Sound Advice from SocialPro 2016

The SocialPro 2016 marketing conference was two days packed full of helpful refreshers and new insights about paid and organic social media strategies and tactics. Ideally, it would take several blogs to break down all of the nuggets of goodness, but I’ve selected a couple key takeaways to help you improve your social marketing. 

 “To avoid excessive remarketing don't create campaigns based on commonly visited pages and specify users visit at least twice.” – Sarah Humphrey, Director of Social Media, Page Zero Media

Have you ever visited a website and realized you are in the wrong place? You immediately left or “bounced” and then start seeing ads in your social feeds for that website. This is known as remarketing. We all think these ads are a nuisance if they’re not relevant or helpful. As marketers, we want to make sure we’re reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message. Sarah Humphrey advises marketers to set guidelines for remarketing to people who visit your website at least twice. And through Facebook advertising, you can create your ideal scenario for remarketing that goes even deeper.

“Just because you can track something, doesn’t mean you should” – John Lee, Managing Partner, Clix Marketing

We live in a sea of never-ending data. Rather than getting bogged down with too many details, be sure to define what success means to you. Once you have a good idea of what success looks like internally, you can create metrics you want to track. The way you define success will ultimately affect how you optimize and segment. Doing this will save your team a lot of time and a lot of headaches.

“Follow the bright and shiny.” – Karianne Stinson, Marketing Manager, Microsoft

Karianne gave us countless insights into decoding the Facebook newsfeed. When Facebook rolls out a new feature, they adjust their algorithm to show preference to that feature. Right now that’s Facebook Live – have you tried it out? Make sure you’re following industry trends and hop on the bandwagon if it makes sense for your brand – and I can’t stress that enough. You don’t want to be the wrong note in a string quartet because you’re a flute player. People simply won’t engage with your content if it’s inappropriate and out of place.

“Instagram is about the experience, not the sell. Be true to the platform.” – Dave Roth, CEO, Emergent Digital

With the introduction of Instagram advertising users are likely seeing their fair share of out-of-place ads (see the string quartet reference above). I’m not saying that Instagram is a snooty platform, but users there have standards, and if you’re not living up to them they will kick you out. Dave Roth touched on ensuring your Instagram visuals are on-point – appealing, aspirational, authentic and creative. A successful post needs to have minimal text, subtle branding and appropriate, brand-related hashtags (and not too many). A hashtag is only as useful as its following. Also, make sure that when you’re creating Facebook ads you’re not clicking the button that says “add to Instagram”. Keep them separate. 

See you next year, SocialPro!