1. Content and visuals 2. Marketing Strategy 3. Going Live 4. Platforms Wave Around the World 2019 – Free Social Media Training At Wave.video, we like videos, content, and festivals the most. That’s why we decided to throw around-the-clock video party filled up with useful content to celebrate the beginning of summer 2019. So we invented #WaveAroundTheWorld, the world’s first 24-hour live social media educational event. We invited over 20 marketing experts to talk about ever-trending topics such as content creation and strategy as well as to discuss the latest trends around live video and social media platforms. In case you couldn’t be with us on the way from Australia to the United States, here is a recap for you. Make sure to check out the recordings and share your feedback in the comments! Below you’ll find: great pieces of advice on how to create and promote your content; ready-to-use frameworks to build solid marketing strategies; inspiration for doing live videos; tips and tricks for working across various social media platforms. 1. Content and visuals Content is the fuel for marketing – we won’t get to our business goals without it. To create diverse and appealing content that would work well on different platforms and for various audiences, marketers need to have a whole range of assets such as blog posts, images, videos, charts, infographics, GIFs and whatever can highlight your message and make you stand out. It might sound quite overwhelming, especially when you don’t have a designing department to take care of the visuals, though it is not a reason for panic. Here are some pro tips from our guest experts about how to generate content, where to get visuals from or how to create them yourself, and what are the best ways to distribute your content efficiently. 1.1. How to Take Your Videos to Pro Level – Even if You’re a Non-Designer Let’s take it from the very beginning: not all of us have design skills to create graphics and videos that look good enough to show them to others. And there is nothing wrong about that! The biggest and most common mistake is to keep trying being a designer when you are not. Being a non-designer, Donna Moritz teaches people like herself to do DIY-design, produce appealing visuals without diving deep into all those design terms and pro tools. Donna Moritz Visual Content Strategist @SociallySorted donnamoritz With tools like Wave.video, you don’t need to stress too much about the creation of your images and videos. The major part is already done by professionals, you only need to leverage the use of those tools and follow 4 rules while working with them. Use pre-designed templates – they were made for you by professionals who know this stuff; Stick to the elements – don’t mess with the layout, fonts and colors too much; Change just 1 or 2 things – don’t change everything at once, it is not needed indeed to fully transform your visual; Same for same – if you want to replace an element find something equal. For example, if you want another bold font, swap it with another bold one, not italics. Donna Moritz is a Digital Content Strategist with a passion for Visual Storytelling and a keynote speaker and trainer in the marketing and tourism industries internationally. She is the founder of award-winning blog Socially Sorted, listed by Forbes as a “Top 5 Social Media Blog You Need to Know About in 2019”. 1.2. How to Make Your Blog Stand Out With Great Images Every blog needs visuals to get people engaged and interested in what you are saying. And it’s not solely about making your article visually appealing – the use of visuals affects your SEO performance and also makes social sharing work the way you want it to. Mike Allton Content Marketing Practitioner mikeallton Not everybody learns the same way – some people want to read, some like charts and infographics and some would rather watch a video. To address all types of content consumers you can create a mix of visuals within your blog. What’s special about video is that it can hook up the reader who will stop to watch it while driving up the time spent on the site. And this is what Google cares a lot about: the longer somebody spends on your piece of content, the more interesting and enjoyable it is in Google’s mind. Mike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner – a title he invented to represent his holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blogging, social media, email marketing, and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales. 1.3. Small Business Success With Video Running a small brick-and-mortar business requires doing so many things at once that sometimes you just can’t get around to doing social media. But if you are a business and you are not on social media, you are definitely missing out a massive chunk of a pie. Lisa Monks Founder of social media consultancy, ChipMonk Media lmonks There is a whole range of different content that you can create to talk to your audience: photos, videos, linked posts, questions that you can ask, text only, etc. But the one that gets the most engagement and reach by a long shot is video. When it comes to video, some people are held back because they think they don’t have enough time and skills to do it or frightened by the tech. The reality is that you don’t need a lot of tech or expensive equipment, and you don’t even have to be facing the camera to create a video that will help you get additional reach and engagement on your social media platforms. Lisa Monks, founder of social media consultancy, ChipMonk Media, is a social media specialist, working with small to medium size brick and mortar businesses. 