In 2010 I paid 100 euro out of my 50 euro monthly student scholarship to attend a conference on PR and digital. And I felt ripped off. I got nothing out of it other than a really bad headache and some buffet food I did not really like.
In time I learned that not all conferences/workshops/summits/industry festivals are born the same. And that most of the times the hype around them is just that, hype to make you believe it is worth investing your time and money. I’ve grown wiser, I think, and I’d like to share my findings with you.
The ‘You’ll Get To Network’ Promise.
No, you won’t. Unless you make an explicit goal out of this and actually identify which of the speakers/exhibitors present at the show you’d like to connect to. My advice is to use that list and know why you want to engage them. Otherwise you’ll end up chatting anyone at the coffee stand just for the sake of networking. Also, if you are not the type to introduce yourself and talk it up then just stop before it becomes awkward.
Choose Speakers Wisely.
I once found myself listening to a Yahoo representative claiming Tumblr is the next raising star in the social media landscape. Eyes rolled and most of us took out our phones and mocked Yahoo on the social networks we actually used.
And this is just one example. Choose wisely what speeches you attend, look at who the speakers are, their role in the company and their involvement in online communities: do they provide value with the content they produce/share? Look for thought leaders or really good specialists and go for speeches with inspiring titles on topics you are interested in. Don’t go for fluff talk like the examples below (I took them from a conference presentation taaking place in October):
The digital waves of disruption and the impact on an entire generation
How to generate ‘Valuable Virality’
Building the Marketing organization for the Next Decade-A Futurist perspective
Beware Of What They’re Selling.
If Yahoo tries to tell you Tumbr is the next best thing you clearly know that, being an interested party, their view is skewed. The same applies with digital agency representatives, consultants, software appliances that promise the automation of all menial tasks. Ask questions, compare with other perspectives and challenge the speakers to provide actual data n what their specialists/tools/software does, not just empty promises to optimize workflows și deliver business intelligence reporting excellence.
Pay for what you need, not what the organizers push for.
You might not need to attend all 3 days of the event, you might only want to hear just one speaker. Can you do that? Then go for it, don’t waste your time and money on what cannot bring you value.
Can you recommend a conference/speaker on digital advertising?
Facebook chat-bots are the new trend in Facebook marketing: for more than a year now players across all industries have invested in their development and promotion. recently Twitter launched a new bot system for support. How does this affect the future of online copywriters and Social Media Community Managers?
Well, for starters I expect all of us, digital marketers, will have to stop pretending our jobs are not subject to automation. Yes, our functions are pretty new on the market — my job title did not even exist 3–4 years ago! — but this is only the beginning of how digitalization is transforming products and services and their communication strategies, respectively. Will chat-bots end up replacing Community Managers? Will copywriters have to focus on getting just the right tone of voice for particular bots? These are all relevant questions. I do not claim to have answers, but I am optimistic when sketching out scenarios on how we could use them to make our jobs easier and more rewarding.
Working with chat-bots and other robots might seem like a scene from the Jetsons, but it’s here. Get ready to meet your new colleagues.
Community Managers Out There, Turn Your Know-how Into Content Marketing
Content was proclaimed king years and years ago, but then a king seldom thinks about his subjects. He rarely thinks of how to administer the kingdom, reply to complaints and grow the entire community. When we think of kings we picture some narcissistic, egocentric, golden-clad Louis in a big throne. Up until now, a lot of brands and services mostly identified content with that: fun pieces of visuals/videos/viral content(!) that engaged users in a relevant manner. I stressed out engaged users because the focus was in every user in the target. Any user. A true Community Manager will come in and want to address the customer — existing and potential. His knowledge of the customer journey, of the real issues customers face while interacting with both the product and the services the company provides are invaluable to a content marketing team.
Community Managers out there will need to step out of their comfort zone and learn a little bit more web analytics, a little bit more on content writing, a little bit more about new technologies and all, yes, about how bots actually work. And they will need to not only be able to brief development teams on how to actually program these bots, monitor them and use all the data/insight they can get out of these bots to instruct teams across all business functions, from marketing teams to traditional customer support teams and product managers.
Copywriters, Unite! We Need You To Make Our Bots Conversational
Chatbots need to…well, chat. And we need to give them the words for that. Copywriters, please step in! You’ll be responsible with providing the conversation scripts. Now turn your creativity into actionable dialogue, but beware, you’ll need to work with Community Managers, customer support, dev teams. And you’ll also need to learn a little bit of what they do and diversify your skills toolkit: how does the bot work? what are the customer concerns? You’ll have o switch from Key Message to Key Problem to Solve. And think about creative uses of bots to speak about your clients identity — how about a bot that teaches you about solar energy for Tesla? How would he talk, what kind of content would he deliver? Or a bot for Discovery Channel that helps children study geography/geology? Or a bot in charge with CV filtering for big players in the recruiting businesses? The startup I work with — Small Academy — has already built its own chatbot with the help of 40 children aged 7–14 year old that attend their courses.
