We hope your Thanksgiving holiday was wonderful! We’re unloading the latest digital marketing news and gearing up for the next month before the holidays take over and we take a week off. From SEO to diverse hiring, we’re chatting about what’s happening in the industry below.

SEO

The time has come for you to get out of SEO. If you’ve worked in the business for more than five years, you’ll have seen dramatic shifts in the way that websites work to get themselves seen online. You can also now see the true importance of being one of the first results on the page. With position zero, changes in the way content is consumed and categorized, the real players can thrive and those who are relying on SEO tricks will have to either get out or step up. Learn more about why many SEO agencies may close, and why the good ones won’t.

PPC

Have you bought into the idea that PPC is a short-term win? Learning the ins and outs of PPC means that you will start to build a true audience and customer base, and while it’s common to think that you can set and forget your PPC accounts of that you should only focus on getting a larger budget, the truth is that there is a quantifiable amount of leads for your business and if you can reduce the CPA you will be able to use your budget more effectively. Ultimately, it’s not about how many dollars you have, it’s how you’re using them. Learn about more popular PPC myths here.

Design

Designing intuitively can be challenging, especially for companies that start to move into other product markets when they have been leaders in another. A key example here is Spotify’s podcast capability. Despite a million sponsorships and the plugging of this section on their desktop and mobile app, I still have not listened to a podcast on Spotify. And I’m a major Podcast consumer. Oof. This prototype of a standalone Spotify Podcast app shows the potential for a cleaner experience, and the question of the best ways to consume different media forms has us intrigued. It’s a good reminder that anything can happen in the world of design and product, it’s just about experimenting and being creative.

Social Media

Social media is a place for ads, for marketers, for friends, for politics. But is it a place for well-being? Does it make your life objectively better? The consideration of whether scrolling through Instagram or checking your Twitter feed is good for you Isn’t hard. Building a platform that improves one’s life instead of maximizing profits isn’t popular. We must challenge the traditional capitalistic and linear means to a successful business will be upended. It’s a question of whether social media is a failure… and if so, what we can do to change it.

Content Marketing

We’ll preface this with the fact that this isn’t about SEO. Volume won’t fix your SEO problem. But, the volume might fix your writer’s block. It might help you strike gold on virality and creating a story people are excited to read. It might help you break through the noise and produce a piece people are excited to read and help you inject a dose of originality into your work. This piece about making sure that you are putting out something valuable every day. Creating every day is a part of success. It’s what prepares us to succeed and helps us learn what doesn’t work. So practice. Create something today.

Culture

This piece from Struck, a creative agency based in Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT about their diversity efforts is a great reminder. The somewhat new emphasis on diversity in hiring wants to apologize for its failures by saying they want it but aren’t getting the right applications.

“If you can’t find diverse candidates, it’s not because they’re not out there. It’s because you’re not trying.” – Matt Anderson

The truth is that you haven’t rewritten your job postings, changed your posting locations or using your network to help you find candidates that aren’t in your network already. Learn more about how to change the way you’re hiring, and the importance of accountability, here.

Productivity

Why can’t we motivate ourselves to do what we’re passionate about? Fear is a common denominator. Perfectionism is another. Ultimately, we know what we want and what we may need to do but it can be complicated and difficult to take the steps to start doing it and believe that we can be successful.

For whatever it is that you need to do in life, you should make two lists — ‘why it will work’ and ‘why it won’t’. Then decide which list you will carry with you at all times. – Shreya Dalela

Learn more about making your dreams a reality – and removing the obstacles in this piece.