Gone are the days when webmasters and online marketing experts set out on an expedition to find out new ways to stay charged, while everyone is winning hearts with digital marketing ideas. There have been some rules that were being followed for a long time. Some are here to stay, whereas others will fade.

You might be surprised to know that some of those rules that you have been depending upon all these years are on the verge of extinct and as we move into the second month of 2018, it is quite obvious that these will not stay. Here, we are going to examine some of the digital marketing trends that will disappear in the year 2018. So, if you are still using some of these, it is high time you reflected on whether you need it again or not.

1.E-books and white papers (time to shred)

There are arguments that white papers can never be out of trend as everyone love these. But, surely there are least chances that these will be discussed around as one of the main digital marketing topics in 2018. Time is ripe to come up with some innovative ideas that would help you to bring about a revolution across the old and outdated ideas that would start infuriating your people very soon.

There are other kinds of strong marketing tools that you can implement to get your brand attract attention over the internet rather than strategizing a white paper as the first thing to do.

Creating long and boring eBooks is not the trend these days. What people expect is a short and precise one so that they can read and scroll around when in doubt. When it comes to developing an eBook, ensure that yours has all the information that the people are looking for and do not bore them down.

2. Organic Facebook

Organic reach on Facebook is a far away thing while we move ahead in the year 2018. Moreover, we can now see organic reach on Facebook sliding into death. “Paid” is the word here as Facebook is used more for commercial purposes rather than anything else, which makes it necessary to implement ‘paid’ reach (the need of the hour).

Since the year 2014, it has been fading out and in the year 2018, it could be said that organic reach will die. Now it is in the range 5%-10% levels and slowly will reach 0%.

3. Optimizing text

Many people have a wrong notion that blog posts that run into meters and meters are the only way to survive now. Of course, there was a time when long blog posts used to be Google’s preference and choice when a user would search for something relatively relevant. But, as time passed, the trend started fading. Though, long posts are still preferred by people for a detailed guidance on whatever they are looking for.

Let us not consider long text as one of the ways to convey information, which actually has a downright impact on SEO. If you are thinking across the lines on optimizing the text on your site and then sitting back thinking that your SEO work has been done, then you are nowhere in the race. You will fail.

You should be optimizing – but, focus on new content that is sure to drive engagement thereby taking your brand to the next level.

Of course, content is important – but, the kind of content you use – plays an important role. Content in the form of video and image has an important role to play and optimizing this could bring about more engagement rather than content in the text form. If you have observed, you might have found that the search is becoming more inclined toward everything rather than text. This is because more people are interested in voice search and camera search. So, in the year 2018, if you are still stuck at text optimization, it is high time to move away.

Spend and invest money and time on optimizing video and image as part of your latest SEO strategy in the year 2018 rather than focusing on text.

4. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is good when it is used moderately, but when you overdo it, everything starts becoming more mechanical than emotional. This can be easily identified within an overdone automation aspect found in contact and ads.

Though, a lot of technology and machine intervention is taking up manual tasks, undoubtedly, a human touch across every digital marketing aspect will stay. It is high time that you got rid of the automation aspect that has been overdone in all your marketing strategies and replace these with humanism, which will help in connecting you with your people, who will ultimately fall for you.

A human connection is what makes us different from machines and implementing this in our digital marketing strategies will take us to the next level.

5. Blogging as always

Ten years ago, blogs have been a trend. But, do you think blogging is still a huge trend? Times are changing and it is necessary that we implement something apart from the regular blogging to make sure that we are offering something new and unique to our people.

It can be acquired only when you set out and experiment with a number of ideas before finally finding out what works well with your people. As you know and as we have discussed, loads of text is not what we want now. But, it is more. We need images and videos as the search is being directed toward such content. But, the trend of blogging for SEO benefits will slowly fade out.

6. Video advertisements that are too long

A lot of businesses have benefitted from video advertisements. Less is always more and more is always less. But, here it is better to follow – less is always more.

A video that plays for more than 6 seconds is something that your people are not looking for. So, let us reduce the time to something lesser. You might have invested in surplus to get a great video ready. No one has the attention span greater than six seconds as well as no one will be bothered to see what happens next. Let us compress it to less than 6 seconds.

7. Banner ads will soon disappear

Banner ads are something that no one in their wildest dreams might have thought would leave us. But, don’t you think these are annoying?

Yes, these are and it is high time since we got rid of this trend. When someone visits your site, their main objective is to find content to solve their concern and what they see is a distracting banner. So, what next – they leave. What other option do they have?

You can always showcase your brand, service or product, but, ensure that you do it in a precise and planned manner, making an impression rather than depressing people. You can follow several promotional techniques when implementing banners to ensure that they do not ward off people, but rather they help in generating leads for the brand.

8. Stock images that are more common

Stock images are not going to last long. These are soon going to fade and away from the websites and wherever we have been using it online. People are more interested in visuals and images that help them to relate to those on a personalized note.

To be more precise, it would be something like the images or story that we can post on Facebook and Instagram. This kind of a trend is widespread and growing these days. The videos are loved by all because they fit into any kind of devices that the people own and videos are cheaper too rather than those stock images.

9. Social media engagement with people

A lot is happening over the social media and if you are staying cut away from social media, then you are doing it wrong. People are active over social media and they love to see their favourite brands on the social media. They connect and interact with their favourite brands via social media. It also helps in bringing about a lot of followers and customers to you through phone or email.These are some of the trends that would die in the year 2018. So, if you are not alert, you would go about fuelling the dead trends and stay behind in time.