Evolve Or Perish
Ijust talked of chat-bots. But the Internet of Things is upon us. So is VR, AI and other two letters acronyms that already transformed the present. In 5 years time my job might not be spelled out Social Media Analyst, but Social Customer Support Tech Marketer. Your job might be performed by a bot. How about we both learn how to make these new technologies work in our favor and make our professional lives more interesting/challenging?
What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below, I’d love to hear what you think about this.
This is a geek rant on how my ideal social media tool would look like. If you do not work in social media/online communication hit the close button — this will get long and technical. But it needs to be said (OK,OK, I need to say it!)
Background: I’ve done social listening since I started working in online advertising four years ago. I’ve used online tools to help me collect and analyze data on the online conversation around my clients ever since. And tools to evaluate performance of said clients efforts on social media (oh, the golden days of organic reach on Facebook!). I’ve done the free Google alerts, manual check-ups and email alerts. But I have also used local Romanian tool ZeMonitor, international Radian6, Social Studio, hash-tracking tools and content discovery platforms. I’ve tested blogger outreach tools and continue to investigate and test every tool I can get my hands on — right now I am researching Sprinklr, one of the market leaders.
What am I looking for? The Knight in Shinning Armour of social media tools. A Swiss army knife I can use, quick and easy, one I can customize according to my own needs and whims.
It’s utopia and I know it. But, as with finding a soul mate, I know there is someone out there for me. Not perfect, but at least trying to be.
Let’s proceed. What do I need my knight to do? Collect, process and present data on three main areas: what people are talking about (earned media, the holy grail), what my client is talking about (owned media — be aware, I also include paid media here) and how all social activity around my client translates into results for his business — ROI. Here it comes, the heaviest listicle I ever wrote online.
Data, data, data!
Crawl online conversation across all social channels — Facebook including, even if it is just quantitative. Yes, I know they have privacy restrictions and you only get restricted access to their API. But, honestly, I do not care. It engages 1.7 billion users as of June 2016, please do not tell me I have to decide where to invest my marketing budgets without having at least the quantitative data on if such a large audience is talking about me. And if I do pay for a social listening tool, I want it to be able to give me at least that. Otherwise your data might prompt me to make the wrong decision for my client and ultimately lose money.
Make sure language is NOT an issue. In other words, do not promise to crawl all possible languages, but only deliver English conversations.
Crawl results as fast as possible. If I do a monthly report on the 5th of the month and at the end of the month results are fundamentally different, it is not only frustrating, but most of the time useless — I cannot make decisions in real time and that has high costs. My client loses trust in me and I lose part of his budget. See how it all comes down to money?
Integrate owned and paid media content in the social listening section of your tool. I want to be able to have the broad picture and assess whether my branded content influenced online conversation or not. Is promoted content driving social buzz or not? Can I see an increase in Share of Voice during and after my campaigns?
Have extensive lists of influencers in main industries and make sure you crawl all their mentions. Provide data on trending topics on their social channels to instruct content marketing and PR efforts.
Help the Analyst analyze
I hate exporting data to Excel files and generating graphics out of these. Why do I even have a tool if I have to manage it all through Excel? So please, please make sure you do check out the following if you want to qualify as my Knight in Shinning Armour of social media tools.
Help me deliver analysis and insight over long periods of time, more than 1 year. I want to look at industry seasonality, trends, not just numbers for quantitative research.
Make it easy to use — UI, UX, have you heard of those guys? Maybe you could ask them for advice before you ask me to click seven buttons to generate one graphic I need for the presentation to be delivered asap.
Make it easy for me to create customized reporting.Get inspired by Google dashboards and make sure the information there is live, dynamic.
Help me integrate social listening reports in other Business Intelligence platforms. I am interested in looking at the entire digital landscape in just one quick click. I want to correlate social media data with web analytics, sales analytics other offline research.
Help me prove ROI – a perfect tool will:
Help me optimize social media paid amplifications campaigns and cut costs.
Help me have foresight into trending conversation topics with customized researches done for the industry/vertical my client is part of. Do these researches regularly and share recommendations with me. I might even have the budget to pay extra for those as long as you can prove their value.
That being said I am still looking for my Knight in Shining Armour. And as with all fairy tales I expect happily ever after.
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