8 MAJOR Takeaways From Social Media Marketing World

Three full days of information on social media and over 30 pages of notes. So what did I actually learn at Social Media Marketing World and was it worth it to go? Let's just jump right in. So if you haven't heard about Social Media Marketing World, it is a three day conference that is hosted in San Diego, California every single year. And they bring in the gamut of amazing speakers to speak to. And there are literally four, five to six different sessions going on every single hour. So there's a lot to consume. But what I've learned at conferences is you can tend to get overwhelmed. And so one thing that I focused on during this conference was taking as many notes as possible. But then on the way home on the flight, the five hour flight, I took time to really decompress, look through those notes and compile down everything that I learned into takeaways. And I got so many responses on Instagram that I've decided to share them with you here in this video. The biggest takeaway I think everybody learned at Social Media Marketing World, not just me, is that video is here and it's here to stay. The very first keynote was from Michael Seltzner, who is the founder of Social Media examiner, which puts on this conference and his entire keynote focused around video. He put video in perspective. The last quarter of 2019, the top four apps that were downloaded was Disney, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, all pretty much video centric apps. And if we look at trends like the movement to 5G mobile and also Google getting into the streaming wars and the streaming wars in general, what does that tell us? That people want video on demand. And that if we as business owners and content creators aren't showing up on video, basically the slide was adapt or die. But don't worry, you don't have to be perfect on video because one of the biggest things that he mentioned was video doesn't have to be perfect. You just need to be able to connect with your audience on video. There are very simple, easy ways to get started on video, like Facebook Live and Instagram stories, which I have a lot more takeaways on Instagram coming up. This is super important to realize as well because over 80% of people who are watching video expectations, especially on their mobile devices, are watching it without the sound on. So as creators and as business owners, we have to realize that and make sure we are captioning everything if we want people to actually watch our content. So pretty much takeaway number one is video is hot. The second takeaway I got was about websites and Nobody hates messing around with a website more than me. I like to just set it and forget it. But what we don't realize is if we aren't testing it to see what's working and how we can increase our conversions with, what's the point of having that website if it's not going to work for us? So I learned all about the different ways that you can test your website. Even testing down to the color of your opt in button, the wording of your opt in button, and making sure you're testing these to see what is your audience actually going to want to click on. What should that call to action be to get them to click on and really think about those exit intent pop ups. This is definitely one of the low hanging fruits that he said to look at. This is one of the first ways you can start testing things with an exit intent pop up. So like when somebody's getting ready to click out of your website, you have that little pop up that maybe says hey, don't forget or that hey before you leave. Just so you're super clear on exactly what you want people to do who are on your website, don't be vague and don't give so many calls action they have no idea what you want them to do. The third key takeaway is storytelling. And I've been heard this for years. One of my clients that I work with, he's been working on storytelling but I wasn't really sure how to get started with storytelling and my good at storytelling. How do I get good at storytelling? Like what is storytelling for my brand? But what I realized is the more I could understand storytelling and understand how to tell my story, the easier is going to be for me to show up on social and know what to actually post. So I'm going to actually list the sessions that I went to and who hosted those sessions down below in the description box. As I honestly can't remember all the names but in this particular session we talked about that every A B T structure so the and but therefore structure when telling a story and this just totally made sense and it allows me to think about how I can structure my content into a story to connect with you better. Because your audience is going to connect with you if they hear you through a story. People remember stories. This has really helped me figure out how to write my content and also what to actually say in that content to be able to connect with you. So again have call to actions that people actually want to take. Okay, key takeaway number four is all about the gram And I have been following Alex Speeden since I got started with my business back in 2015. And she did an amazing session on Stories, Instagram Stories. And one of the things that I really loved that she mentioned was to think about if two of your fans or two of your followers were to meet in real life, what would they bond over? What would they connect with? So one exercise she said to go through is right, 25 to 50 things about you that your audience should know. For me personally, it's hard to get kind of personal. I come from an MBA business background, and it just feels kind of weird to be more of a personal brand when I'm thinking business side. But this definitely allowed me to think about, okay, what are these 50 things? Let me take the time to think about that so I can better create content that people are going to connect with. If they aren't connecting with your content, they're not going to stick around, they're not going to buy from you, they're not going to follow you, watch your content. So it's really important to know these things. And if you know me, I love batching YouTube content. And she does the same thing with her Instagram stories. She said, do not post your stories in real time because you want to actually take the time to decorate it, make it stand out as your brand so people can recognize you as they're tapping through the story. So maybe you batch stories and then you decorate them and post them later, and that's okay. Jasmine Starr was also a keynote speaker, and she had some great takeaways about Instagram as well. She said in her keynote that people want to see real life stories, but you need to have a plan. You can't just post, oh, hey, I'm going for a walk with my dog. Okay, cool. What does that mean for your viewer? Dig a little bit deeper. Really share with them, you know what's going on with you and behind the scenes and share more of a story than just say, going to take my dog for a walk. Maybe you say something like, I love being able to work from home because I'm able to take my dog on a walk two times a day, which allows me to be healthier. Think about digging a little bit deeper and think about that viewer on the other end. What do they care about? Because if you can make sure they care, they're going to be a follower for life. So really understand how to connect with your audience with that brand story, which tied back in with Alex's presentation on really coming up with those 25 to 50 things people should really know about you, which also tied into really understanding your brand story. We're moving into key takeaway number five and it's all about YouTube. You know, I was going to go to sessions about YouTube, so one of the sessions I went to was from Evan Carmichael, who really talked about thumbnails and titles and how to get people to actually click