TrustWorkz is celebrating our 10th year of business this year! It wouldn’t be a true anniversary without a genuine (and slightly cheesy) retrospective about how far we’ve come. Stick around; there’s also a list of throwback digital technologies that will hit you right in the nostalgia feels!
A Brief History of TrustWorkz
Way back in 2011, our founders realized that digital marketing wasn’t going anywhere. Back then, digital marketing was a fledgling industry with a big price tag. It was almost impossible for anyone but the largest and most profitable businesses to compete. We wanted a way to help “the little guy” local businesses reach their customers online—before major brands got there first. To achieve this goal, we knew we needed two things: empathy and an eye for innovation.
TrustWorkz has a foundation of empathy because to truly understand your business, we must understand you. You’ve worked hard to build your business from that first fledgling idea into a community mainstay, whether your tools of the trade are power saws or roller skates. We strive to empower your business by developing your online community—a community that’s reflected in the people who step through your doors.
TrustWorkz also has a commitment to innovation. The digital sphere has changed a lot in the last nine years, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it changes just as drastically over the next nine months. We’ve nurtured a team of forward-thinkers with skills for spotting digital marketing trends, determining which ones will stick around, and utilizing the latest technologies and digital tools to grow your business.
Remember that listicle I promised? Here are a few ways the digital landscape has changed since TrustWorkz started tending it.
What started in 2011…
- When TrustWorkz began, Instagram was only a year old, wasn’t owned by Facebook, and was a veritable sea of sepia filters. Oh, and Instagram marketing? Nobody had thought of that yet. Now Instagram is the social platform with the 2nd highest daily login rate (and marketers take full advantage of such a captive audience).
- Back when Millennials were the college and post-grad generation, Snapchat revolutionized the world of social media. Other platforms took a few years to catch onto the trend of live update video content, but now Instagram leads the pack with “Stories.”
- Siri was born in 2011, introducing the concept of voice search—an important component of digital strategy that was leveled up by household tech like Alexa.
- In our first year of professional digital marketing, the iPad turned one-year-old, the iPhone turned four, and people were just starting to wonder if mobile search might matter. Today, digital trends are shifting from a “mobile-first” mentality to “mobile-only” strategies.
- Way back when, Google didn’t make it easy to find local businesses. Far from the world of one-click calls and map directions, finding answers on Google in 2011 involved scrolling…and scrolling…and scrolling. Now, Google provides the most relevant information to many searches without the user ever clicking through to a website.
As technology has evolved over the past 10 years, so has TrustWorkz. The strategies that elevated our first clients to page 1 of Google in 2011 wouldn’t be a blip on Google’s radar today. We keep our ears to the ground and swiftly adapt our marketing strategies to both technology innovation and the world’s ever-changing digital communication styles. But no matter how much our tools change, TrustWorkz’s foundational principles never will. We continue to work with passion, empathy, and a joyful commitment to helping our clients’ businesses grow. Because when you succeed, so do we.
If you’ve ever worked with TrustWorkz, thank you for allowing us to grow alongside your business. And thank you to our advocates, partners, and team for helping make this organization what it is today.
We don’t know where technology will take us over the next decade, but we’ll be ready to meet it, master it, and help businesses make it their own. We can’t wait to see how the world looks when it’s time to write “how digital marketing has changed since 2021.”
This blog was originally written by Taylor Brantner and recently edited by Katelyn Shaiman.