Get Social Kent 2016

On the 3rd November 2016 mso attended the third annual Get Social Kent Conference at Longfield Academy. Hosted by Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce and ZC Social Media, Get Social Kent is Kent’s biggest Social Media event and is packed full of Social Media content, expert advice, tips and new strategies from some of the best industry experts.

First to speak at this years’ Get Social Kent, was Franky Saegerman, Head of Digital Insights at NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) with a keynote titled “Measuring Social Media”.

“It is crucial to be out in front managing your message” @Frankylitics

It’s sometimes easy to forget, that even organisations such as NATO face daily challenges when it comes to social media and as such Franky Saegerman’s insights were invaluable. From NATO’s stance of keeping negative comments on their social media profiles, to identifying which social media platforms are beneficial for your business there was something for everyone to takeaway on the day. The statement from this talk that particularly resonated with us at mso was, ‘Know your audience and engage in something they love’, NATO are definitely putting this into practise as their Facebook video How it works – Ballistic Missile Defence has racked up a staggering 2.1M views in just under a month.

Next up was Zoe Cairns, founder of ZC Social Media with a talk titled “Is influencer marketing a smart move for your brand in 2017?”

“It’s not about the number of followers you have, it’s the quality of people who follow you” @ZCSocialMedia

Ok, hands up, we admit that we knew very little about influencer marketing before Zoe’s talk and for those of you who are as unsure as we were, Influencer marketing is a form of marketing which focuses on key individuals (or types of individual) conveying your brands message, rather than the market as a whole. Zoe’s talk focussed on the 6 different types of influencer from The Celebrity and their vast amount of followers, to The Curator, a hub of knowledge and information – an influencer who will amplify your best stories to their audience. But it’s not as easy as contacting Arnold Schwarzenegger and asking him to be an advocate for your brand, influencer marketing requires months of research and planning to execute, you need to trust your influencer and in many cases, you’re trusting them with your companies reputation.

Up next was Greg Russell, Partner Manager EMEA of Facebook speaking about the “Evolution of Communication”.

“Phones allow us to communicate more expressively with immersive content like photo and video” Greg Russell

What’s the first thing you check when you get up in the morning and the last thing you check before you go to bed at night? If you answered ‘phone’, then you’re not alone. Mobile phones have really revolutionised communication allowing us to interact more expressively with immediate, expressive and immersive content. Did you know that the human brain process an image 60,000 times faster than words? Knowing this fact, there really is no surprise as to why Facebook has quickly evolved into a video-sharing platform, so Greg’s strategy for success is, “You need to have a mobile strategy”, and we could not agree more.

The last speaker of the day for us was Luke Quilter of Sleeping Giant Media whose talk asked us all a valid question, “Are we really doing Digital Marketing?”

“We no longer go online, we live online” @LukeQuilter

Luke explained that Digital Marketing is much more than Social Media, in fact, Social Media is just the tip of the iceberg. A successful digital marketing strategy is inclusive of many factors, such as;

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Luke likened SEO to having a great shop on Oxford Street, but nobody knows it’s there in the same way that you can have a beautiful website, but if you do not have SEO in place, how will you rank in Google search engine results pages?
2. PPC or Pay-Per-Click, the modern day newspaper advertising. PPC ads are used to direct traffic to your website. It’s essentially a way of buying visits to your site, rather than earning those visits organically, but done correctly can reach a bigger audience and lead to conversion.
3. UX or User Experience Design – the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability and accessibility of a users interaction with your website. You can have a beautiful website, but if UX is poor, you’re in danger of frustrating and losing your users.

So to ask the question again, are you really doing digital marketing?

In all, we really enjoyed our time at Get Social Kent. We both left the event with some great takeaways and action points as a result of some fantastic talks by some amazing keynote speakers. Thanks Get Social Kent for having us, we look forward to next year’s event!