Social Fresh was invigorating, exciting and loaded with great speakers and talks! Now that we've absorbed all of this great knowledge we are ready to package it up and give it to you! No matter where you are at with social media in your company, you'll want to pay attention to these hot new trends.
Content
Content was king and a big topic! Jesse Catlin from eMarketer focused most of his presentation talking about how important it was to create good, engaging content.
"Is it magnetic?" was his phrase. Magnetic content is valuable content - content you know your audience wants. It is engaging, informative and interesting.
Although you've heard the phrase content is king over and over since it seems like the dawn of social media time, you will actually see a trend this year where marketers pull away from traditional advertising and actually try to have a conversation with their consumers.
Mobile
As our phones get smarter and smarter, you will see consumers use social media on their phones more and more. This means there needs to be a change in thinking when it comes to setting up our websites, blogs and social profiles. We need to think about the mobile user's experience. Adrian Parker says this means mobile needs to be thought of as the first page. Optimize for mobile first and you will be golden!
Email marketing is social and a tremendous tool for keeping the social buzz going. When used in concert with the rest of your social platforms, you can effectively close the information loop with your customers and get them hooked on what you have to offer by keeping them up-to-date and in-the-know! Don't discount it, you may be missing out on a big piece of the pie.
Jay Baer talked extensively about the importance of email, his main point was that Facebook and email are almost the same, and using them in harmony is ideal for building an engaged community that is excited about your brand and the content you provide. This is because each platform can be used to build buzz about what's going out. For example you can hype up your email subscribers about a new Facebook contest by sending an email. In turn, you can hype up your Facebook fans for a newsletter that's coming out by posting to Facebook.
Pinterest is the hot new platform and is gaining members by leaps and bounds! Pinterest is great for retailers, but as a brand you should stop and ask yourself if it makes sense for you before jumping on board.
Google+
We heard an entire spiel from Scott Monty at FORD on Google+. As they were the first brand to be on it, he had some great insights into what the platform can do for you. Be warned: don't ignore Google+! It has immense potential for optimizing your search results and will be the platform that changes the user experience. Think about Google+ as the platform that will do better at truly connecting you with your customers.
Market Research and Monitoring
Pretty much every speaker started out by telling the social fresh ears that you have to research your community before you dive into it. Social media marketers are marketers - they are an extension of the marketing force that is behind your brand and therefore the same marketing principles apply: #1 is do your research!
In order to research you have to listen. This was the main premise of the talk we heard from Chuck Hemann. It is important to know what people are saying about your industry, your brand and your products as well as where they are saying it!
According to Hemann, listening data is the foundation of everything. The 4 L's driving behavior are:
- Listen
- Leverage
- Launch
- Link
Social is not stand alone
One point everyone on stage drove home in their own way was that social media is not your marketing plan. It is an integrated part of your marketing plan. Social should be weaved in and out of every other aspect of your marketing efforts. It should be in emails, on print media, on your website etc. Like we've said before, it cannot operate in a vacuum!
Brand Advocates
The subject of getting brand advocates was mentioned in various ways. Some speakers talked about reaching out to bloggers, using engaged consumers as content providers and even involving employees.
Jane Quiggle had an entire section of her presentation dedicated to including brand advocates in your social strategy. She suggests finding them through polls, contests and small scale promotions. Empower them with tools to advocate for you like badges, banners and avatars and then reward them!
Things we heard from every speaker:
- Mobile
- Use calls to action
- Do your market research
- Go outside the big 3 and discover the power of other platforms
See the official Ballywho Interactive Storify of Social Fresh EAST... the tweets, the presentations and summaries of the talks here: Social Fresh East Storify.