My Key Takeaways From Social Media Marketing World And Why You Should Be Visiting In The Future

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Video is one of the best ways to reach as many as people as possible when it comes to social media, and the best way to increase your overall engagement.
• If you are using pre-recorded videos, you want to keep it between 15 seconds to 3 minutes. People don’t like to spend hours and hours watching videos, so keeping it as short and sweet as possible is the best way to keep your viewers watching. Live videos should be between 7 minutes and 17 minutes. For longer videos, you may want to consider using YouTube.
• Think about how you’re going to make your videos emotional and relatable, as this will ensure you have a much bigger reach. Be inspirational.
• Text overlay is important when it comes to video, as a lot of people will watch without their sound on.
• Stories are an incredible way to show your authenticity. You can show your personality and the making of your business, giving people an idea of who you are and what you’re about.
• Instagram Stories advertising is currently the cheapest it is ever going to be, so if you’re going to invest, do it now.
• Facebook owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger and when you look at closer, you can see that two of those apps are focussed on one-to-one communication. Moving forward, getting people to message you on a one-to-one basis is going to be the way forward. Whether it’s through Instagram DM’s, Facebook Messenger or on WhatsApp.
• Chat bots are another hot topic at Social Media Marketing World. Although they’re not designed to take over those one-to-one conversations, they can speed up the processes that you find you’re answering over and over again. Whether it’s booking appointments, answering customer service questions or detailing opening times.
• When people join a Facebook group they are there because they have a common interest with you. It’s a meaningful way to have a two-way conversation, at the same time as focussing on your community.
• If you niche down on something, it’s definitely worth considering opening a group and finding likeminded people to join you.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

One of my key takeaways was that there is no algorithm in your email list. You have complete creative control so building your email list should be one of your biggest priorities moving forward.

Highlights You Simply Can’t Miss

• What Is Social Media Marketing World? - 02.20
• Focussing on Video - 06:02
• The Importance of Stories – 13:17
• Messenger Messaging and Messenger Bots – 17:00
• A Few Social Media Marketing World Favourites – 20:20
• Using Facebook Groups – 25:40

Links to Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• Mari Smith
• Wave.Video
• Biteable.com
• Episode 8
• Episode 29
• Episode 51
• Episode 39
• Episode 31
• Episode 30
• Episode 44

Transcript below

Hello and a super warm welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. How are you? I hope you’ve had a great week. Whatever you’re doing and that your quarter too has started off really positively and you’re really focused for this next quarter ahead. I know I am trying desperately to be and I do find these things really difficult to keep up. I have really good intentions in the early days and I start filling in my 90 day planner and then normally by I don’t know a week or two into where I stop. So I’m going to try super hard this time because I really have got some cool things that I want to achieve in this next quarter. So I really hope yours has got off to a good start as well.

Now I’m really excited about today’s episode because I decided that following my trip out San Diego to Social Media Marketing World that I wanted to come back and share all the stuff that I had learned while I was out there. And I want this episode to be a bit about Social Media Marketing World and explaining what it is and why you might want to consider going but also talking about what is hot right now. What should you be focusing your time and attention on in social media right now. This is always really key because there is so much that we can do and the overwhelm is real my friends. I feel it, everyone feels it and when there are so many different platforms and systems and tricks and tools and tips sometimes you just think today what I can’t do it all. And we go from you know complete overwhelm and then not doing anything which obviously is not great. So in this episode, I’m going to talk you through what the world’s experts are telling us that we need to be focusing on right nowin our own businesses and with the platforms, what kind of things we need to be doing. So I’m hoping that this episode is going to be a really good one and you’re going to have lots of value from it.

So before I kick into the good stuff let me just tell you about Social Media Marketing World. So this is a conference that happens in San Diego every year normally around March time and this year was my third year of attending.

And basically if you’re in social media or you work in social media then this is the place to be. Now it was on my vision board for some time in terms of I wanted to attend and I took a very risky strategy one year and just bought a ticket and thought to myself, I’m gonna make this work. I will find a way in which I can get out there and attend this conference. And you know what I did. And like I said this is my third time this year. Now one thing I need to tell you if you’ve not been to a conference in the States before, it is full on. So not only do they have the most amazing speakers from all around the world which is wonderful.

However they also have a really upbeat, fun and slightly crazy atmosphere going on where there’s cheering and bells and whistles and a high five guy and you know it’s really quite.. I can’t think of the word, What am I trying to say? It’s just really full on and I guess as a British person, we don’t have conferences like that so it can be a little bit kind of shocking when you first go in but it means that the atmosphere is kept up, it means that the enthusiasm is kept up and it is a great conference. And like I said, they pulling in people from all over the world as attendees but also as speakers.

