The lucky social media manager that I am, I got to attend Social Fresh East in Tampa on behalf of Vocus. I’ve always wanted to attend this conference because Jason Keath is great at bringing together social media minds and educating all levels of business social media implementers and strategists.
Here are some of my favorite takeaways if you missed it. If you’d like to follow who attended and get more tips, search hashtag #socialfresh on Twitter.
Lessons for Social Marketers from the 2012 Elections
Tom Webster, VP of Strategy and Marketing at Edison Research:
- The reason communicators become successful is by telling stories. We need data storytellers. There is way too much data “repukery.”
- Big data is data you can’t fit on an excel spreadsheet. If you are in marketing and say you’re not good with numbers, that’s almost the same as saying you’re not good with words.
- The dangers of snapshot data: we often see it spit out on social media. But it doesn’t mean anything about context. If you can’t tell the story, you don’t have enough data.
- Don’t be cynical, be skeptical. Don’t be negative, ask why. Always seek to prove yourself wrong first. Don’t settle for the first or easiest metric.
- We are becoming less skilled at being social with people we do not have empathy with, but we are in the business of understanding people.
- Social media causes and accelerates relationships. In your business, you can’t afford to blow off people online.
Word of Mouth – Your Ultimate Distribution Channel
Spike Jones, Engagement Group Director for WCG:
- If you talked to people in real life the way you talked to people in ads and on social media, they’d punch you in the face. (Hugh MacLeod, @gapingvoid)
- Advertising = awareness, yes. However, it doesn’t give you credibility. It’s time to bring community back.
- Truth: It is not, nor will it ever be about your product on social media. Don’t talk about products, talk about passion and reframe the conversation. What do your customers get excited about?
- Don’t seek out influence, create it. Influence can be created but passion cannot.
- Inconvenient truth: Your community is not for everybody. Stop trying to fit everyone in it.
- Find your rallying cry: everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
- Think about content differently. Why do people share? Well, we are egomaniacs and emotional beings. Create pieces of content that feed ego and evoke emotion.
How to Leverage the Voice of the Customer
Morgan Johnston, JetBlue:
- Build relationships first. Only then do you earn the right to monetize.
How to Develop Your Mobile First Social Strategy
Ian Schafer, Deep Focus:
- Vertical is the new horizontal. Using mobile phones is habitual, social media is habitual. Mobile social networking is social media and you must adapt your marketing and storytelling efforts accordingly.
- Feed mobile social media feeds with content people want to share. That’s your measure of branding success.
- The cornerstones of effective mobile social content marketing: produce, publish, propel, success.
- A great social media content and marketing strategy is your best mobile advertising strategy.
Breaking Through The Clutter: Content, Analytics and Paid
Christopher Tuff, 22squared:
- Social success is a mix of art and science, voice and virality, influence and purchase. The right content to the right people at the right time.
Understanding the Power of the Earned Media Ecosystem
Christopher S. Penn, SHIFT Communications:
- The power of earned media:
- It increases liking
- It fosters reciprocity
- It creates scarcity
- It establishes authority
- It adds social proof
- It generates consistency
The Key to Facebook Success: Ads + Social Promotion
Jim Tobin, Ignite Social Media:
- Take a balanced approach. Earned + paid + owned media= amplified success. It’s the holy grail of social media marketing.
- Organic exposures drive better results than the paid. Advertising only works 1/3 as well as organic. We’re spending too much on advertising, not enough on organic.
- Tobin’s Law: The size of a brand’s network is always smaller than the size of its network’s network.
Building An Insights-Driven Social Organization
Adam Kmiec, The Campbell Soup Co:
- Social media insights come from signals, and those insights should form decisions. It’s what you do with those signals that matter. However, insights are NOT data – there’s a big difference.
- We are data rich but insight poor.
Content Creation is the Ultimate Fan Advocacy
Ted Rubin, Collective Bias:
- Content is the ad and relationships are the new currency.
- Shoppers seek information on their own terms – primarily via search.
- Shoppers trust stories from people they know. Everyone is influential.
- Trust is built based on interaction, consistency, being true to your word, authentic and genuine.
- Listen to your customers. Make it be about them. Ask, “how can I serve you?” and aim for ongoing engagement. Know the people in your audience.
- Think reputation not ranking, connection not network, loyalty not celebrity. A brand is what a business does.
- Keys to marketing now: participate, experiment, engage and build relationships with key advocates and detractors – Return on Relationships (ROR), not ROI.
- The path to purchase is lined with content. ROR drives discovery. Organic content is preferred by searchers. Listen for moments and make it personal.
- Content drives engagement, engagement drives advocacy and advocacy correlates directly to increased sales.
- A secret to innovation: childlike imagination. If you are only focused on the money, you risk completely overlooking the people.
The Impact Equation
Chris Brogan, Human Business Works:
When pitching your business to prospects, answer these questions first:
- How do I add value?
- How do I make my buyer the hero?
- How do I equip my buyer for success?
Youtility: Why Smart Companies Are Helping, Not Selling
Jay Baer, Convince and Convert:
- Create content that makes it easier for your company to be found via search and social media, and wait for the leads to roll in. It’s called frame of mind awareness.
- With ‘friend of mine’ awareness, you seek to have the prospective customer allow you inside their circle of trust, where you become a valuable resource. When the customer is ready to buy, they don’t have to go find you, because you’re already there.
- Helping can replace selling.
Thanks to Jason Keath and the whole #SocialFresh crew for the great conference. Looking for more social media marketing knowledge from thought leaders? Check out the Demand Success conference this June.