The 10 fast-rising digital buzzwords of 2013

As much as you might dislike buzzwords, working in digital means you not only have to tolerate these trending words but understand and even possibly bring yourself to use them once in a while.

 

Below is a list of phrases and buzzwords that have originated in recent years and significantly grown in popularity during the year that was 2013.

 

Big Data

This term has caused quite a lot of confusion as it appears to mean different things to different people .

But it is most accurately used when comparing it to the term ‘little data” which is the reality, or the present. So “big data” means; the dream, or the future.

 

Content Marketing

Certainly not a new phrase but definitely one that continues to grow in stature as brands have realised how important good content is to engage an audience. In the social networking world that we live in, having content that can be, and is worthy of being shared, is a essential to being noticed. 

 

Responsive Design

Definitely something to adapt if you want to your mobile users to be able to have the best experience possible.

Easily crafting your site to provide an optimal viewing experience – easy navigation and a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling , across mobiles and tablets will ensure users will return to your site, even on the go.

 

Growth Hacking

It is said that growth hacking is a mindset rather than a tool, it was developed by start-ups as a marketing technique. It includes using creativity, analytical thinking and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure.

Growth hackers focus on low-cost and innovative alternatives to traditional marketing, like utilising social media and viral marketing instead of buying advertising through more traditional media outlets.

 

Listicle

Everyone love lists. Really, they are easy to read and easy to create and they are not going away anytime soon.

The term listicle is used by journalists, bloggers and copywriters in creating lists in thematic structure, fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article.

 

Digital transformation

Digital transformation is the science of adapting your organisation to the times in which we live. 

It is thought of as the third stage of embracing digital technologies: digital competence → digital literacy → digital transformation.

 

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is the art of using news events or stories for marketing and advertising purposes. To  jump on the back of popular news stories to gain visibility, media coverage or other benefits (backlinks, viral video views, cheap PPC click-throughs, etc.).

Forms and techniques of newsjacking in digital media context are numerous:

- Google News SERPs "squatting"

- hashtag hijacking

- seo for news related queries or search trends

- use of PPC search ads related to news related queries

- infographics

 

Agile marketing

Agile Marketing is a philosophy that is used to shorten the length of marketing campaigns, to get actionable information from those campaigns as soon as possible, and to test these ideas so that the good ones are recognised faster so that the ones that aren’t working can be dropped. The goal being to make the marketing process more adaptable to changes in your business.

 

Native advertising

Is defined by Wikipedia as “a method of advertising which seeks to provide content in the context of the user’s experience”, and Sharethrough’s CEO, Dan Greenburg explains it as “a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content.”

So if we compare native advertising to an old fashioned advertorial in a magazine, you can see why Facebook would be a better platform for native advertising than Twitter.

Omnichannel

When multichannel just isn’t good enough anymore.

Best described by David Moth; “Omnichannel extends past social networks, email, web and mobile, to include the entire customer experience, so it includes things like in-store displays, kiosks, interactive television and set-top boxes.”

 

 

So there we have the top 10 fast rising digital buzzwords of 2013. And now we can sit back for another year and see which new words and phrases worm their way into our vocabularies during 2014.