The Social Media industry is moving so fast and it’s not always easy to keep up with the current trends. We in Pixel Federation believe in the power of Social Media which helps us keep the community of players alive and loyal and at the same time gives them space to carry the conversation with us, their devs.

Just a few days ago, we attended Social Media Week Conference for the very first time. Three days packed with lectures about the latest news and information in Social Media Marketing mixed with a few case studies and real-life examples of the many successful companies from various industries across the world such as BBC, Facebook, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, Reddit, Huawei, L’Oréal Forbes, LinkedIn, etc. These are the key takeaways that resonated with me the most.

Focus on winning in one area

While planning your Social Media Content Strategy, try to focus on just one area at a time. The case study presented with this keynote showed us a Cosmopolitan’s effort to create a small piece of video content which will resonate with their housekeeping audience. They came up with an easy Chicken Casserole video recipe and guess what? The simple video of even simpler recipe became the top video on their website as well as number one result in Google search at the time. You may ask yourselves, why the Chicken Casserole? Well, the reasoning behind the decision was that they wanted to pick a recipe which is widely searched for on the Internet and at the same time create a social-first video which will be inspiring and will empower people to do the same. Actually, I realized that many companies stated that they build their business and social media around video at the moment. The importance of creating different videos for different platforms is obvious I think. Just to give you an idea, the agency behind the Cosmopolitan’s content stated that on Instagram the most popular are more authentic, less polished and in-the-moment videos while on the other hand on YouTube the polished, well-thought videos are more appropriate.

Big reach is not important, it’s the IMPACT

Reach is easy to buy but the impact, you have to earn! Remember that a great quality content allows you to break through organically, still. People’s comments are always a good source of inspiration for the next content pieces so don’t forget to learn from them and encourage the human interactions on your favorite Social Media platform. Focus on creating content that allows people to engage, especially comment and share. A very popular type of interaction nowadays are “viral interactions”, means tagging people in the brand’s comments, with the message always similar to this: “@lili you’d love it”. To have an impact, you need to stay relevant, creative and innovative. Social Media has millions of conversations every day, it’s global, real-time and evolving so take the advantage of that!

Meet people where they are

Rather than drive people to platforms you want them to, stay where they are. Also don’t ever rely on one platform. Find your target audience and create a culture of conversation with them. We are the generation of doers! So encourage your audience to do something and bring your brand closer to them.

Do you know your audience’s touch points?

It’s interesting to look at what your audience’s most used hashtags are. Let’s say there is a brand focused on the vegan audience. Can you imagine the range of hashtags used with veganism? Just stop for a while and try to come up with a few of them in your head. Do you have at least 20? Well, there are over 100 hashtags associated just with veganism itself. People who identify themselves as vegans have all sorts of reasons for their lifestyle choice. There are “Health conscious vegans” using #cleaneating and also “Activism vegans” using #animalright #environment #zerowaste. When you identify all the hashtags used by your audience/customers, create so-called sub-audiences. Then position your brand the way it’s alright for your audience to make people stick to your brand in the long-term. And listen to your audience as they develop, it’s very important.

Let the ‘social’ fuel business decisions

Let me tell you something about another great case study, this time about Fresh Handmade Cosmetics company Lush I personally love as a customer. They claim that their customers are their sales team. On Social Media, they heavily rely on User Generated Content from the customers. Their community even “invented” their our hashtags they use while showcasing their experience with the Lush company such as #lushcommunity or #lushaddict. But back to the point. Lush states that they love creating a Social Media content which fuels their business decisions. Every now and then, they let their audience decide about new themes for products for the next season or about specific scents they should use. The customers are usually so excited when “their” product launches that they become “an ambassadors” for the brand and spread the word about their experiences with the products. So remember, it’s the network, not the content, that's viral!

Have confidence in who you are and work with like-minded partners

Do you know who you are? Who your brand is? If you’re working for an insurance company and you think you’re like Beyoncé, you’re simply wrong. If you have a hard time setting your brand’s tone of voice, try to match it to some well-known celebrity. Once you set your tone, it’s time to show it in the visuals too. Always strive for sharing the story through powerful visuals which deliver a “wow” effect. Stay true to the brand and if possible, lean into the purpose. Brands which put the purpose into the heart of everything usually win. I loved the case study presented about how the cooperation with another brand can bring such amazing results. For World Ocean Day, National Geographic and Adidas partnered up to fight the plastic waste in the oceans. This initiative lets both companies explore new ways of storytelling, mainly visual storytelling. Because they were willing to take the risk and push the boundaries with tech and innovation, they picked up one of the most trending social media formats nowadays, vertical videos, which brought outstanding results. Did you know that 60% of Instagram stories are watched with sound on?

Men prefer chatting with bots over humans

To wrap up this article, I have a little bit shocking finding of the research presented by Neil Davidson and Aoife McGuinness from HeyHuman. For this research, people were observed with the special neuroscience head equipment on to see how do they feel while chatting about their problems with their friends versus with the psychology social media chatbot named Wooot. The results showed that men actually felt more positive while chatting with chatbot about their issues over their friends, crazy right?

And that’s it, guys. Hope you enjoyed the summary from SMWLDN 2018 Conference and I am curious about your favorite Social Media Conferences. Let me know on our Pixel Federation Facebook page.