It’s a New Year! What Are the Essential Digital Marketing Tools to Use in 2017?

The New Year has arrived, and more than likely you’re already thinking about how you can improve the various aspects of your business for 2017. Fortunately there’s no shortage of amazing digital marketing tools you can use to help you accomplish your goals – in fact, the sheer number of technology-based business aids that are available is absolutely staggering (well over 3,500 at last count!).

You can’t use them all, but there are some you should make every effort not to do without. So in no particular order, here are the must-have digital marketing tools to add to your arsenal in 2017.

1. Google Analytics

This robust web traffic tracking and reporting tool is imperative if you want to see digital marketing ROI. Your business decisions will only be as good as your analytics data, so be sure to squeeze every last drop of information out of this indispensable analytics service.

2. Facebook Live

For the foreseeable future, video is unquestionably the medium of choice for optimal engagement and interaction with your audience online. In fact, tech giant Cisco recently predicted that by the year 2019, 80 percent of all video traffic will consist of live streaming content.

We already see the seeds of this transition in apps such as Periscope and Meerkat, but without question, Facebook Live is becoming the 800-pound gorilla of streaming video. The more you can connect with your audience in this raw, immediate way, the more likely it is that you’ll gain a loyal following.

3. SnagIt

This multi-function screen capture software is an uber-handy companion for all of those times when a picture (or video) can save you a thousand written words. You can capture anything on your computer screen and turn it into an image, or create demos, tutorials, reviews, feedback, etc., by way of SnagIt’s video capture tool.

4. Screaming Frog

Improving your on-site SEO should definitely be on your list of New Year’s resolutions, and Screaming Frog is the tool to help you do just that. This powerful, locally-installed desktop program will crawl all of the links, images, scripts, CSS, and apps on your web pages in order to evaluate and analyze your on-site SEO. From there, you can know what to tweak in order to make your website more search engine-friendly.

5. BuzzSumo

If you’re wondering how to customize your content in order to capitalize on emerging trends in your given niche, BuzzSumo is an invaluable tool. Simply enter your topic of choice into BuzzSumo’s search function, and it will return the content and topics that are garnering the most attention across multiple social media websites. This can be a gold mine of ideas in terms of how to identify and address the needs and wants of your target audience.