By: Rachel Simrose, Kaelynn Frankish, Emily Huang and Kate Palamarchuk

Two weeks ago, our Social Squad stormed the Hootsuite Social Breakfast Vancouver at the Rosewood Hotel. It was 8 AM and we were half asleep, not ready to socialize. As we arrived at the reception, the lively crowd and heavenly waft of fresh coffee instantly woke us up. The talks began shortly after a chance to connect with other great industry professionals.  Our team has learned so much from the event. Therefore, we have created a blog to share some of the key takeaways with you.

 

Measuring Organic Social ROI – Rachel Simrose

So how do we measure the ROI on organic social? This can be super tricky, as identified by Ryan Ginsberg from Hootsuite. We can often get caught up in ‘vanity metrics’ when evaluating the success of social media for a client – referring to likes and followers on a post or social channel. While these may look great at first glance, they won’t get you very far in the grand scheme of things.

We have said it before, and we will say it again – engagement is the name of the game. A smaller following of highly engaged users, actually interested in your content is far more beneficial in long-term conversions than a ‘fake’, or spammy audience. So what does all this boil down to? Organic social acts as brand awareness, or what we refer to as ‘Top of Funnel’ for a social campaign. Creating strong social platforms that reflect brand value is essential to bring a user down the conversion funnel, but that first point of contact will rarely be their last touch point. So this makes organic social incredibly hard to measure as a single ROI, but consider how it integrates with paid social advertising to create a highly effective consumer journey – that is far more likely to end in that highly coveted conversion. 

 

Bridging the Gap Between Organic and Paid Social – Kaelynn Frankish

No, there isn’t a troll that lives under this said bridge between organic and paid social media. It seems as if some organizations that offer social media as a service act as a separate department, where a lot of objectives and ideas are not met working for the same client. This is something that I am proud that our team hasn’t had any trouble with. Let me explain.

Remember that algorithm fiasco I wrote about a few months ago? This has been a bit of a sore spot for agencies all across North America, which was evident during the #HootBreakfast. Facebook has become a space where you “pay to play”, meaning you don’t get reach or engagement on your posts if you don’t put money into getting your brand out there through social media advertising. This seems to be something that not many have caught on to just yet, or they just haven’t figured out how to do this effectively.

Without awareness and goals, your Facebook page may not function as effectively if you are trying to get it off the ground and you want to discover new followers.

 

The sum is greater than the parts – Emily Huang

Our industry has evolved greatly over the last five years. I wasn’t even in the industry five years ago. I was a sophomore at UBC studying Psychology and had no idea about the world of Digital Marketing. Fast forward to today, I’m about the celebrate my one year work anniversary at Glacier.

In 2011, there were about 150 unique marketing technology vendors. Today, we have about 6829 tools in the digital marketing industry. What does that mean? The industry is fast-growing and it’s forever changing. These tools are so unique that not all of them are suitable for your business model. One speaker summarized, “Ask yourself where is the overlap in this marketing technology landscape. Consider the larger picture. Think horizontally. How do you partner? The sum is greater than the parts. Wise words on creating value in an increasingly complex marketing world.”

To create value in a complex marketing world, we often need to take a step back and see the bigger picture and plan for the future. Test many different types of tools and choose the one that works. Being informed and staying curious is the only way to survive in this industry.

 

Setting Social Media Goals and Measuring ROI – Kate Palamarchuk

One of the guest speakers at Hootsuite Social Breakfast was Graeme Leathem, Social Media Manager at Destination British Columbia. I bet you’ve seen their beautiful Instagram account @hellobc or followed the #ExploreBC hashtag.

As digital marketers, we can all agree that content is still a king of marketing. But Graeme’s presentation had an interesting addition to it. As he put on his slides:

“The goal isn’t to be good at content. The goal is to be good at business because of content.”

And in order to be good at it, you need to understand the purpose of your social media content. Is it for people who browse and seek inspiring content? Or is your main goal to capture the attention of people who subscribe to find regular content on a particular topic? When you know the purpose, you can then determine your tools and social media ROI.