What I learnt at #SocialDayBCN
At Fhios we love analysing and measuring everything we do. Metrics are essential for any marketing strategy, and also for social media. That’s why last 8th May I attended #SocialDayBCN as a Fhios delegate, an event by and for social media professionals where we learnt about 2.0 analytics and metrics, but also about people, creativity, trends and shiatsu (they offered free massages for attendants!).
Some of the things they said I already knew, most of them I didn’t. Either way, it’s always useful to refresh one’s ideas. Here a list of everything I learnt (or refreshed) at #SocialDayBCN. I hope it’s useful for you too! 🙂
Creativity still matters
It’s an undeniable fact that there is plenty of data to segment our content and reach our target. But people haven’t stopped being intelligent and demanding: let’s always offer our best version! In other words, hyper personalisation of messages can never put our beloved and necessary creativity in a second term.
Goodbye to Much ado about nothing
Say goodbye to click-baiting (we talked about it on 9 definitions to master Facebook). Those obnosious “Click here and discover the ultimate method to…” have to come to an end. There ain’t no such methods, and people know it. So let’s forget about appealing headlines that lead to irrelevant content. Again, people are intelligent and demanding.
Big brands don’t use filters on Instagram
Why? Because they don’t need to. If you are an Instagram user, you probably will have noticed that filters are often used to make a photo look better, to hide that it is burnt, or that its composition is not that good. Big brands don’t need that: they hire photographers for their social media content.
Maybe this is not important, and definitely not closely related to social metrics, which is what we are talking about today. But I believe this is essential. If you want to bet on visual content marketing, really go for it and hire a good photographer.
ROI? Now the trend is REI
“In social media you don’t sell, you make friends”, said Iván Rodríguez (@Twittboy) from Pirendo. I couldn’t agree more. Even though it is obvious that the ultimate goal is to sell a product or service, social media are spaces for conversation and communities. That’s what REI is about: Emotional Return of Investment. Who is your best customer? A good friend who likes your ideas, opinions, tips… and products.
The number of followers is not important anymore
What’s the use of having 100.000 followers if only 10 interact with your content? It is much better to have 1.000 engaged users that care about your posts.
So let’s leave behing that weird obsession over numbers and look into engagement, sentiment towards our content and brand and wether we are gaining brand awareness. So let’s evaluate the vitality of our online community.
Which KPIs to measure
Bad news: there’s no magic spell for that. Your KPIs depend on your goals, obviously. Want to gain brand awareness? Measure your posts reach, evolution of followers, potential target, engagement… Want to sell? Supervise the whole conversion funnel and examine how users act in each part of the buying process. There are as much KPIs as strategies!
But there’s one thing that can’t be forgotten: in front of your clients you can’t cheat. KPIs are fixed before the campaign begins, not after and depending on your best results or what’s most convenient for you. If you don’t achieve your goals, just learn and amend.
Social media and Google, the odd couple
Google is cool, and you should take it into account for you social media strategy. And it’s not Google+ what I’m talking about (yes, I know it’s good for SEO, but there’s no one there!). I mean Google Analytics: a really useful tool with countless possibilities… and for free. I recommend you have a look at the presentation made by Iñaki Tovar (@seomental), one of my favourites in the event.
#SocialDayBCN rocked it on Twitter
The event’s hashtag was trending topic in Spain. Thanks to Tweetbinder, one of the tools I appreciated most at the event, we were able to see real-time tweeting on a big screen and also the key metrics of #SocialDayBCN: there were more than 3.500 tweets and 922 tweeters, who posted an average of 5 tweets each, most of them from an iPhone (not me) and in Spanish. The potential impact of all of us was 24 million users. Great, right?