Wow, what a night!

160+ digital-savvy marketers packed Over-the-Rhine's Union Hall on December 7th in the late-afternoon to hear from experts and share their own reactions, all in an effort to stay at the top of their game.

ICYMI: Social Media Show & Tell is a unique, quarterly event series that features thought leaders who share a behind-the-scenes look at "how the sausage is made" in the industry. Since its inception, the event has served as a gathering space for executives, strategists and consultants to continue learning what works best in the space.

More photos here!

Recap - December 7th, 2017

Bob Gilbreath

"Two Social Media Secrets Even the Big Brands Don’t Know"

Bob kicked off the event with insights he's uncovered during his years as a digital marketer and, more recently, as the chief @ Ahalogy. Everyone's ears perked up as he briefly described how Facebook sold political ads to a Russian company during the 2016 election (with stellar results!), then segueing into how marketers can leverage the same line of thinking but for good (vs. evil). Exactly how? Great question. Bob prescribes the following three-step process.

Actually care about and question this stuff. Consider: how is your agency buying media? What's the CPC they're buying on? What's really going on with the money you're spending?
Build a skill in ad bidding. Dig in and test objectives, placements, audiences and creative. A set-it-and-forget-it approach is a fast-pass to being out-bid (at best) and flat-out ignored (at worst).
Get people to "like" your advertising. Facebook prefers ads that its users enjoy, and your reward for interesting ads is more reach. Choosing an objective other than engagement is NOT your pass for not caring about engagement. Two birds. One stone.

So, how do you create ads people will like? Provide shareable information, leverage data-driven content (what are they saying vs. what do we want to push out), amplify with paid ads (organic is dead), and continually optimize (try multiple images, check your Facebook relevance score, explore custom and lookalike audiences).

After dropping these truth bombs, Bob moved on to influencer marketing - something he knows juuuust a little about. Similar to the classic PR, impressions-based, feel-good data, influencer marketing has risen (and fallen) on the empty-promises model. As with most things, you get what you pay for - if people know brands are willing to pay for followers and impressions, the system will be gamed to produce those results (only). Thankfully, brands are wising up and demanding better data and verification. Bob's company is swooping in on this trend by offering a "tri-verified" approach, which qualifies reach and impression figures and results in real traffic. Impressive.

Key takeaways:

Digital/social is still a wild-west environment with outlaws everywhere.
“Trust, but verify” with the partners and companies you work with.
The more you know and care, the better your business will be.
Create ads that people like, and we can make the world a better place 😇

Kelly Bennett

"Making the Most of Your Social Media Investment"

Next up, Miami's very own Kelly Bennett graced the stage and completely blew everyone away with her mastery of the top social media platforms. Like Bob, she quickly captured our attention - but by sharing some jaw-dropping stats and super helpful tips to accompany them. We've compiled her tried-and-true methods into a top-ten list...

80% of global Internet traffic will be attributed to video by 2020.
Mobile, mobile, mobile. Most platforms are predominantly used on mobile devices (e.g. Facebook is now about 80-85% mobile).
Humans only have an 8-second attention span. That’s one second less than a goldfish!
FB Live gets 10x more engagement than FB Live video. Some ways to use this are: Behind the scenes, Q & A with experts, Product Releases and VIP Events.
85% of video on FB is watched without sound. Add captions! Instructions here.
Tweets with images generate 2x the engagement than those without. Mix it up by tweeting with GIFs.
90% of IG users are 35 and younger. UGC is huge for brands, so capitalize on any content people share about or around your brand and channel it into a campaign. Case in point: Miami U's #FallforMiami Instagram campaign (currently over 500 uses!). Note: Instagram recently announced the ability to follow hashtags the way you would follow another user. BOOM.
200 million people use IG stories each month, which is 50 million more than Snapchat. At this rate, nearly half of all Instagram users will be using Stories by the end of 2018. This means that brands interested in connecting with Instagram users must take the time to master Instagram Stories. Speaking of Instagram, have fun with all of its features, including Stop Motion, Boomerang, Go Live With and Polls.
77% of college students use Snapchat daily. Leverage all that it has to offer your brand: from "customer" takeovers (Miami U edition here) to Maps and Links.
FREE social media tools: Storify, Flipagram, In-shot, and Repost.

Key takeaways:

Video, mobile, and authentic content will continue to be important in 2018.
Know your audience.
Social media is constantly changing - the best brands change with it.

Margaret Russo

"Social Storytelling in Seconds: A How-to for Today's Scroll-through World"

Margaret Russo anchored the evening with a highly engaging presentation about how to channel storytelling into short-form, quick-scroll social content. She shared both hits and misses from a global brand and outlined the three key criteria you can use to inspire your next project. Let's dive in!

While it's the long-form, anthemic content that captures headlines (and hearts), the reality is that the majority of your brand's content will be viewed for an average of 1.7 seconds in a mobile newsfeed. Wow. That's not a lot of time to capture someone's attention and inspire them to act. Not only, that 0.25 seconds is the amount of time it takes to recall social content at a statistically significant rate. Taken together, this begs the question if storytelling in social media is even possible. Margaret argues that it is! So let's hear her argument.

Margaret believes that social media started with people telling their stories - and that now it's up to brands to do the same. Your tools for doing so...

Universality - gather insights at the cross-section of your brand and human truths
Context - build your world based on what you discover and build a campaign that hits home and has legs
Specificity - cast with conviction, from the people who represent your brand consumer to the pets that accompany them 🐶 (name the dog, vs. relying on stock photos and generic descriptions). Avoid stereotypes and really make things your own.

That's a wrap!

We wish you a strong end to '17 and a very prosperous and healthy '18. Stay tuned here for the next quarterly Show & Tell, and please don't hesitate to share your ideas for both speakers and topics.

December 2017 Recap