1.4. Creating an Alexa Flash Briefing for Your Business Alexa Flash Briefing is one of those content formats that are not widely known, although when used smartly it can help a lot to drive traffic to your main content stock and also make you stand out. Christian Karasiewicz Founder of Social Chefs christiankarasiewicz Basically, it is about creating bite-sized audio or voice files. How is it different from podcasts? The main thing is that they are much smaller – about 3 to 5 mins. If you are creating a long blog post or a 40-minute podcast, these short audios are great to squeeze out the highlights from your longer piece of content and create a voice teaser for it. It is also useful to do prompt interviews and share short daily tips. Good thing is that you don’t need to have any of Amazon devices to create an Alexa Flash Briefing – you can do this on any audio device and run it through the Amazon Alexa app. Christian Karasiewicz is a social media marketing professional for B2B and B2C businesses. He’s also the creator of #SocialChatter, the industries longest running social media marketing talk show and founder of Social Chefs, your premier source for social media training on the web. 1.5. Content Distribution: 3 Steps That Will Make Your Results Improve Creating rich and engaging content is a big thing but still not the prime one. Once you finish mounting your video or writing your blog post the key is to find the best possible way to bring it before your target audience. Heidi Cohen Top Global Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing Influencer heidicohen Whether you are doing content marketing, social media or any other kind of marketing communication, the main challenge you face is that your audience is being bombarded with various messages from all over at once. In order for you to break through this competition, use the TIP Method for content distribution success: Test & track distribution results Improve & republish content Promote repurposed content Heidi Cohen runs the award-winning Actionable Marketing Guide. As a consultant and a professor, Heidi helps executives and students understand and apply actionable tactics to execute their marketing strategy. 2. Marketing Strategy In the area of ever-changing trends and algorithms, it is undoubtedly important to be agile and variable with your tools and content formats. But nevertheless, it is also crucial to have a solid understanding of how your way to success looks like and how to measure it. Be you a small local business or a big global brand, you need to create a strategy and stick to it. This set of videos is all about building a clear strategy, setting goals, analyzing metrics and adjusting your activities for even better results. 2.1. How to Achieve Improved ROI Using Content Marketing Content marketing is great. But it takes a bit of time before you start getting traction, when you get the traction you start generating lots of traffic and on the back of that traffic, you can start generating leads, email addresses and then sales at the back of it. Ian Cleary Founder of RazorSocial iancleary There is a framework to structure your content marketing efforts and improve ROI. It is called Elevate and has 5 steps: Step 1. Building the foundation One of the most important things about building the foundation is making sure that the content you create will generate reasonable amount of traffic. Do keyword research to identify topics that will bring not just any traffic, but relevant traffic. Step 2. Content goals and funnels Identify the steps of what’s happening on the way from someone’s reading your content to becoming a customer. Make sure to set up analytics so that you can measure and track what’s happening at each stage along the way. Step 3. Create and publish content With the content foundation and the funnel in place, start producing content. Today, the rule is quality over quantity: it is better to create fewer items but more detailed and valuable ones, because such content is more likely to be shared on social and linked to it, thus ranks higher. Step 4. Outbound marketing promotion Go out and push your content to drive traffic and get subscribers. Create videos to promote your content on social media as platforms prioritize videos knowing that people get more engaged with them. Step 5. Analyze and optimize See what’s working and what’s not in your funnel. Once you identify the weak points, you can start optimizing and then see how your stats are getting better. Ian is the founder of RazorSocial which is an award-winning marketing technology blog. He is a consultant, trainer and speaker and spends a lot of his time using his combined marketing and technology skills on digital transformation projects for companies. 