If you work in digital marketing, chances are you already know about Social Media Week. For those who aren’t familiar, Social Media Week is a worldwide event that connects industry insiders to discuss the future of technology, digital trends, and best practices for social media marketing.
This year, I was able to attend Social Media Week in New York City for free, thanks to Topi, a fellow WeWork member. Throughout the week, I learned a tremendous amount about the state of social media from all of the presenters, including Jonathan Perelman of Buzzfeed, Adam Ostrow of Mashable, and Alexis Kaplan of Tumblr.
Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s event:
Know what other brands your audience is following. Marketers have grown increasingly frustrated with Facebook’s Newsfeed algorithm; yet, they fail to consider the fact that there are more brands sharing content on the platform than ever before. Determine what other pages your fans ‘Like’ on Facebook and see what times those companies are posting on Facebook. In terms of audience reach and engagement, you’ll be able to cut through some of the noise if you post at different times than those brands since you won’t be competing with them directly.
It’s shortsighted to look at social purely as an avenue to sales. Social media was first created to connect people online, yet some brands are so focused on promoting their brand that they tend to forget about this altogether. Social media builds relationships, authenticity, and an audience. Your goal of publishing content should be about providing relatable and shareable content that your audience will find valuable.
Startups need marketing, and they need it cheap. The health of a startup can be measured by comparing the number of users during each stage of the lean marketing framework. When you’re thinking about growth, focus on what your users actually need. And instead of constantly building new features into your product, work on your marketing strategy so that your users will find you in other places than the App Store.
Social isn’t just about one metric, it’s about ALL of them. Often times, people get so caught up with how many ‘Likes’ their Facebook page receives, but there are so many more useful metrics that they should be looking at. It’s extremely important that marketers are monitoring their page reach, engagement levels, best performing content, and their audience.
Overall, it was an incredible experience. I learned a lot about social media, and I connected with some truly amazing individuals in the industry. If you ever have the opportunity to attend Social Media Week in any of their host cities, I would definitely recommend it.