On 17 March 2016, the AllFacebook Marketing Conference (AFBMC) took place in Munich. Almost 500 participants gathered to listen to social media experts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They were hoping for new insights and precise instructions on how to find their way around the big, colourful world of “social networks”. But one thing above all became clear: there is still a lot to learn. And, more importantly, there will always be a lot to learn. Social media presents itself as a constantly changing and, above all, never-ending “fashion trend”. Everyone hears about it, many use it, but far too many do not seem to really know how to use it well.
You can compare it a little to fashion. There are many different ways to combine things, and every company and every brand has to “tailor” the perfect solution for itself. Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Periscope, WhatsApp, or whatever they are all called. Yet choosing the right ones from this crowd seems to be the biggest difficulty.
Our main takeaway from AFBMC is that this “tailor-made” social media solution is a lot of work. Work that small teams can manage too, but it is and remains work.
Social media is not just about putting thousands of euros into a pretty ad. Above all, you have to work on tailoring a creative concept that suits your brand. And that also means producing a lot of content. That word, “content”, came up again and again in the talks.
In the very first talk, Robert Seeger set out to show that we need to move away from storytelling and towards story doing. Content should above all trigger reactions from users, and these days you can no longer achieve that with pretty, high-end images alone. Expensively produced, beautifully dubbed videos simply do not work that well on social networks. Nobody wants to listen. The thumb only stops for gripping images. And sometimes you only have a few seconds to make that thumb stop. So, away with expensively produced footage and on with the courage to go for “poor mobile phone video quality”. For expensive HD films, you go to the cinema, sit still in your seat for 120 minutes and then go home without a word. And let’s be honest: who wants to stay silent on social networks these days? Likes and shares, too, are now just a quick reaction of the thumb, and usually not much happens afterwards. Today, users need to be held captive in front of their screen and smartphone. Involving users in the production process is the best way to do this. Whether through live chats or real-time directing instructions from users. After all, who knows better what the crowd wants to see than the crowd itself?
“Courage” was also the theme of the next speaker, Niddal Salah-Eldin. She is Head of Social Media at “Die Welt” and presented the concept of “troll-eating community management”. Having the courage to answer provocative and nonsensical comments from some “Welt” users with quick-witted irony and humour had a positive effect on pretty much all of the site’s KPIs.
But this “story doing” is not right for everyone. A NON-SOCIAL network that is not really new, but in some cases still not used that often, is particularly interesting for providers of “beautiful” things. The bookmarking tool Pinterest is slowly creeping into the world of social media and showing that this “fashion trend” can hold its own too. Jan Honsel describes Pinterest as the tool that describes a user’s future. Here, too, you have a profile, but instead of publishing your own life diary-style as on Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest is where you save ideas, inspirations and fascinations. As most users here are women, most pins come from the areas of fashion, beauty, food and travel. In recent years, Pinterest has become the second-largest traffic generator and is extremely important for buying decisions. As always, there is plenty you can get wrong here too. As a brand, it is not enough to simply bookmark links from your own site. Like every social tool (and we are deliberately not using the word network here), Pinterest has its own add-ons that are constantly being adapted and expanded. This emphasis on “not a social network” is particularly important to Country Manager Jan Honsel. Because it is precisely not about the “interaction” between individual users. The key KPIs are impressions, repins and clicks. Pinterest will certainly play an even more important role in generating traffic in the future.
As a marketing agency, we were surprised how little was said about conventional ads. As an agency, we naturally always look for content-based solutions first, but we also know there is no getting around the classic display ad. And of course Facebook keeps offering new and exciting ad formats without which some business goals simply cannot be reached. Thomas Hutter, for example, gave an exciting talk on Local Ads. Local Ads are not really new in the world of Facebook advertising, yet many companies do not seem to make full use of what this format offers. Hutter himself achieved very good, low-cost results with this ad format, and Facebook itself only recently developed Local Insights, which can give a very interesting view of where users are located.
The talk on Facebook Lead Ads also gave us interesting new insights. The possibilities here are very varied. It does not have to stop at the classic generation of newsletter sign-ups. Competitions, recruiting, surveys or downloads can just as well be the goal of the ad. The format is particularly interesting for companies whose website is not responsive. The ad can link to an external site, but the lead can also be captured on Facebook itself.
The last talk we heard on this informative day was added to the conference at short notice because a speaker had fallen ill. It was about the “decline” of YouTube and Facebook “taking over” video integration. Facebook has developed a great deal in moving images in recent years. Features such as slideshows or live videos are nowhere to be found on YouTube. With autoplay and an adjusted news feed algorithm, Facebook has been able to report impressive video views in recent years. Even so, YouTube, almost written off, refused to be beaten. We all know the many YouTubers who publish their content mostly there. The fact remains that Facebook is still of no interest to this industry because its monetisation is not well developed. On top of that, YouTube remains far ahead in discoverability thanks to Google. What Facebook clearly still lacks is the “searchability” of content. Videos are sometimes placed prominently in the news feed, but finding them again a few days later is almost impossible.
Here, too, it is hard not to come back to the “fashion trend”. Because just like fashion, social networks that are said to be in decline keep coming back. Over the past decades, there have been countless styles that were tried again and again, and these days everyone wears what they want anyway. In the same way, people seem to keep rediscovering social networks for themselves. The development of technology certainly plays a significant role here. So we are curious to see how social media trends develop and where we will be in a year’s time. Hopefully we won’t be celebrating “live parties” in neon leggings, with everyone dancing alone at home in front of their smartphone via live stream.
