How much has digital changed since 2011?

At Red & Yellow, we devote considerable time and knowledge resources to ensuring that our digital content is at the cutting edge, while covering the fundamentals and best practices that always apply. Our Digital Marketing course is based on eMarketing: The essential guide to marketing in a digital world, a textbook that is completely overhauled every two years to keep up with the rapid changes in technology and practice. We recently published the fifth edition in collaboration with Quirk and held an exclusive workshop for past students to bring them up to speed with new developments.

Since the last update in 2011, the digital marketing field has changed considerably. Successful marketing requires an understanding of these subtle shifts and giant leaps. Here are just a few of these:

• Social media is evolving at an unrelenting pace. Some of today's biggest channels didn't even exist when the previous edition was published. Among these are Pinterest, Vimeo, Instagram, Vine and Google+, all of which have a marked effect on how people interact online today. Facebook also reached its billionth user in late 2012.
  
• From this list, it's clear that image and video sharing is accelerating as data costs decrease. YouTube users now watch over four billion hours of video every month, while SnapChat users share over 400 million photos a day (more than the number shared on Facebook, on a platform that launched just two years ago).
  
• The way that online analytics tools measure user data has been thoroughly overhauled and is now much more sophisticated (and useful). We can now accurately track single users through the entire marketing journey, which means more effective marketing for businesses, and better experiences for users.
  
• Mobile devices have also changed. The use of wearable technology like Google Glass and smart sports monitors (like the Nike FuelBand) is increasing, though they seemed a bit far-fetched just two years ago. Smartphone adoption is fast catching up on feature phones across the world (in rich and poor areas alike) and mobile payments using Near-Field Communication, QR codes and mobile card readers are increasingly commonplace.

For insights like these - and many, many more - consider signing up for Red & Yellow's 10 week distance-based Digital Marketing course, presented in partnership with the USB Executive Development Ltd of the University of Stellenbosch Business School. The next course starts on 7 April 2014.

For more information, or to register, visit http://www.redandyellow.co.za/product/digital-marketing-course/.