THE HUMAN SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE AT SOCIAL DAY - ROUNDUP

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Written By Lucy Hall

Oh what a day! Social Day Birmingham... 27th April 2017 was a day not to be missed if you work in social media or you run a business where you are responsible for the content and social media. Why? because we got together and learnt, we networked, we created and we laughed. And if you didn't make it don't worry, i've put together a roundup to give you a flavour (just a flavour... you should have been there!) of what went on.... So I want you to grab a cup of tea and relax, soak it up and imagine what it's like to be part of something so special.. Social Day Birmingham kicked off with Julia Bramble, Julia talked about the importance of human interaction in a digital world. She threw colourful paper around the room exclaiming it was just like the content people share on social media... colourful rubbish. Julia asked us to think about the content we create and to remember the importance of just making more in depth connections with our customers.

Next up came Daniel Knowlton. To kick off his talk Daniel ran a giveaway asking the audience to post up a tweet with a selfie on social media, the winner was to take away 2 emoji cushions and bottle of bubbly, this got everyone creating content and interacting straight away. Daniel then took the topic of Influencer marketing and flipped it, telling the audience how they could become influencers online in their own right by creating incredible content, giving away valuable information for free that actually helps people. Daniel has used this strategy in his business to become on of the top influential digital marketers in the world.

Desi Dobreva talked about how to really use instagram for business sharing her top tools and ideas for growing a following. Desi explained that using hashtags in Instagram posts should be a key strategy. She also talked about the importance of branding in Instagram and social media. A great Instagram feed should be instantly recognisable as your own brand, in your own brand colours and style. To do this Desi explained that you should stick to certain colours and if possible stay away from the selfies! Again make sure you are posting consistently and using the stories and livestream capabilities available in the Instagram App.

After the break we heard from Cas Majid. Cas took us through his 8 steps to social media strategy success. Before he began his step by step talk he reminded us that with social media there are no silver bullets and that everything is different based on the objective of each company. Cas took us though his social media strategy beginning with: Start with the end in mind meaning that we need to have a goal to work towards, you can't have a strategy without an objective. He then said before jump in we should analyse the platforms to see what fits in best with our objectives. Cas discussed the importance of social listening, curating and creating content and how being consistent is really important. He touched on social media post timing, looking at trends and things happening in the calendar and media as well assesing our values. Lastly Cas discussed the importance of mesaurement and testing.

Victoria Taylor was up next. Victoria spoke about the importance of customer experience. But first she explained what customer experience is: Victoria explained that customer experience is the product of an interaction between a business and a customer over the duration of their relationship, this interaction is made up of three parts:

1.) The customer journey

2.) The business touch-points a customer interacts with

3.) The environments the customer experiences (including digital environment) during their experience

Victoria asked up to think about experiences as mini moments

"All of these elements are mini experiences that someone has with you… you are only as good as the last ‘moment’ that you had with someone, so how do you make each moment memorable every single time? Victoria gave the audience a practical exercise asking them to create a mini moment about their best moment from social day and post it on social media. The 2 winners will receive a copy of Brian Solis book. 

Lucy Hall (yeah that's me) then came to the front to discuss tools, including visual, video and content creation tools such as Canva, PicMonkey, Bitmoji, Wordswag, PicsArt, Clips, Biteable, Animoto, iMovie, Giffy. Then tools for instagram: Planoly, Tagomatic, Layout. Boomerang. Scheduling tools included: Buffer, Hootsuite, SmarterQueue, Sprout Social, AgoraPulse. We then discussed analytics and passed over the to the audience to give their own tool suggestions which included: SEM Rush... (Stay tuned for a full list of tools discussed during social day - there were lots!)

After lunch we welcomed Andrew and Pete with an energetic performance about content, called 'contents a beach' - Equipped with beach balls. They explained the importance of being different and asked the audience to stop creating boring content. They asked us to put more effort into a post after working out that they spent a week on a social media examiner post so why don't they do the same for their own blog? And since they took the time to create they have seen their business and clients business grow.

Next up came a really powerful testimonial for livestream from the inspirational Mr A Singh (Amrit Singh) Amrit told his livestream story showing how he was also able to use social media and livestream for good with his humanitarian efforts. He also managed to grow a business, He gave his tips for success.

Mike Hacker (Also known as Hax) took us through how to create great video using your mobile phone.. wow this was cool, mike did all his talking through video showing real life examples of how to improve your production including and this tip is good! - 'Remember to clean your phone camera lenses"... it smudges you know? And if you stand further away from your smartphone the sound quality deteriorates so ensure you use a lapel mic. Some great takeways here, it was like having 2 Hax's for our money in the room! We were seeing double...

Abdul Shakur discussed social selling and explained that relationships are key, that making your content and message all about the customer is best and reinforced the fact that education, help and nurture will often lead to the sale.

Then came the panel session, all the speakers got together at the top to answer the audiences burning questions. Here are some of the top tweets about that!

So there you have it... It's not over though, it's not. I don't hear any fat lady singing. See you in London. ;-)

Lucy Hall
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