Digital, social and mobile is our day-to-day. It's normal, we've embraced them all, it's how we live. It wasn't like that a few years ago, and it certainly wasn't the norm for businesses but companies today are realising that without digital, they will simply cease to exist. 

Realising this is one thing; taking action and actually transforming every level of a business is something different. 

But it's becoming inevitable. Businesses have to react and act as technology is disrupting every aspect of our economy and society. They need to be on top of this now because we as consumers require it; this is how we lead our lives, with digital, social and mobile at our fingertips all the time. 

To put some pressure on you, I want to show you some stats about social, digital and mobile from this year's research by We Are Social. 

I reviewed the same study in 2014 so today we are going to look at 2016 and compare what's happened in two years. A few additional things have been added since then such as the share of web traffic which I find very interesting and useful.  

Just as the old post, this one focuses on Germany and the UK as the markets I am professionally and personally most interested in. 

Social, Digital and Mobile Global Snapshot 2016

I was on holidays last week and I actually managed to not open my email, read any blogs or articles or even write. I completely switched off. And I'm proud of myself for doing so for the very first time in my life.

Now I'm refreshed and ready to get back to it with full energy. And so I spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon catching up on all my reading from the past two weeks. Almost 500 articles were waiting for me in my feedly but yet again, sitting on my sofa with my coffee and reading helped me learn quite a few new things that I thought I need to share with you too.

Below you'll find 17 must-read pieces about digital, inbound marketing, public relations, agency world and management and leadership I recommend for you to go over this week.

17 Articles and Blog Post to Read Now:

Digital

#1: 26 Disruptive Tech Trends for 2016 – 2018

Brian Solis again gives us a sneak peek into the future. Brands, brace yourself and start adjusting and adapting again and never stop if you want to stay relevant!

I'm now very dedicated to ramping up my blog series "Why Work in PR?" as it looks like they are very helpful to you, dear PR students and young professionals. 

Today, it's Scott Guthrie who shares with us his PR career story and some fantastic guidance with three big tips on how to succeed in the PR industry.

It looks like I tend to meet other PR professionals on Twitter. Same happened with Scott and also through the #FuturePRoof book project that we both wrote chapters for and then started reading and tweeting each other's content more often afterwards. He writes regularly about communications, creativity and change on his blog so I encourage you to subscribe there to learn. And don't forget to follow him on Twitter @sabguthrie. 

(If you've missed any of the previous interviews, you can take a look as well: Richard Bailey, Pippa Hanson, Jessica Hodkinson, Chryssa Skodra and Farzana Baduel.) 

Why Work in Public Relations: Interview with Scott Guthrie

1. As a short introduction, can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?

I’m the Digital Director - Influencer Relations at Ketchum London. 

My clients always ask me "How do you go about finding keywords and creating an effective keywords strategy?"

With the constant changes of Google's algorithm and most importantly consumer behaviour, companies struggle to define the right keywords. That struggle, though, comes from the lack of process or a way to go about coming up with the keywords. 

Today, I want to solve that challenge for you and offer you a very simple, but super effective guide to doing keywords research and defining your keywords strategy. 

But before I go on into the actual steps I want to point one significant shift that we have been seeing recently – the growing importance of topics and catering for user needs.

Today, Google wants to solve for user intent. With the huge amount of data, it now understands natural language patterns and tries to identify meaning around the context of a search. It wants to offer solutions that are meaningful and relevant, not so much purely based on the exact words a user has put in the search box. This is called semantic search and it should drive your keywords strategy. So bear this in mind as we go ahead.

How to Do Keywords Research and Create Your Keywords Strategy:

With the proliferation of digital media, influencer marketing is becoming more and more important for inbound marketing to generate traffic and help drive leads, but it’s now also more challenging to do than ever before.  

We’ve spoken a little bit about influencer marketing when discussing it as part of the PESO (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned media) model that guides modern PR and even more so inbound PR that is strongly orientated towards digital and inbound.

Basically, influencer marketing is getting others to tell your story, and not just any others, but people who have somewhat of a celebrity status within their area of expertise and have a fairly big audience due to their popularity and reputation. When we say celebrity, that doesn’t necessary mean an actress or a singer. It could, for example, be a fitness blogger with a huge Instagram following.

The problem with influencer marketing, though, is that it’s hard, you cannot control the results, and with the rise of other influencers such as YouTubers or Instagrammers and no longer just journalists or bloggers, the sheer of influencers has made it even more complicated to pick the right ones. 

And there’s, of course, the notion of not knowing how to approach those influencers as it is still rather new and very different than traditional media relations. Influencer relations is the Wild West now.