Out with the old; in with the new.
 
This has always been the mentality of everyone for the new year. And of course, online marketing is no exemption to that.
 
There were strategies that we loved using the entire year and have resulted in a great ROI for our companies. But this doesn’t mean that these are still effective for 2018.
 
As technology continues to evolve – and target market behaviors, too – so should your online marketing strategies.
 
Here are a few of the 2017 staples that you should try to slowly let go and create some new year’s resolution for 2018:
 

Less automation. More personalization.

 
Companies have relied too much on automation for the past few years. The discovery of creating things more easily has now come to an end.
 
For 2018, you need to lessen creating automated email, mobile, and chat replies or even in online marketing. You need to refocus on our audience. They are people – REAL people.
 
If your content sounds too generic and automated, it would be obvious to customers who really reads emails and can see the difference between automated emails to personalized ones. And this will definitely turn them off.
 
An automated email is okay. But it shouldn’t be the standard.
 
This year, try to give enough time to create content that is more personal and custom-fit to your customers. It would also be better to speak in a tone just like the way they communicated to you.
 
Give your clients importance. Create a content that’s made specifically for them because not every content would fit the mold.
 

The 280-character drawback.

 
Twitter’s decision to increase their character limit to 280 has somehow reached a drawback as it earned negative reviews from users. As most of them complained, it somehow lost its unique quality over social media platforms. Hence, there might be lesser people who would use it.
 
While it can still be part of your online marketing, but don’t dwell too much on it. And if you could (as much as possible), stick to the old 140-character limit. The audience would appreciate that.
 
You can explore other online marketing platforms like LinkedIn or Quora. Just make sure you create quality and share-worthy posts so it would have a wider reach.
 

Long, text-heavy eBooks (and other content).

 
The previous resolution on Twitter’s more text-heavy platform had a setback; so should your eBooks, blogs, emails, and other contents.
 
Gone are the days when you would want to squish all information in so it would be like serving a full-course meal to your audience. But is it working?
 
For some, it might. But if your target is the millennials or the digital natives with their short attention span, creating long content might not be as effective as you want it to be.
 
Probably, the best rule for this year is to keep it short and simple. Go straight to the point. For emails, use catchy images or headlines to send the message across and support it with lesser content in the body.
 
That way, you’ll have your main points in focus so as not to let your audience (or their attention) be dragged away by other stuff.