2.2. Game Plan for Social Media Lead Generation Today social media is a place where people spend massive amount of time, therefore, there is a way to intersect with them and grab their attention (i.e. generate leads). But it is vital to realize that the old dear lead gen models and tactics are not applicable here. Also, it’s not like Google search when they come to look for something with an intention to buy it. People come on these platforms, first of all, to be social, so lead generation also needs to be personal and relational. Mike Gingerich a “Business MacGyver mikegingerich Social media is a great opportunity to find an ideal audience, more of the types of customers that you really want. But many marketers mistakenly think that you can do it all on social media. Doing lead generation on social media is not about collecting leads on the platform itself. Typically, it is just the beginning of the journey when people are becoming aware of your services and discovering what you do. You might have one or two first steps of your funnel in social media before you take people somewhere else – a landing page or a registration form. You need multiple touches before you get them to share more information with you in exchange for something valuable be it a white paper, recording of a video, or access to some group. Mike Gingerich helps owners and CEO’s take pieces from their business and put them together to create buzz, grow sales, fight overwhelm and execute effectively. 2.3. A Winning Marketing Strategy in 3 Easy Steps A lot of startups and entrepreneurs get very excited about their business ideas but when it comes to marketing they just don’t know what to do. They either don’t do enough or start doing everything at once on every platform and get lost as a result. Claudia Sheridan Founder of Small Business Breakthrough marketing firm claudiasheridan You need to remember that at the very core marketing is not about you and your business – it’s about people on the other side. It’s important to get out of the “Me” place where you think “I need more clients and sales” and step on the way of doing business where you care about the customer, solve problems and add value. Key things to build a solid foundation for your business are: 1. Goals Be very specific with what you are trying to achieve. There are 2 things that you CAN’T say to answer this: “I want more clients” and “I want more money”. 2. Targeting Identify exactly who your customers are, what they do, what they like and what they need. Knowing this will help you to be there for them to solve their problems. 3. Content Creating content should be the last step. Completing the first two steps will give you a clear understanding of what content will resonate with your target audience and how to distribute it in order to achieve your goals. Claudia is the founder of Small Business Breakthrough, a boutique digital marketing firm, and the founder of One Amazing Women’s Network. Claudia been a digital marketing consultant and strategist for small businesses for nearly 2 decades and is now using her own personal and professional expertise to help you create a business to be proud of. 2.4. The How, What and Why of Video Metrics Sometimes we get too focused on creating the content and forget to analyze the numbers to see how it is actually performing. Some just don’t know how to read the metrics to make conclusions and improve the results. Some think numbers are too complicated and keep on with luck-based marketing. We invited Serena Ryan to give some inspiration to understand the numbers so that you stop wasting money on producing things that don’t give you ROI. Serena ‘Dot’ Ryan Facebook Ads Strategist serenadotryan If we don’t understand how valuable our numbers are then we are really missing opportunities. When we know how to play with the stats we can grasp what we are doing well and what activities and campaigns need to be adjusted. Not to get lost in all the terms and abbreviations, remember this set of 3 things that you need to focus on: Goals; Content; Targeting. Content and targeting are quite clear, but setting the goals is where the numbers get in the game. Your goals should be based on the 3 following metrics: CPA – cost per acquisition. The amount of money spent on the campaign divided by the number of clients you are getting as a result. CPL – cost per lead. This is how much money you spend to get someone engaged. ROAS – return on ads spent. How much did we earn on the previous campaign and what are the expectations for the next one? With these figures captured and analyzed, it is much easier to understand how you can improve your further results. Serena Dorothy ‘Dot’ Ryan is Facebook Ads Strategist, Educator and Speaker who helps Accounting Professionals and Decision Makers See The Numbers In Social Media. 