GroveJar's Collect & Convert feature, you also have the capability to integrate with other email service providers, like: MailChimp, Send Grid, Drip, AWeber and Infusion Soft. One of GroveJar's popular pop-up apps allows online businesses to pull reviews from Yelp, Google and Facebook that then can be elegantly displayed on your website.

GrooveKudos, meanwhile, is a widget that shows happy customer reviews from Facebook, Google, Yelp, Thumbtack and Angie's List. Other popular pop-up apps are GrooveUrgent and GroovePop, which help websites collect emails to grow their subscriber lists and campaign targets. Groovejar comes with real-time apps analytics, where users can see the number of impressions and the amount of recovered revenue and recovered traffic. GrooveJar takes its users’ suggestions and recommendations and makes improvements quickly -- reinforcing the notion that users are truly part of the team.

4. MailChimp is a popular email marketing automation platform. It's simple to use, and the paid version comes with many advanced features. These include tracking the opt-in source for each subscriber and the ability to build and run Facebook and Instagram ads targeting subscribers. MailChimp has also got hundreds of email templates and drag-and-drop email blocks to track subscribing behaviors with UTM codes. The latter create fully automated email sequences for sales funnels. They also track leads and paying customers, re-engage stale subscribers and personalize content with merge tags. Further, A/B testing capability is available.

The automated email sequence itself is worth the price, as it will allow you to run the business hands-free. Once you have a new subscriber, MailChimp will send you a series of welcome emails. And you can create drip-marketing campaigns triggered by each subscriber's behavior.

5. Tap Influence. Influencer marketing is the future of marketing. For decades, Hollywood's boldface names and other influencers have been marketing products without our realizing it. Kardashian-Jenner family members, for instance, are renowned as the "big wig" in influencer marketing. For one sponsored Instagram post, they command hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you can afford only a fraction of that price, there are more than 100,000 influencers in Tap Influencer's database to choose from. With IBM Watson data, you can see the 360-degree picture of each influencer. The Audience Intelligence feature provides additional information about influencers’ audiences, brand affinities, DMAs and interests, along with advanced demographic data. It comes with built-in program management for campaign deployment and tracking.

6. Idio personalizes web, email and mobile-customer experiences. It provides in-depth predictive analytics on overall competitiveness, content audit, content strategy and performance, plus analytics on searches and social optimization, and dynamic segmentation. Idio furthers a salesforce's understanding of each customer's unique journey through sales intelligence, sales content and dynamic prioritization.

In a nutshell, Idio is a marketing-automation suite using NLP (natural language programming). Based on 10 million interactions tracked per day, Idio updates a user's profile based on the content that he or she has viewed. Idio provides customized content for marketing purposes by picking the best piece of content at that point in time for any individual. In just milliseconds, it can choose the best-personalized content out of hundreds of thousands of pieces of content in real time.

Final thoughts

Depending on your marketing strategies and business models, you can combine these six tools or choose them a la carte, to superboost customer engagement, which is key to increasing brand awareness, generating new leads and elevating your revenue and profit.

Start attracting organic traffic with the help of Almighty.Press to identify potential viral contents. You can then curate and repackage that content with the stories you have that are related to your product.

While you can schedule the curated stories on Almighty.Press, you can also use Buffer. Once your stories generate traffic, capture your visitors with MailChimp's email-marketing automation platform. To ensure the highest conversion rate, use GrooveJar apps, which can be seamlessly integrated with MailChimp and other similar platforms.

Related: 12 Content Marketing Trends You Should Be Following

Finally, for extra exposure to your brand, use Tap Influence, which boasts 100,000-plus influencers in the database. Then use Idio for powerful customization and personalization. All in all, these six powerful content marketing tools can level up your content creation, scheduling and distribution in 2018.