#SMWF North America Day 2 Takeaways

by | May 30, 2014 | Social Media, Trade Shows

The education and insight that #SMWF North America had to offer roared on during Day 2. Here are some highlights from #SMWF North America Day 1 in case you missed them.

Day 2 started off with some selfies taken by the attendees, prompted by NBC Universal’s Sarah Glover who made the opening remarks. She talked about social journalism that’s accurate, informative, and a first source for local and breaking news. News networks still dominate on Twitter over brands like Mashable and Buzzfeed.

The keynote was spoken by Sean Gardner and covered a tailored approach to building and implementing a multi-channel social media campaign. He cited forming a plan, studying users, executing a plan and sticking with it as the steps it takes to become an influencer.

One topic Gardner delved into was Google+. He claims it’s not a user-friendly platform, but is beneficial for content creators because of the Google authorship tag and SEO value (albeit, overstated SEO value) it brings.

A panel was up next about interdepartmental cooperation for a unified social media campaign. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Spotify’s Josh Karpf says a great way to become relevant in the social conversation is to offer a unique POV that can also reflect your brand voice.
  • Social Electric’s Tanya Donnelly claims that social provides flexibility since it allows consumers to come in and out of the marketing/sales funnel at any point.
  • Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s Abbey Reider states that the key components to a campaign include what the objective is, how it’s measured, what success looks like and how much content you’re getting back.
  • Catherine Lynch of BBVA Compass declares that communication and project management are the key components to interdepartmental social media campaigns.

 

Next up was Chobani’s Josh Dean talking about developing a brand voice by acting like a human and not a company. Every Chobani post is designed to be visual, start a conversation and tailored for the platform it’s going on. Dean claims that following their Golden Rule of social media helps Chobani’s content remain likeable, shareable and clickable.

After two social learning labs and a lunch break, Office Depot’s Emery R. Skolfield talked about how emotion marketing is greater than content marketing. Making an emotional connection with things people care about will go a long way in your social media marketing efforts.

Sometimes, just telling a really good and emotional story with your brand can be better than any product integration. Be part of something people care about and they’ll care about you.

Brandwatch’s Will McInnes spoke about the future of social intelligence next. Knowledge is never further away than WiFi and a smartphone. He said that the four places to focus our social intelligence now is:

  • From “what happened?” to “what’s going to happen?”
  • From small pockets of social insight to distributed intelligence
  • From passive data to active, physical insights
  • From what we know we don’t know to discovering white space conversations

Another big point to note from Will’s presentation is that social media causes complete strangers to influence some of the biggest decisions of your life.

Jim Rosenberg of UNICEF then presented on creating and managing powerful social content at his company. Social media is your embassy and a good website is your home country. Images and videos are key to social media storytelling. The goal is to have a conversation, not a campaign. This tweet tells the story perfectly.

After the fourth breakout, we heard a panel talking about social media redefining the customer experience. Some highlights include:

  • Sienna Farris of Estee Lauder saying that advocates are the real people who have a passion for the brand, but not necessarily because they want to buy the product
  • Kate Spade’s Kristina DiMatteo stating if you’re doing your job well, you’re telling your own brand story
  • Will McInnes declaring that the principle of social media isn’t new, but the scale of it is
  • Ryan Bonifacino of Alex and Ani advising to simply be human since consumers are human and they don’t want to interact with a robot

Finally, Pulsat’s Francesco D’Orazio talks about how stuff spreads and the viral marketing behind it.

He declares that virality is 50% great content and 50% great distribution. It comes from the ability to understand your audience and how it’s structured.

#SMWF North America had a lot of great points to take away. Here are just some of the other highlights talked about on social networks on Day 2.

Which session did you learn the most from at #SMWF North America? Let us know in the comments below!

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