2.5. How to Grow Your Brand via Relationships Relationship Marketing Evangelist, Jessika inspires brands to do and give more through the art of authenticity relating with their customers using relationship marketing. Jessika Phillips Founder of NOW Marketing Group and the host of Social Media Week Lima jessikaphillips Relationship marketing is about adding an extra step to the know-like-trust framework which is refer. This is about making your customers so excited about the exceptional experience with your brand that they start referring you on to their families and friends. It is turning your followers on social media to your true fans who grow that word of mouth referral business. And also turning your clients into advocates for you. And your community – into collaborators. Jessika Phillips helps brands master Relationship Marketing. She’s an international Speaker, Good Vibes Spreader and the passionate Founder of NOW Marketing Group and the host of Social Media Week Lima 2.6. Tips on Marketing to Parents Of course, all target audiences are special and you need to investigate yours inside and out in order to succeed in your marketing efforts. Jill knows everything about doing marketing for a very peculiar audience that exists everywhere in the world – parents. Jill Holtz Co-founder of Mykidstime.com and Digital4Sales.com jillholtz One of the differences of parents, especially moms, comparing to other segments is that they are buying not only for themselves but also for their kids and other family members. That makes them more worried and picky, so trust is really-really important and you need to build it over time. Parents are a very sensitive and emotional audience. Also, they are always busy, a little bit stressed and grateful for any assistance. Solving problems and giving a helping hand to the parents is the most effective way to build that trust. Jill Holtz is the co-founder of Mykidstime.com, an information website for parents, that has grown from a local Galway directory to a global website and one of the most trusted online brands for parents. 3. Going Live Live video is obviously the marketing tool that you can’t ignore today. It has been a trending topic for a while already and a lot has been said about the importance of live broadcasts. But some are still hesitant about going live and keep naming excuses like lack of camera skills or absence of the equipment. Our guest experts from around the world are sure that it is not that scary and difficult as you might be thinking. Check out these recordings about all things live to overcome the bias about going on the air. 3.1. How to Level up Your Impact and Authority with Confident Live Video It is always scary to start doing something new, especially when you know that others will be watching. From his own experience of being on the camera as well as from teaching people on how to do it confidently, Ian identified 3 most common phobias that stop people from doing broadcasts. Ian Anderson Gray Founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy ianandersongray Being on the stage or going live is stressful but fear can actually become a good thing if you can channel it into your energy. There are 3 big challenges of going live that scare people the most when it comes to broadcasting. 1. Live video gear Don’t over-complicate things so that you end up throwing your computer out of the window. The only 2 things you need: a modern device with a good quality camera (smartphone or computer) and fast internet featuring high upload speed. 2. Live video fear Stop trying to be perfect! Be authentic and honest. Your audience wants to see the real you. To overcome the fear and get used to being in front of the camera, start with 15-sec Instagram or Facebook stories before you get to the longer format. 3. Content and marketing sphere Remember 5 P-s of doing a live video: Planning Pre-promotion Production Post-promotion re-Purposing. Ian Anderson Gray is the founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy and helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority and profits by using live video confidently. 3.2. Podcasting For Business Growth Being the manager of the Impactive8 marketing agency, Loren was asked by clients whether doing a podcast was a worthwhile thing for a business. Not knowing the exact answer, she decided to try it out herself. This is how #BusinessAddicts, a top-rated podcast about all things business, was launched. Loren Bartley Owner and manager @ Impactiv8 lorenbartley Every business needs a place for positioning the expertise and creating a community around it. These days people might be too busy to watch videos or read blogs, so probably podcast is easier to consume as people can listen to it on the run, while driving or being in the gym. If you are in someone’s ears for 45 minutes, they are hearing your voice and getting to know you – this is one of the best ways to get people to know, like and trust us. When anyone starts a podcast, it takes a lot of work to be done upfront to become discoverable in the search engines. It is very important to get an audience as big as possible at the beginning because this is what will propel your growth further. And once people subscribe it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are listening to you, so you still need to do social media and email marketing to drive them back to your content. Video works great for podcast promotion – you can take snippets from your audio and put them over video footage as text to create a teaser and run it on the social media. This is a very effective way to deliver your message because usually, people don’t turn the sound on while watching the video. Loren Bartley is a self-confessed business addict. As well as owning and managing Impactiv8, a digital marketing agency that specializes in Facebook Ads, she also has a co-working space, runs a digital marketing conference in Australia and is the co-host and producer of the top-rated podcast, Business Addicts. 