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Yesterday I did a recap post of my day one at the Social Media Marketing World Conference where over 3,000 digital marketers come together to learn, as Michael Stelzner puts it, “what works in social.” The event is sponsored by his company Social Media Examiner, one of my favorite resources for digital marketing and an awesome podcast to boot.

This year, there has been a heavy focus on live video and streaming. Day two kicked off with a fantastic expert panel talking about Periscope, Facebook Live Streaming, and Blab. From becoming more comfortable on video to the future on live streaming (including drones and 360 views!), the discussion was lively and informative.

Two things stuck out for me:

• On the topic of ROI, there were these comments:
  • Kim Garst said social media is about the relationships, not the numbers
  • Shaan Puri said the return is on the experience
  • Mari Smith said that people should be thinking along the lines of re-purposing. So, take that live video, an excellent example of authenticity and connection, save it, spiff it up in a video editor, and reuse it on social and in email
• On the topic of platform longevity, Shaan shared this timeline: there is the hype followed by skepticism. Then people find their footing and build a communication strategy with a long-lasting structure. Going back to what GaryVee talked about in Day 1, at some point, a strategy also has to be developed for new platforms (or new efforts on existing). The landscape changes. Case in point: MySpace, Meerkat, and Ello to name a few.

Day 1 takeaways for me were all about live video but in Day 2, the big topic was focused on social sharing and this thing called…

Influencer Marketing

Apparently the fancy name for my Social Media Ambassadors Program is called Influencer Marketing! Two of my sessions and the closing keynote focused on this concept. Lee Odden shared that 90% of people trust recommendations from peers while only 33% trust ads. Bryan Kramer said that there is no more B2B or B2C (business to business or business to consumer), it’s all about H2H: Human to Human. Mark Schaefer shared that internet data will increase by 500% in 2020. He also shared a slide that nearly made my cry out loud: Facebook organic growth was 26% in 2011, in 2016 it’s expected to drop to 1%!!

This is the value and importance of what Lee calls “Brandividuals.” Mark refers to them as the Alpha-Audience: influential people who can advocate for your brand, provide authenticity, and improve engagement. These can be both internal (employees), customers, and/or industry experts with active networks.

Lee outlined a plan with the following steps:

1. Identify potential influencers through LinkedIn, Facebook, Buzzsumo, or Traacker. 
2. Correlate the data found and verify the channels of the influencer. For example, you don’t want to recruit someone who hasn’t been active on social for over a year or so. But he cautioned that a big celebrity might have less reach than a well-known social media star.
3. In the recruitment phase, be thoughtful and do your homework. Don’t ask too much too soon and ensure you know what they care about.
4. Maintain and grow the relationship. Share goals and results. Be a good project manager. Bryan recommends the VIP treatment: thoughtful gifts, unexpected thank you cards, ask for their opinion.
5. Make your topics relevant and make it easy. Perfect example: provide a shareable tweet. Bryan mentioned sharelinkgenerator.com as an easy way to share.

Some ideas for Influencer Marketing? Interviews, quotes, panels or webinars, guest blog posts, endorsements, reviews, or participation in events and contests. Mark closed saying that your traffic are just tourists. Dig deeper and find your Influencers!

My two sessions included…

Growing an Email List with Facebook Ads (on a budget!)

Amy Porterfield‘s presentation was an excellent tie-in to what I learned the day before from Jon Loomer about Evergreen Facebook Ad Campaigns. But instead of starting with a question that qualified the audience into segmented buckets for nurture sequence, Amy’s starts with an “epic” blog post the directs the audience to a lead magnet (an enticing freebie or giveaway) with the intention of an email signup, specific thank you and followup strategies, and re-targeting ads to visitors who clicked but did not opt in.

Admittedly, I had a hard time fitting this concept into a nonprofit strategy but a few quick searches and I found some really cool quiz ideas by the Salvation Army, World Wildlife Fund and the Girl Scouts! Plus, I sat next to the Digital Strategist at Heifer International at lunch and she said they use quizzes all the time. I’ve been loving these tie-ins!

Essential Tools for the Marketers Toolbox

Ian Cleary with Razor Social held a fast paced session on essential tools to build a Social Media Success PRISM: People (audience), Relationships, Inbound Traffic, Subscribers (including social retargeting) and Monetization… in that order from broad to focused. Ready?

1. SocialWarfare – social sharing buttons and click-to-tweet features
2. AdExpresso – easier to use than Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor and includes visual reporting
3. Veeroll – step-by-step wizard to create video ads
4. Buzzstream – automation for ads
5. OptIn Monster – build subscribers with content upgrades (the founder, Syed Balkhi, presented blogging tools for growth just the day before! See my notes from Day 1).
6. Apester – polls and quizzes to embed in websites and blogs
7. Socialquant – gain followers through marketing automation
8. Zapier – automate frequent tasks
9. Dasheroo – a visually appealing dashboard
10. Ripl – an app to create animated images an gifs

Analytics Dashboard Strategies

This panel session featured some heavy hitting all-stars in digital marketing: Louis Gray from Google, Justin Levy from Citrix, Maria Saltz from Adobe, and Susan Beebe from Tyson Food!

The main strategies from all of them are to look at awareness (reach and engagement), conversions and leads, and from that, making tactical decisions. So, are optimized pages working, are the new video ads performing, is our customer care program having an impact? Maria also uses the dashboards to monitor for crisis situations.

Three big takeaways for me were:

• Klout. Louis says throw it away. Any relevance-related programs are no indicator of social reach and can be manipulated. It’s no way to measure a company’s true impact.
• Maria chimed in with machine-scored sentiment: it’s no way to measure true feeling towards your brand because it cannot interpret social media sarcasm. However, you can monitor it at a high level. Spikes may indicate a crisis situation that needs to be investigated.
• Susan also brought up bounce rates. Make sure that you have the issue in context. It’s expected that you’ll have a high bounce rate on a webpage with no call-to-action. Alternatively, if you have a link to an external website and your bounce rate is low, that’s probematic.

In all, panelists shared that different businesses need different analytics tools but agreed that for people just getting started, Google Analytics is probably the best. They cautioned that beginners should keep it simple and benchmark just 2 or 3 things. Overall page views, the number of visitors, and repeat visitors are a good place to start. Identify your goals to determine what to measure.

One other neato tip is to monitor keywords and use them in blog posts to improve SEO! (And I heard this yesterday from Syed Balkhi on blog growth!)

Book Recommendations

Book Recommendations from Day 2:

• Shareology and Human to Human: H2H by Bryan Kramer
• The Content Code and The Tao of Twitter by Mark Schaefer

Overall, a really incredible conference. Next up, I’ll be processing all this amazing information and sharing what my top priorities are related to the marketing strategy at my nonprofit. Yay!