Back in 2019, when the world was normal, we hosted another successful Internet Summit event in Raleigh. One of our top-rated speakers from that event, Jennifer Watson of Agora Pulse, led a session focused on social media and productivity hacks.

In a previous life, Jennifer used to be a meteorologist and social media strategist at The Weather Channel. She got the chance to partner with Facebook and created close to 2000 live videos on the platform. Suffice to say, she knows what she’s talking about.

In her talk, she explains that it’s very important to your productivity to really understand what you want to accomplish:

• Define success – What does it look like for you? What metrics do you need to know if you have achieved it. First step!
• Do you audit your campaigns or just your channels? You have to do it to understand what’s working.

Another important aspect to understand about social media is that you have to relate to your audience. And millennials are all about the experiences! If you have exciting content that stands out that will lead to actions.

A lot of teams in charge of social as we can listen in the session are very small, one-man bands, so Jennifer emphasizes how important it is to plan, plan, plan! In order to get things ready.

She gives us some tips on how to succeed:

• Plan your strategy ahead of time
• Have a content calendar
• Track metrics
• Have a monthly brainstorming session

In the recording from this session, Jennifer provides some great sources of content for your social strategy. She mentions a quote by Mike Kim, that reminds us that as marketers we have to focus on the bigger picture and remember we are trying to build a relationship with our customers and not focus just on the final sale.

• Schedule evergreen content – this is the content that will not expire!
• Invest in tools to schedule & do listening
• Tell your story! Humanize your brand so people can relate to you
• Empower your employees to tell your brand story. Are your employees excited to tell your story?
• Leverage user-generated content – It’s the best and most honest way to show your product or service.

If you need to design your own creatives She also provides a nice list of options for designs and to create infographics in the session

Live video is another critical element of any successful social strategy. Live video is important! – it is more engaging than uploaded video. Jennifer provides some great tips to make your video more engaging.

In summary, Jennifer provides 4 great tips

• Bring value
• Be relatable
• Be transparent
• Show compassion

Check out the complete session for more details on what equipment setup can you use for your lives, platforms to share your live on different platforms and a few ideas on topics!

We hope you enjoy this session and join us for the next Digital Summit event for more tips and strategies on the latest in digital marketing.

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Karen Rubiano leads social media and paid advertising strategy and campaigns for Digital Summit & Internet Summit