3.3. Podcasts, Live Video and Other Video – Oh My! Phil is a very early adopter of podcasting with 13 years of experience under the belt. After lots of mistakes made and lessons learned, he is now sharing out the list of dos and don’ts for planning the broadcasts, being on the air and repurposing the recordings. Phil Gerbyshak Expert sales trainer and co-host of the social media talk show #SocialChatter philgerb With 800.000 podcasts and millions of episodes online, your content needs to be as rich and interesting as possible to get listened to. No matter if it is your 1st or 501st live video it needs to add value for people. They might forget you once, but don’t burn your audience even before you get to the good stuff. The very first advice to take is: don’t go live just because you can! Use PSA-formula for proper planning: Point. First, ask yourself why you are doing a podcast and why your audience should care? Story. Then decide what you’ll be doing and how you will add value for people while entertaining them at the same time? Action. The last thing to define is what do you want people to do after you end your broadcast? Phil Gerbyshak has been podcasting since he was featured in the book What Nobody Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting in 2006. He’s currently an expert sales trainer and is the co-host of the longest-running social media talk show #SocialChatter, brought to you by Social Chefs. 3.4. Relaxed and Confident Live Video Jennifer used to work for The Weather Channel and has done over 2000 live videos throughout her career. She definitely knows that often things go not as smooth as you want. If you do a lot of live videos you’ve probably faced all the possible technical issues with connection, audio, video and what else. And this fine, because live videos are meant to be imperfect. Jennifer Watson Social Media Manager @ Agorapulse jenniferwatsonsocial If something goes wrong with your broadcast, just brush it off and keep going. Otherwise, it will paralyze you and stuck you from going live again. The key thing with live videos is that nobody actually wants them perfect. Broadcasting is first of all a mean to bring people from all over the world to a place where they can’t usually be and to experience something in real-time. Thus, they want it raw and real. Jennifer is a social media specialist, speaker and Emmy-winning meteorologist. She has a diverse background from working on camera to executing digital strategies for the biggest brand in the weather. 4. Platforms Social media are so huge these days that it is hard to keep track of everything happening with trends and algorithms. Each platform has its constantly changing specifics demanding for an effort to adapt accordingly and also has some superstitions around it. The good thing is that we have experts to bust the myths and share their tricks of doing marketing on various platforms. 4.1. 10 Stunning Social Media Myths Busted You probably know about Agorapulse, a great social media management tool to keep your posts organized. Along with developing the software, the team is also running a Social Media Lab where they do A/B testing and other experiments with various tactics and approaches to investigate social media phenomena, provide marketers with trustworthy data and bust the myths. Emeric Ernoult CEO and co-founder of Agorapulse ernoult There were a lot of different myths spreading out the “truths” that were not validated by any kind of test or data or anything real. Getting real data requires a huge investment of time and money if you want to make them on a consistent basis. And people usually don’t have these resources. And this is the reason why the Social Media Lab was born. Check out the recording to find out the data-proven answers to the questions about different platforms and apply them to your social media strategy: Facebook Leave negative comments on Facebook or get rid of them? Does the usage of 3d party publishing tool affect your rates somehow? What results will you get from re-posting the same content several times? Instagram Is it worth it to take part in Instagram pods? Instagram Ads: Feed or Story? Where to put the hashtag? LinkedIn Do text-only posts perform worse than posts with visuals? How long should be your post to get more views? Twitter Squeeze in 140 characters or leverage the potential of all 280? Do emojis really give more impressions and engagement? Emeric is a serial entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in Social Media and SaaS (software as a service). He is the CEO and co-founder of Agorapulse, a Paris based Social Media Management Software launched in 2011. 