One of this week’s top articles in our opinion was Seth Godin’s reminder that when it comes to marketing one should know who their customers truly are. And not just their age group, location and occupation. What is more important is to truly be aware of what they want, need, love and fear; of who they trust, listen to and like. Only after can you target them with any marketing you find suitable. In the past few months we have encouraged our clients to sketch their own clients’ personas and to answer similar questions about their target audience. Read the full article here.

Trends will disrupt marketing agencies in 2014? Bring it on. Social Media Explorer explores how the traditional role of agencies will change in the next year and we must say we like the predictions. Fully-integrated media strategy, content marketing, mobile innovation – new service offerings have to and will emerge if agencies want to remain competitive. Ultimately these changes will help agencies move forward and this is a good thing. Here’s the story.

We know we’ve already shared quite a few trends articles, but it’s just that time of the year and we cannot possibly skip Econsultancy’s CEO Ashley Friedlein’s take on digital marketing and ecommerce. These are somewhere between trends and predictions and what makes them stand out is the fact Friedlein based them on his own conversations with influencers and those who practise them.

We’ve spoken about the importance of having a social media strategy quite a few times, but let’s not fool ourselves – a strategy without measure and realistic goal setting won’t do much. Social Media Examiner offers a nice and quick action guide in 4 basic steps to make sure you do reach your social media goals this year and you streamline the process the right way.