So who’s who of social media is at this conference. So you got keynote sessions from Marie Smith, Mike Stelzner and Mark Schaefer and of course our very own lovely Andrew and Pete and I have to say as friends of Andrew and Pete and having worked with them for some time it was like a proper.. I was going to say like proud mum moment which is hilarious but I am a bit older than them. But it really was like those boys, they were phenomenal. They were great. And to think of what they’ve achieved so that they’re keynoting Social Media Marketing World is amazing. So well done them but yeah like I said, loads of amazing speakers and then what happens at the conferences you end up having speakers against each other. So it’s a bit like a music festival where you attend anything who’s on what stage, when and who do I want to see. So you physically could not see every talk and like I said I find it very exhausting so actually and I think I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t feeling very well when I was over there so I missed more sessions than I would have liked to.

However one of the great things about the conference is with the full pass, they send you all the video. So since I’ve come back I’ve watched a lot of the videos as well so even the sessions I didn’t get to see that I really wanted to see I was able to then witness and see what they had to say which was brilliant and also sometimes when you’re at the conference it’s all overwhelming and you try and take in and you can’t. So again to come back and rewatch some of the ones I’ve already watched is really really great. So yeah conference was fantastic. Really enjoyed it. And I would highly recommend it to anybody that’s working in social media. It’s a fun place to go to. San Diego is just beautiful. I’ve been there. Very lucky now to have been quite a number of times and it’s stunning so it’s a great atmosphere. This year there was lots of UK people which is the first year I’ve known so many people from the UK go but like I said there are people from all over the world and I’ve connected with so many lovely people through just attending that conference. So definitely want to think about. But anyway, enough of the pitch for Social Media Marketing World. I’ll promise you. They haven’t asked me to do that.

Let’s talk about what’s hot right now in the social media space, what you should be doing in your businesses to get the biggest effect and a couple of things that maybe you shouldn’t be doing because they’re not working anymore. Now I have to say a lot of my content is coming from the keynote talk that Mari Smith did. If you don’t know Mari Smith I’m going to link up to her here a link below. She is a well she’s actually named the queen of Facebook because she’s been employed by Facebook in order to help promote what they do. She is sponsored and works with so many of the big sort of tech companies in terms of like wave video and some of the scheduling systems out there. Sp she has a lot of connections and she’s spoken at Social Media Marketing World every year and she was one of the very first people that I actually start training with. So it was really nice to see Mari up on that stage and hear what she’s got to say because she is a very smart lady and has got some really cool stuff to say which is cool.

So today I want to talk about the four key areas that she mentioned that are areas of growth and places in which we really want to put our focus in when we’re doing our social media marketing. So the first area which is not going to be a surprise and you’re going to think, how many times do is talk about this.. is going to be video and I know that. Honestly when I mentioned to people they’ve got to do videos, they literally groan. It’s the last thing they want to do. But I promise you. It honestly is the best post that you can put on social media. It’s the ones that get the most interaction. It’s the ones that get the most reach. And it really is by far better than any other post you can do. Facebook loves them. Instagram loves them. They really are a fantastic post to do so. One thing that Mari said which I thought was really interesting and actually I want to touch on Mike Stelzner’s keynotes as well t about this is first off Mari said that for really engaging videos if they’re pre-recorded videos or videos you’ve created, you really want to be keeping them between 15 seconds of three minutes long so 15 seconds is great for something like Instagram because obviously your story is 15 seconds but really short sweet, succinct. As quick as possible getting that message across as quick because we don’t like spending hours and hours watching stuff especially on Facebook, which is what Mike Steltzner was saying.

So what was really interesting about his keynote was he was talking about a long form video that he’s been producing called The Journey and he was putting that video out on Facebook and also on YouTube and he gave some amazing stats of the fact that even though Facebook said it had I don’t know 20000 views hardly any of those views went past 10 seconds. Whereas YouTube seemed to give them less views but more quality and people stayed around for longer.

And if you think about the two platforms, it kind of makes perfect sense. If I’m watching something on YouTube then I I don’t mind sitting around and watching it I do feel like I would expect to be watching something longer on YouTube than I would necessarily on Instagram and Facebook. And actually personally I think Facebook would probably be more tolerant of a slightly longer video than I would have Instagram because Instagram is so fast moving so it’s really something to think about.