4.2. How to Get More Engagement in Your Facebook Groups Bella is The Expert when it comes to hosting Facebook groups. She knows exactly the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook group and how you should approach both of these spaces to power up your social marketing strategy. Bella Vasta Keynote Speaker, Author, Consultant bellavasta Imagine your business being a house with a front yard and a back yard. These two places serve different purposes – same as Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups do. Thus, your Facebook page is your front yard. You generally keep it neat and decorate it on special occasions. You probably wave at a stranger passing by but won’t hang out with your friends here. While the place to throw a party is your backyard – and that’s your Facebook group. It is a safe, relaxed and enjoyable space but you’ll need an invitation to get in there. There is no answer to what is better – you need both. The front yard is to deliver your message to the whole world, and the back yard where the real magic happens. Bella Vasta is the dynamic personality behind the one-woman coaching company, Jump Consulting. Since 2002, Bella has been a trailblazer in the pet industry consulting with multi-million dollar companies to hundreds of small businesses. She is an author, podcast host and blogger. 4.3. Running Effective Video Ads on Facebook and Instagram With organic reach declining, you can’t afford being on social media without running some campaigns promoting your content. Facebook and Instagram feature different setups and host different audiences, but at the beginning, it is hard to predict what will work best for your business. Antonio Calero Head of Marketplace Services for AdEspresso antoniocalero When you are at the very start of your social media journey, it is ok to use the same content assets across different platforms to test the waters. But when you get deep into it and come to understand what works better and where you’ll need to adapt the creatives for each platform for better results. Keep split testing as much as you can to define what works better for your specific goals, audience and content. Video ads tend to perform better on Facebook and Instagram and here are 3 rules to follow when creating a well-performing ad. Be different. You need to create something unique to break through all the noise; Start video with something impactful. You have less than 2 seconds to grab the attention before the post will be scrolled away from the feed; Don’t make it too long: 15-20 seconds maximum. Antonio Calero is a Social Media author, speaker, and the Head of Marketplace Services for AdEspresso – a tool from Hootsuite that simplifies optimization and reporting of Facebook Ads. 4.4. Change the World With a Single Hashtag A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This is what 100% true for the #LinkedinLocal movement that emerged in a small Australian city 2 years ago almost by chance. Since then there have been 3000 events in 650 cities and 90 countries featuring this hashtag that has literally changed the LinkedIn world. Anna McAfee CEO and Head of Communities at LocalX annamcafee Building a community, especially offline, shouldn’t serve the commercial purpose. It is first of all about getting together, being yourself and creating an open space where everyone is welcome regardless of the title. People need a sense of belonging and a face-to-face connection. Being a part of the community is very refreshing and valuable for people because it is so much more than a traditional business networking. Speaking of business, every brand has a community – it is your customer base or your social media followers. If you can tap into that and create a feedback loop for your own business you can ultimately save a lot of money as there is a lot more of customer retention within the communities. Anna is the founder of the #LinkedinLocal movement, Linkedin’s longest-running hashtag, and a concept that has been copied in 90 countries around the globe, helping people leverage LinkedIn to build relationships and communities offline. 4.5. Accelerate Your Conversions for Your Online Store Doing marketing for eCommerce differs a lot from doing it let’s say for a service. Mainly, it is about adding an extra step where you need to sell not just yourself, but also you need to make people like and want your product. And you can sell anything online – be it a physical product or a digital one – you just need to give your customer a convenient platform to buy it. Veronica Jeans eCommerce coach & Shopify Expert veronicajeans Having your own platform is more beneficial and reliable than selling solely on big marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy as they are constantly changing the rules of the game and force you to adjust. The best way is to do both, but it is good to integrate a shopping platform to your website so that you have everything in one place and don’t make people to switch between the domains. The biggest thing in e-commerce is the customer journey. You have to have 3 clicks maximum between to get to the product from somewhere else. If you give your customers too many choices they will hop off because it gets hard for them to make a decision. Veronica is an eCommerce Business Mentor, Marketing Strategist and Shopify Queen. 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