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People decorate their homes with lights and wreaths for the holidays, so why not decorate your social media page, too? Updating your main cover photos of your social media accounts to reflect the holiday season is simple and effective. The change doesn’t need to be huge. If your brand is known for a specific logo, maybe all you need to do is add a Santa hat to get the effect across!

Now that people can easily see that your brand is full of holiday cheer, it’s time to own up to that spirit! Try launching a holiday event that coincides with the season. Have special sales for 12 days in honor of the 12 days of Christmas or kick off the season with a holiday event. This is the time of year when many people throw parties, so make your brand the host of its own event! This can help get people excited about your brand and its holiday offerings.

The best way to show off your Christmas spirit is by channeling your inner Santa. This means being the arbiter of good cheer. Show that you’re in the spirit of giving by donating money to charities for every dollar spent on your brand or by establishing a gift drive. You can even try to make peoples’ wishes come true by offering prizes through your social media account. Reward people with a gift for interacting with your brand and spread it out over multiple days so that people are encouraged to keep returning to your page! Most importantly? Wish people merry Christmas and happy holidays! This is your time to show people that you care about them. Make your followers feel special by sending them some holiday wishes this season.

You’re probably starting to feel all warm and fuzzy about the holidays by just reading this. Now go out and update your social media profiles to reflect your holiday spirit!

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Who’s to thank for this reinvention? Facebook. While Google+ was desperately trying to stay afloat, Facebook was busy taking all of the positive aspects of Google+ (video integration, circles, news discovery, etc) and transforming them into basic Facebook features. The difference is that it worked for Facebook. However, Facebook managed to normalize these features in the process, which is giving Google+ a shot to become a real player now with its redesign.

A huge factor in Google+’s downfall was its forced integration of everything under Google’s umbrella. It was confining for many users. Google+ has seen the error of its ways and has chosen to spread out its services into individual components, which users can now integrate into Google+ at their own discretion. This also means that you no longer need to have a Google+ account to sign into other Google sites or apps.

The new Google+ is much faster than its predecessor and handles its social aspects in a much more valuable way. The emphasis has pivoted from friends and family to interest groups. Users identify their interests and then see posts and articles from within those “communities”. It’s a more relaxed system that’s akin to Pinterest or Reddit than to Facebook. Google+ has also made the interface far more visual in an attempt to capitalize on the growing popularity of visual content.

With the amount of money that Facebook is currently making from ads, it’s no surprise that Google has worked hard to improve its social network offering. Keep an eye on the future of Google+ to see how its advertising opportunities advance.

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The first skill you’ll need is the ability to analyze data. Collecting data is great, but knowing what to do with that information is vital for success. It’s easy to look at data over a period of time and see whether it improves or worsens. However, the trick is knowing how to evaluate that data in a way that is specific and that can enhance business. This means breaking down the numbers into meaningful subsets so that you can pinpoint issues that lead to solutions. Nowhere is this more true than with A/B testing.

A good content marketer is also a great researcher. They have to be in order to survive. Research means being able to find out who your customers are and what they want, to understand your own product, and to solve problems independently. Having the ability to do this on your own will put your light years ahead of other content marketers. Adaptability is another critical component. Content marketing is always changing and if you’re not capable of adjusting then you won’t last long. Be flexible and knowledgeable to keep up.

If you want to go above and beyond then you need to be capable of creating your own content from the bottom up. This means being a good, strong, efficient writer as well as being able to code and design content. Writing is the most important skill in this group as it will give you the ability to pump out strong content on a consistent basis. Knowing how to code and design the final product can make you a one-man content marketing machine, but are not as essential for success.

Content marketing isn’t easy and there are no perfect guides for how to succeed. Your best bet is to hone these skills.

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