Our mighty team of three on the digital side of Ellipses attended the Social Shakeup conference in Atlanta May 6-8. Three days of social media and digital marketing speak may seem daunting, but we social media professionals LIVE for that kind of stuff. Here are the five takeaways from the conference to help improve your social media.
1. Adobe Spark is your friend
At Ellipses, we are huge Canva advocates. If you’ve never heard of Canva, it’s an online graphic design tool, much simpler than Photoshop or Illustrator. If you scroll the pages of our clients’ social media, there is a 99.9% chance any graphic on there was made by us using Canva. Canva is easy to use, affordable and creates beautiful graphics that look like they were made by a professional graphic designer. Yes, it’s safe to say we’re big fans.
At Social Shakeup, we attended a session titled “Graphic Design for Marketers” hosted by Veronica Belmont, a product manager at Adobe. Veronica gave us a step-by-step demonstration on how to use their product Adobe Spark, an online and mobile design app where one can “easily create stunning social graphics, short videos, and web pages that make you stand out on social.” After going through its abilities online with an employee of the product, we were amazed at its abilities and diverse design selections. Adobe Spark allows you to easily create animations and videos, too. It’s so easy and could definitely give Canva a run for its money.
2. Always go back to STORYTELLING
There is a reason it’s called social media. Even though you’re behind a screen when participating, it’s still all about making connections. And as we know from our PR experience, nothing brings people together better than stories.
Think about it on a personal level; do you like being marketed to? Probably not. So why would you try to constantly push marketing in your social media and nothing else? Need more convincing? It’s been shown that 40% of consumers report they associate the word “pushy” with brands and 69% distrust a brand’s advertising. Your brands should never be talking at people, they should be talking with them. That means changing your mindset and truly honing in on what your audience wants to see and delivering it. A lot of brands still aren’t doing this, so storytelling can be a way to stand out on top amongst the social media marketing world.
3. PR and Social Media are more integrated than ever
…and it’s not changing anytime soon. Ever since the rise of digital, the landscape of public relations has changed drastically. It’s come to the point now that you really shouldn’t, even can’t, be successful in PR without integrating social media and digital marketing. (Which is something we do here at Ellipses!) Your campaigns, messages, and entire brand need to stay consistent between the two. The lines of digital marketing and public relations are completely blurred, especially now in the age of influencers.
4. You don’t need to be a huge company with a huge budget and infinite resources to do well on social media!
As a small boutique agency, it’s easy to feel intimidated by what big brands are doing. They always seem to be doing something crazy from activations in the middle of New York City to working with the biggest influencers in the game. But here’s a secret: the “go big or go home” mentality really isn’t for everyone or every brand. All you need is a bit of creativity and a little patience.
Living in this digital world, where you can find practically anything on Google, why would social media resources be any different? Do you think you need to work with the biggest influencers in the game to see results? Well, it turns out, according to Business Insider, “people with a few thousand followers generally seem more trustworthy, authentic, and relatable than those with huge followings.” Working with micro-influencers saves you money, allows for the production of much more authentic content, and lets businesses target a very specific audience.
In addition to working with influencers with little to no budget, there are also plenty of free resources out there that can help you improve your social media game. Here are a few:
1. Use Planoly or Later to plan and auto-publish your content
2. Try Instagram Insights for a native analytic tool
3. A Color Story, Snapseed, VSCO, and Lightroom are great for photo editing
4. Play around with Canva, A Design Kit, or MOJO to help you create graphics
5. Vanity metrics aren’t the end all, be all
We know that it’s hard to not care about follower count, page views, subscribers, etc. All of those flashy analytics are satisfying on paper, but when it comes down to it, they likely aren’t moving the needle for your business goals.
The landscape of social media is constantly changing, which means those metrics can easily disappear. Instagram just started testing hiding like counts and recently changed profile design to make follower count much less noticeable. Hiding these metrics will refocus the platform back to authentic photography and real self-expression, rather than a robotic approach to attracting more likes. When it comes down to it, social media is ever-changing, and brands should focus on connecting with their followers in a valuable, authentic way. By bringing the social back in social media, you’re more likely to see a bigger bang for your buck when it comes to social media.