Right after the grand opening by the two AllFacebook founders, Philipp Roth and Jens Wiese, Sascha Lobo greeted the participants with his opening keynote speech, “Social media is not what we think it is”. In today’s “smartphone generation” era, social networks have become an indispensable part of our lives and accompany us at every step. “Social” not only influences us in our daily social life with others, but is also used for advertising, politics, and protest movements. Not to mention the true as well as fake news that reaches us via this channel (to name just a few factors of influence at this point). Social media works primarily with emotionalisation. We do not even notice this, and even if we do know what is being done to us, it is hardly possible for us to escape this form of communication. With admonishing words and startling case studies, Sascha Lobo clarified the considerable influence of social media and appealed to us online marketers:
Who should accompany this process constructively and critically, if not us?
After this introduction, each visitor could decide which topics were most relevant for their online marketing work in order to advance their own performance. The talks, for example, discussed target group optimisation and the impact of the GDPR on Facebook ads. First, it is particularly important to know your target group and to carry out a detailed analysis in advance. The GDPR provisions still leave us scope to get advertising to the right people and run data-driven social media. With a bit of boldness for a Facebook pixel and the appropriate setup, an important and sometimes indispensable basis for successful targeting can be created, especially in traffic campaigns (for example on a company’s website or online shop).
The creative aspect of the perfect Facebook ad should not be underestimated. Only when content is appealing and appropriate, and is directly obvious, will users really look at advertising and thus at the company. New content formats also bring new opportunities for companies. A recurring theme at the AllFacebook conference was “Instagram Stories”. These not only offer cool storytelling opportunities in the trendy 9:16 format, but also interactions with users (news, questions, surveys, etc.) as well as direct links to products and websites. What is especially positive is that with the right image/video editing tools and a little practice, an Instagram Story can be created quickly and easily. Even Facebook offers the suitable (basic) tools in the Business Manager.
But social media doesn’t work only for B2C. B2B companies can also benefit from digital marketing on the right platforms. LinkedIn offers a wide range of opportunities. Companies can use it to strengthen their online customer communication by establishing internal experts as ambassadors and establish a strong employer brand for global recruiting. This also consolidates a brand community that, among other things, generates interest, 1:1 marketing, and market research. With a well-thought-out global campaign plan, leads can also be generated on LinkedIn. How can this be achieved? Sponsored content, dynamic ads, text ads and sponsored InMail.
WhatsApp is now also an integral part of the social media marketing world. Mark Zuckerberg commented, “We think messaging is one of the few things people do more than social networking.” With about 42 billion messages per day, WhatsApp is the number one messenger service in Germany. There is no other social network a company can use to get closer to customers and thus build emotional brand loyalty through direct 1:1 communication. However, community management on this path should not be underestimated. If necessary, chatbots can also support it. The great opportunities for businesses are on the verge of being launched and are already being tested by WhatsApp in some countries.
In his closing keynote, Robert Seeger emphasised that modern and intelligent social media marketing can be used to design even the most complex industries and content for social networks. What the speakers that day all agreed on: quality before quantity. Social media users receive so much content every day that the important content is lost. To be able to inspire its target group, an accurate analysis and development of KPIs is also part of the process. Therefore, it's not about using the next trick to get more engagement if you’re only going to get a few irrelevant interactions. Rather, the content must be convincing and created “appropriately” for the corresponding target group.
The AllFacebook Marketing Conference in Berlin was again persuasive due to its many exciting and varied presentations. New ideas, strategies, and concepts for the social media marketing industry were discussed in practice-oriented, interactive talks. Between sessions, there were deliberately planned breaks for networking, where participants could exchange views with other online marketers and collect valuable tips for their own customers, social media presence, and upcoming social media campaigns.
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