In 2018, the marketing environment is extremely fast-paced, competitive, and complex. Why is it so?
Well, we’re experiencing major technological breakthroughs and shifts (cryptocurrencies, new digital technology, a shift in the economy, etc.). If you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, blogger, or small businessman, you’re probably aware that great wins require a great deal of attention, knowledge, and action.
Before you promote anything, whether it’s your business, an affiliate product, or a B2B contract, you should get the necessary information that will allow you to create real progress.
Reinventing the wheel is one option. The second option – and the best – is to seek professionals/brands that have already accomplished what you want to accomplish. By seeking these entities, you’ll be able to recognize PROs and CONs, you’ll be able to see different twists in strategies, and you’ll able to create your own, unique marketing strategy based on the clues you’ve picked.
Following vs Studying
There’s a very thin line between following and studying. Following means listening to orders, copying step-by-step, or simply put, believing and doing what you’re told without filtering it on your own.
Studying means taking information, filtering it well (through both reason & intuition), and placing it somewhere in your mind. When you study, you don’t believe. The process is different. You are actually going straight for the essence of the problem/lesson/situation. Take the feedback and do better next time!
Now that you know the difference between following and studying, let’s get into our topic of discussion for today: marketing influencers that every brand, marketer, blogger, and businessman should follow in 2018.
1. Neil Patel
Neil Patel is one of the most well-known digital marketing influencers mostly due to his great marketing and advertising. He’s a New York Time best selling author and a fantastic coach that aims to improve everyone around. Even president Obama recognized him as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under 30.
He founded Quicksprout and co-founded Kissmetrics and Crazyegg. His platforms are full of relevant content and his social pages continue to deliver consistent and qualitative marketing education.
2. Heidi Cohen
Heidi Cohen is a talented marketer that runs a successful educational newsletter called the “Actionable Marketing Guide”. She has a great deal of experience in social media, mobile marketing, and also content marketing.
In a recent post, she has covered the basics on how to develop a powerful editorial calendar that can take any business to the next level. Moreover, throughout her content, she loves to illustrate how marketers can develop more efficient content that’s meant to reach specific social networks.
3. Madalyn Sklar
Madalyn Sklar is a serial entrepreneur, digital marketer, keynote speaker, and leading Twitter marketing expert. Her experience of 22 years in the marketing field has granted her the opportunity to contribute to the growth of various successful brands.
Madalyn Sklar has been nominated as the number 1 social media influencer in Houston. If you care to follow her, you’ll be able to enjoy her weekly #TwitterSmarterChat, which is a weekly tweet chat dedicated to entrepreneurs, digital marketers, and businessmen.
4. Oil Gardner
Oil Gardner is the founder of Unbounce, one of the most successful landing pages services out there. He’s a talented professional with a lot of talents and traits. He’s an energetic and engaging type of individual and he loves to give public speeches.
Besides being a passionate entrepreneur, Oil Gardner is also a wildlife photographer and a rocker. His passion for life and marketing is clearly observable from his consistent, full-of-passion, updates concerning the latest world & digital marketing shifts.
At the start of 2018, he approached what he called a “beast-mode” and managed to write 30 posts in 30 days. If you want to learn more about marketing & sales in general, Oil Gardner is the perfect source.
5. Rand Fishkin
If you’ve heard of Moz, you should know that Rand Fishkin is the founder and former CEO of one of the most popular SEO software platforms ever. He is an extremely popular name in the SEO environment because of his brilliant ways of “playing” with Google’s algorithms and rules.
He has also written 2 popular SEO books named “Inbound Marketing & SEO” and “Art of SEO” (you should read his books to become an SEO expert). Besides his books, he loves to post new content on his blog.
6. Pat Flynn
If you’re the type of professional who is looking to generate more passive income over active income, Pat Flynn will be your next best friend. He’s a famous blogger, serial-entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal book best-seller, and more!
Pat Flynn started with affiliate marketing, promoting his extremely popular website SmartPassiveIncome through various media types (text, video, and podcasting). If you ask me, his podcast makes the difference between him and other “average” webmasters that operate in the same niche. I also believe that every brand will take a great deal of value out of his teachings!
7. Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan is both an entrepreneur and marketer who truly knows what he’s doing. He is the founder of Search Engine Land and Marketingland (two extremely popular digital marketing platforms).
Lately, Danny Sullivan started a collaboration with Google. His purpose is to educate the public regarding the search algorithms that Google continues to change. He is a great follow if you’re looking for some extra SEO knowledge!
Takeaways
Digital marketing is both a skill and an art. To do very well at it, you should gather (initially) the necessary information, resources, and commitment. Once you feel ready, it’s all about testing, measuring, optimizing, scaling, and repeating.
Finally, I’d like to mention one important fact: every single successful person becomes successful once he/she learns from his/her mistakes. You can’t make mistakes unless you try, and you can’t succeed unless you move beyond your mistakes and failures!
