January is a great time for reflection, both for personal and business goals. Over the past month, I’ve been focussing on ways to develop and grow, and a big part of that means looking into what is and isn’t working.

For Civic Web Media, that means revisiting our blog and seeing which posts people have been reading, sharing and interacting with the most. Here are our 18 most popular articles of the year, with brief summaries for the best-read posts.

Australia’s most popular social media sites 2018

Social media continues to be a huge investment for companies in Australia, so it’s no surprise that marketing managers are keen to find out which sites Australians are most active on (Facebook’s still number one). Our 2018 rundown was our most popular post of the year and we’ve already written about Australia’s most popular social media sites in 2019 for an up-to-date snapshot.

 

Fiverr – the true cost of cheap copywriting

There’s a vast difference between terrible and brilliant copywriting. While price isn’t the only factor you should consider, it’s definitely something to think about. If you’ve found a writer who’s offering to work for peanuts, think about why that might be. Fiverr is a site where people offer various services for $5, but as our research showed, even that can be a waste of money.

 

11 Australian experts reveal common content marketing mistakes

While there are thousands of articles about content marketing available online that tell you what to do, you’re mostly left in the lurch to find out the wrong approach the hard way. We spoke to a group of Australian experts (including people at HubSpot and LinkedIn) to find out exactly what we shouldn’t be doing.

 

Hashtag Hacks: Everything you need to know about hashtags

Hashtags are #everywhere these days, but how exactly should you be using them? Our seven-part series highlights pretty much everything you could ever want to know about the current punctuation mark du jour.

 

The pros and cons of the most popular CMS options

When you’re building a new website, it pays to do a bit of research. Knowing which CMS is best suited to your needs (WordPress remains the most popular) can save you a lot of headaches further down the track.

 

How Australian brands are making the most of social media

Looking for inspiration for your social media campaigns? We highlighted what some of the most successful Australian businesses were doing on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

 

10 Australian experts reveal common SEO mistakes

Following on from the success of our content marketing mistakes article, we interviewed some of Australia’s SEO experts to find out some of the biggest mistakes many websites make to get on the wrong side of Google.

 

How to correctly and legally use images in your business blog

Many small business owners have the impression that if an image is on Google, they can use it on their site. This isn’t the case, and this blog posts explains why using some images may not be legal as well as giving suggestions for how to find images that don’t cross that line.

 

Followed by:

Civic Web Media turns three

 

10 reasons you should have 10 items in your listicle titles

 

How to reduce spam emails from your website

 

How to improve your presence on Google Maps

 

Social media comparison: Newcastle City Council vs Lake Macquarie Council

 

How not to write your About Us page

 

How to use Google My Business

 

Logo inspiration from death metal band Party Cannon

 

Content strategies for different search queries

 

Ethical link building tips