on your video. Because we all know it doesn't matter how great our content is, if people aren't clicking on that video, they're never going to watch it. So some great ideas, he said, was poll your audience on a title. If you don't have a big audience on YouTube that you can pull through the Community tab, maybe you pull them in a Facebook group that you host or maybe you pull them on Instagram, but get that insight from your audience and that will help you decide on a better title. Also, quick things to do with your next thumbnail is really zoom in on your face. Keep your face really close tight so that they can see who it is. Even on mobile devices when your thumbnail is really small, always, always up the saturation in your brand color. So just going into the color and really taking that saturation to a max. Make sure you're adding text to your thumbnail and make it emotional text. Remember I tell you all the time, don't just repeat the text of your title on the thumbnail, make it complement the title and really make sure that text is emotional text. The Next part about YouTube was from Derral Eves and he really dug in on looking at the click through rates based on your traffic source. So when you go into your channel you're going to see your video as a whole click through rate. So you actually want to go into that video, into that click rate and go in by traffic source and see how well your click through rate is performing on browse and suggested. If you've been around here, you know I really preach focusing on browse and suggested because you're going to have a much more high valuable audience coming from browse and suggested. So look at those click through rates and see how they are doing instead of looking at your click through rate as a whole. Also Remember to use 50 characters or less in your title because that title gets truncated to 50 characters on mobile devices. Oh, one other thing that I wanted to mention about my key takeaway on how video is super important. Pretty much every single presentation that I saw, that presenter incorporated video into their slide deck. They actually use video examples. So it just really hits home how important video is in 2020. All right, key takeaway number six is all about Facebook. And I'm not a fan of Facebook, but listening to these sessions really helped me figure out how can I make Facebook doable for me and how can I really use Facebook as an organic source of traffic. You always want to focus on what kind of content is going to be relevant to your audience. So what is that kind of beginner content that your audience is going to resonate with? You need to make it educational and you need to make it entertaining, but you don't have to make it high quality because it's on Facebook. You also need to make sure that you have those captions and you have some kind of text title in that post, the video post as it is to really get people to stop the scroll. I also learned that Facebook groups aren't dead as long as you're engaging and really utilizing that Facebook and not just creating a Facebook and leaving people there. One example that they use is this person that hosted a Facebook group actually gives away prizes every single month to his top Facebook contributors to really keep everybody engaged. Then when it comes to Facebook Live, I really learned how to structure a Live to make sure it's engaging. We all know how hard it can be to go live those first couple minutes when nobody is there. What you want to focus on is opening your video, going live, and immediately welcoming those replay viewers that will watch the beginning of your video, introduce yourself, welcome them, tell them what they're going to learn. Then you can start getting into the content so that your followers, your subscribers, are being notified as they come in. They're obviously not going to see what you told the replay viewers. And so when the replay viewers watch, they're not just watching you, waiting for people to get on the live stream. I know it's kind of common sense, but it just kind of really clicked how I could structure live, even on Instagram or YouTube, a lot better. The seventh key takeaway I have is all about content and maximizing your content. If you know me, I created the video multiplier formula. So I'm all about taking one piece of content and duplicating it or repurposing it as many places as possible. Jay Baer kind of talked about this a little bit. He has the one to eight rule about how he turns one piece of video into eight pieces of content. And he actually has a complete content brief that he fills out before he even creates any content. This will really help you in creating random acts of content. You want to make sure. The content that you're creating makes sense and it's not random. Because when it's random, you're not going to get it to do what you want it to do. Get people on your email list, get people to buy your product. Whatever it is you are creating content for, you need to be strategic and not be random. And so he had this whole content brief on how to figure out what the goal is of that. He talked about three different types of series that you should have a video content, he talked about binge worthy content, he talked about event driven content and then the education or the news content, kind of that content that comes out daily for you to stay connected with your audience. The session that really blew my way was Google Data Studio and all the details that you can pull from Google if you understand how to use Data Studio. I'm really intrigued. I'm never a numbers person, but you know, I am a numbers person when it comes to YouTube analytics. And I feel like this data studio could really help me dig into numbers in a way that I understand and that I can start tweaking things. Whether it's conversion rates, website traffic, I can start seeing what I need to do to make that better to in return drive more leads that drive more sales to my business. So literally one other big takeaway that I had at the conference is it is good to get out. I am an anxiety driven person and so leading up leaving, flying five hours out, I was just a ball of anxiety. In fact, my shoulders are still so tense from just being tense that whole time with anxiety. But while I was there I just had a rejuvenation of excitement for my business. I'm here at my desk every single day, Monday through Thursday. There's nobody really around me here in my office or location wise to talk about business. But being there really allowed me to talk with people about business and what they're doing and talk to them about what I would do. And being able to hear people, which sounds really weird, tell me that I'm saying smart just allows me to realize I am smart. I'm going to tell you every single day, at least one time a day I think, oh my goodness, I am so dumb. But that's just because I'm here by myself, not knowing if what I'm doing is right, always second guessing myself. So being able to talk business, being able to mastermind and being able for people to take in my advice and tell me, wow, that was really good, that's really smart, just allows me to actually feel confident and the day to day work that I do and not feel like I am the dumbest person around. Did you like this style of video? I'm thinking about doing more relaxed videos. I don't have my full makeup on, I just have one light on and sharing a little bit more behind the business and getting more on a personal level with you. Let me know if you're liking this style of video and maybe this is a brand new series. I'm thinking maybe behind the business series. Click the video that's on your screen right now, which is going to show you exactly how I plan everything in my business to make sure I had the time and the space to go to my conference without having to work while I was there. So click that video and I'll see you in the next one.