As we rounded the corner to the final stretch of Social Pro, session content showed no signs of fatigue as speakers powered through tackling topics of attribution and analytics. Below includes our top five favorite learnings from day two of Seattle’s sweetheart Social conference.
Social: More Than Fun & Cat Pics
“Social [for brands] is more than fun and cat pictures” shared Ef Rodriguez of HTC during the AM keynote, spurring inspiring conversation about the state of social and the variety of ways it can play a role in businesses.
When it comes to measurement, Karianne Stinson of Microsoft reminded us once again that social should always tie back to business goals… and that doesn’t always mean sales. Caitlin Angeloff of DocuSign hit it home by stating , “When you think of all the functions of social media, you think about the customer lifecycle. Sales is one part of that, but social media plays a part in every stage of the customer lifecycle.”
The morning keynote is underway! #SocialPro pic.twitter.com/bx5yK9JxyO
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) June 21, 2016
Trendjacking is Risky Business
Of four brands in the keynote panel, three advised against riding the wave of media storms or national selfie day. Bottom line (shared by Rodriguez): Understand where it’s appropriate, and “don’t lose sight of how this is going to come across to someone who’s not going to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Tag All The Things
Tag everything. All the time. Ian Lurie of Portent dropped some serious Analytics insight and highlighted the importance of tagging to understand true attribution. If tagging is already employed, crank up the value by creating micro conversion events.
If you can’t prove that it worked, no one is going to care if it worked or not. Budgets are finite! – @portentint #SocialPro #22b
— Maggie (McD) Malek (@MagsMac) June 21, 2016
Facebook Lead Gen Ads
Test Facebook Lead Gen Ads Now. If you’re not using Lead Gen ads in Facebook yet, this ad type allows users to fill out a form right in the ad type instead of leaving Facebook to an external site.
Catering to mobile, Lead Gen ads can autofill customer information, and users can even decide to fill out the form later in desktop. Molly McCarty from 3Q Digital shared that clients have had success using the ad type in generating large numbers of leads at a lower cost — however, the quality of the leads were lower.
Instagram Your Content Early & Often
Don’t be afraid to up your Instagram content. Hayes Davis from Union Metrics noted that 10% of interactions on the channel occurred in the first 15 minutes and the 90 percent in the first 12.8 hours. With 80 percent of Insta users now international, brands should consider testing hours outside their normal posting schedules. Â Â
Brands publish an average of 1.5 times per day on instagram. You will lose audience if you pause. Don’t stop! @hayesdavis #SocialPro
— AJ Wilcox (@wilcoxaj) June 21, 2016
Question Social Attribution & Refine
Kiko Correa of Glowforge shared a harrowing case study that should hit home for anyone spending money in Facebook: Only 48 percent of Facebook ad traffic on mobile was trackable in Analytics *pauses for gasps*.
So what’s a marketer to do? To better understand what’s happening when users jump devices, set up segmented audiences for retargeting that defines traffic source and device type. Make sure to set attribution window to match click through (you can ignore click through conversions), so that the extended VTC can be credited back to the original source. Â
Shiny Knowledge Nugget
New to Snapchat and looking for followers? Carlos Gil of BMC Software shared a Snapchat Ninja hack that is too good to keep quiet: Put Facebook and Instagram ads against a follow image CTA. Spend ~$50, get  ~1K followers.  Thanks, Carlos!
That does it for a another fantastic Social Pro conference! Â Look out for #SMX Advanced coming your way soon! Â Â
