What we learned at Social Media Marketing World 2018!
Imagine this: Top social media marketers delivering their best content, tips, and tactics that really work—just for you
That was us three weeks ago! We took pages and pages of notes and curated the best content for you.
Algorithms, Facebook and the new direction, Instagram, Video, Chatbots are in the future, what works, what doesn’t – WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE BEST IN THE BIZ.
✨ A quick note about Social Chats. Social Chats is a weekly LIVE Facebook show that we put together to help small businesses learn from great people who stand out in their industry. What they do works well with social media and we hope this will keep you educated and inspired!
View all social chats and subscribe to our channel here: YouTube ~ All Social Chats
1- Algorithms – Lower reach with Facebook Business Pages
2- Where the future is heading – Chatbots
3- Video “Episodic” TV
4- Know your audience –Jay Baer. Pat Flynn. Mark Schaefer
5- Working with influencers
6- Denis Yu & Logan Young on advertising
7- Instagram, is it the new Facebook? Instagram stories.
1- Algorithms – Lower reach with Facebook – Are Facebook Business Pages Dead?
This all started in a post on January 11th, 2018 by Mark Zuckerberg who said that in 2018 Facebook would re-engineer the News Feed to emphasize content from friends and family — rather than posts and videos from media publishers, businesses, and brands.
This means that Facebook business pages are getting lower reach in the personal newsfeed. Why even bother, as business owners to spend time creating content that will not be seen?
Catherine: My understanding is that Facebook for business is still a very powerful platform. It is an easy to edit micro website. It allows you to have a conversation with your clients or potential clients… and it’s free! However, it is a business and as a business, Facebook needs to make sure the users are happy with what they get in their newsfeed and Facebook is a business that needs to make money for the stockholders.
It’s a pay to play platform, but you don’t need to pay much. You need to be an educated advertiser and a good content creator, a storyteller. Find out how you can solve someone’s problem, offer solutions, don’t try to sell. Be genuine.
As per Andrea Vahl: “Don’t just wing it! Be strategic. Have a system for placing your Facebook ads and you will succeed!
Know your target market and make sure you have content that is of value to your targeted audience.”
Facebook pages are not dead! You should be focused on creating quality content over quantity.
2- Where the future is heading – Chatbots
We are talking about the good bots here, not the ones that try to steal data and where you must check the box: “I am not a robot” when you fill in a form online. We are talking about the new cool bots!
I attended a chat called Facebook Messenger Bots: An Alternative Future for Marketers and Creators with Olly Pittman with Mikael Yang (ManyChat), Andrew Yaroshevsky (ChatFuel) and Linda Lee (Facebook Messenger). It was fascinating. Chatbots are the future.
Do you know that there are 1.3 billion monthly users on messenger? These robots can help answer the most common questions about products and services.Two main thoughts:
Beware, as Mari Smith said: “when marketers step in, users step out.” You must make sure not to annoy people with a selling message. BUT used wisely chatbots are a wicked customer service tool.
There is a difference between an AD on Facebook messenger and chatbots used for customer service with a selling point in the conversation as a natural step. Some examples:
– When you make an online purchase, you can be asked if you want to be notified in messenger when your product has been shipped. The company can then follow up by asking if the product arrived ok, if the client as any questions and if they would like to be notified when a similar product goes on sale.
Another example is to answer commonly asked questions like how much is a lift ticket and what are your hours of operation etc. You can then send a message when there is a discount on tickets and so on.
I liked the analogy Andrew Yaroshevsky made with the chat services offered right now. It’s so annoying when you are finally chatting with someone in customer service on your desktop, on hold forever to get an answer, and the minute you go to the kitchen and leave the chat for a second you come back and the chat has ended! With Facebook, you can take messenger with you from your desktop to your phone seamlessly. The chatbots answer in real time and do not put you on hold to handle 10 calls at the same time.
The key is to use both, chatbots and humans… In the future search engines will “feel” what you are looking for and offer you a seamless solution.
(At this time April 2018, Facebook has stopped allowing new Chatbots, once they finalize the Facebook crisis, Bots will be back in business. If you already had Bots set up on your business page, they are still working)
3- Video and Episodic TV
The future resides in an episodic video series. We don’t have Facebook Watch in Canada yet, however in the US Facebook has a new TV channel called “WATCH”. Short episodes that Facebook hopes will create “binge-watching” on Facebook WATCH, similar to Netflix. Facebook wants you to stay on their platform. They want you to watch little videos one after another. You need to start thinking about what your business could do as a series. Maybe “how to” or “frequently asked questions” or content that will bring people voluntarily back to your Facebook business page. Heather and I (Catherine) do this with our Social Chats every week and our Social Tips.
Groups are a fun place for “WATCH” where eventually you will be able to watch “TV” with a group of friends from anywhere in the world and comment on the show or news break and so on.
Videos are the key to promoting your products and services through Facebook today. Facebook favours video and will push this content into more newsfeeds. The consumer will gaze at video five times longer than any other type of content.
In your Insights tab on Facebook, you’ll want to find out how long people are watching your videos for and strive to create videos that get more than 3-second views. We like at least 10 seconds! See which of your videos works best and recreate similar content.
4- Who is your customer?
Who is your raving fan? Start with the people that are already on your site and appreciating what you do and build content for them. They will be your brand advocates and are already your ambassadors. Reference: Jay Baer. Pat Flynn. Mark Schaefer
5- Influencers
Influencers are a big thing these days, especially with Instagram. Team up with someone who is a good match for your brand. Make sure you research the quality of the content they post and that you have an agreement on what you expect when you enter the relationship.
6- Dennis Yu and Logan Young – Video marketing strategy!
In a nutshell! You can start with a 60-second video and try to hook people in the first 3 seconds by sharing not a bio but a story. You then boost your video for 1$ a day for 7 days. Collecting the data from that ad campaign, you create a warm audience based on video views of 10 seconds or more and retarget them.
Remember you don’t need to spend a lot of money in Facebook advertising but you need to spend some and wait at least 7 days to see the results.
7- Instagram, is it the new Facebook? Instagram stories.
As per Mari Smith, Instagram is the new Facebook. It is huge today and it is growing super-fast. Make sure you have an account and think strongly about a Business account on Instagram. YOU need to start doing Instagram stories, this is prime real estate.
Follow @suebzimmeraman and learn about Instagram stories. Here again! Real, fun, authentic, this is not a sales platform it is a way to educate and entertain potential clients while keeping you and your business top of mind. Make sure to post with a purpose, with an intent. Play with Planoly, Canva, Adobe Spark, Wave Video… Be consistent and true to your brand!
*Please note that these tips and takeaways are from an episode of Social Chats that was originally recorded on Facebook Live in March 2018. What does Live mean? LIVE means our viewers were able to get involved while our guest was in the studio, and ask questions. You can watch the replay on our Facebook Page, ask questions in the comment field and we will make sure to answer them in a timely matter.