We recently attended #SMWF - Social Media World Forum in London. Read key take-aways on current and emerging trends in digital and social media from world leading and innovative brands. Simon Veaney, American Express Director of Social Media Communications, presented recent social media wins and shared tips on how to achieve similar success.
The key message for publishing socially, was for fewer, bigger and better posts. That is:
- Fewer - don't publish too frequently,
- Bigger - only publish when you have something newsworthy or interesting to say, and
- Better - only publish high quality, engaging content.
One of the examples presented was the Shop Small movement, initiated by AMEX. In response to online flash sales, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday was held between the online sales days to celebrate local offline retailers. The campaign was shared by all participating small businesses through social media channels using the #SmallBiz hashtag, and local communities rallied behind them. This positive sentiment linked back to AMEX via two-way real-time social dialogues throughout Small Business Saturday.
Simon discussed the benefits of introducing ambassadors or guest bloggers to contribute content on behalf of your brand but emphasised that marketers must understand that this means letting go of editorial control. "You can’t mandate what they write and you need to give them the flexibility to let them write the story their own way," he said.
World-renowned fashion photographer Nick Knight agreed to act as ambassador for American Express by taking photos along his London commute to work. AMEX tweeted the images to a photo gallery in real-time along with the hashtag #MySecretCity. The American Express team monitored engagement and sponsored popular tweets. They also encouraged their social media audience share their own pictures with the same hashtag.
Along the Fewer, Bigger and Better theme, Simon highlighted the need to do less, get your message out to lots of people (this means put money behind your posts to boost them), and create great content, but cautioned, "people are very VERY happy to tell you when they don’t like your content. When you post and boost on social media, you’re paying money to enter people’s curated newsfeed, so you need to provide content that will be interesting and relevant to them."
Simon recommended marketers should “plan your spontaneous moment” on social media, asserting the need to make less, but high quality "snackable content." In the moment, real-time and relevant posts can usually be worked out before an event – pre-make quality content ready to post. He referenced the famous Oreo "you can always dunk in the dark" Superbowl tweet as a prime example of a quick-thinking spontaneous tweet that was incredibly successful, and he challenged marketers to think the same opportunistic way with their social media strategy.
Simon also said that marketers must now accept that social posts need to be paid (boosted or sponsored) all the way – but don't think of them as paid ads – be more creative and provide compelling content. This was a recurring theme of the #SMWF conference - all digital marketers must allocate budget to boosting and sponsoring social posts or your audience, literally, won't get the message.
To see more information and discussion from the Social Media World Forum, check out #SMWF on twitter.