So if your videos are long you might want to think of using your YouTube strategy rather than just perhaps a Facebook video strategy. So I thought that was fascinating what Mike said and the stats that he gave us in terms of actually on the surface of it it looked like Facebook was better but when you dug into the stats and had to look at how long people were watching it for which is the key thing especially with a long video. Then actually Facebook didn’t do as well as YouTube did.

So anyway so Mari said that obviously your short videos that you have pre-recorded to in 15 seconds and 3 minutes and live videos between 7 minutes and 20 minutes. So live videos can be a bit longer but what was interesting is for a long time 30 minutes has been a good length for a live video. So it’s interesting that that appears to be coming down a bit and people don’t want to sit there for that length of time watching a live video. So she really encouraged everybody’s have a go and I’m going to put some links in the show notes so if you had to teresaheathwareing.com/60 oh the number and go and have a look there and I’m going to put some links to two sites that we use to create videos from stock images, stock photos, stop music and you can change colors, add your logos and you know what. If you’ve got some creativity in you then you can make some amazing videos if you’d rather do that than necessarily go live or put your face on camera.

So these two sites are called Wave.Video and biteable.com. They’re really really good like I said great ones to use for stock images checking your own images and some really nice creative things in there and then not a lot of money so if you do want to start creating video they can be a great way to start without having to pay a professional to do it. Now if you are going to start creating video there’s a couple of points that Mari pointed out that I want you to think about that you can try and bring into your videos that might help you get a bigger reach and more engagement on them. So the first thing is that if you can make it emotional or relatable then you’re going to get a much bigger reach.

So putting in some emotion somewhere whether it be makes you laugh, makes you angry, makes you sad, makes you happy. Think about the last thing that engaged you or you shared. And inevitably it would have produced an emotion in one way or another. So if you can bring some emotion into a video then great. Things like storytelling, pay attention to the story you’re telling and make it have a story. And again that will help that video get out there and it’ll help engage people watching the video. Also if you can keep it under 30 seconds and have that message come out really succinctly and I know 30 seconds doesn’t sound like long but I can assure you it really is on a video when someone’s watching it. So think about trying to keep that as succinct as possible. Then if you’re going to use on Instagram using square video is great. Obviously if you’re going to use it in stories then vertical video is also great. Try and be inspirational. Try and kind of engage someone like that and also have text overlay. So be ready for people to watch that video with no sound because I don’t know about you but I do exactly the same. I will watch a lot of stuff was sound off specially on Facebook and perhaps more than Instagram and of course make sure you’ve got some captions on there as well so that they can see what the videos about even if they haven’t got the signed on. So that’s the first one video, I want you to really think about hey can bring that into your business. Again you don’t have to put your face on camera. It could be a stock video that you’ve created through biteable or wave or you could be recording your screen and just have your voice. So try and think about the different ways you can do that.

OK. The next big hot thing that you should be focusing on right now which comes on very nicely from video is stories. Mari mentioned that stories are growing 15 times faster than the feed. I personally get more people watching my stories than I do necessarily engaging with my image on my feed on Instagram. Now I have to say at the moment I’m not putting stories to Facebook. I don’t really have a good reason as to why I’m not doing that. I think because my focus is on Instagram and I prefer Instagram but I am wondering whether I just need to start sharing my stories across the two platforms because stories are where it’s at. People love the story side, they love the authenticity, they love the fact that it’s real and they can see you and hear you and get a real feel for who you are. It’s very authentic. I was talking last night funnily enough I was doing a small talk locally and I was doing this talk and there was a consultant there and I said to her how do people know whether they want to work with you or not. Because as a consultant or a coach or a trainer or whatever it might be, you’re going to want to make sure that you get on with them, that you like them, that you have the same opinions of them or you respect them. And how do people know that? Unless you’re going to networking meetings and I can assure you that’s not something I do anymore. I did do in the early days but not anymore. Then how are people going to know whether I am someone that they want to work with or someone that they can trust that knows what they’re talking about and something like stories is a great way of showing that it’s a great way of someone getting to know my personality as well as well as the podcast. I love the podcast but it’s a great way of getting someone to understand who I am, what I’m about without actually having to physically meet them. So stories are totally hot right now and something that you really want to consider doing. Also one thing that Mari said which is fascinating is advertising within stories is the cheapest that it’s ever going to be. So she said that one of her clients got a conversion cost half the price in the story than it was in the feed. So hopefully you understand what I mean by that. So they would have advertised something in the feed itself and then also as a story and basically they were getting double the result for the same cost in the story. So that was really interesting that people were engaging in that story and maybe for me it’s something that I need to think about a little bit more in terms of actually focusing...