ChatterBachs… Composing Strategies

I present to you “Digital East in Less Than 180 Seconds”: the best of the notes, quotes, tweets, and posts from Digital East 2012. I have organized these topically rather than by session or chronologically. I have put in bold ones that are my personal favorites or resonated with me in some way. May the content below inform and inspire you to more and better in the digital space!

Facebook

• Facebook ads outperform Google ads and are much cheaper.
• 99% of sales on Facebook are from Facebook users who see ad but don’t interact with it. Brad Smallwood
• 54% of Facebook traffic comes from mobile.
• Brand pages reach only 16% of fans each week on average.
• 65% of consumer engagement across Facebook is on timeline; 29% in newsfeed, 6% in ticker.
• Photos and videos drive most engagement on Facebook’s top 10 brand pages.
• Facebook posts that include photos are 180% more effective than text posts.
• Videos posted on Facebook are 12x more likely to be shared than links + texts combined.
• Users spend 432 minutes/month on Facebook.
• Fastest growing Facebook segment is women 55+. Have doubts? See @AARP‘s Facebook page. 

Social Media

• Shark Week: 20 million viewers; 1.6 million tweets; 35% of cable TV social conversations about Shark Week.
• The heart of everything you share on a social network is a story.
• There is marketer and audience. But we are all slaves to third party platforms we use.
• Engage your customers before you meet them.
• LinkedIn is an oft missed social property for brands; you already have a presence – use it.
• It takes 2 secs to create a channel; takes a lot longer to create a community.
• Ad dollars are moving online at a record pace- to display, video, mobile, social. Digital would outspend TV by 2016.
• Social networks reach 82% of the online population.
• Two types of social media: bridging (people not like you) and bonding (people like you).
• Must-read social media books from @gbyehuda: Connected, The Shallows, True Enough, Cognitive Surplus, Reality is Fun
• We talk a lot about listening & engagement but people still want to listen primarily for compliments.
• @devonvsmith‘s Twitter tools to check out: Crowdbooster, FollowerWonk, Topsy, Rowfeeder.
• What to share on social? 10% direct promos, 30% links to company content, 60% links to 3rd party content .
• The social web is about communities of interest.
• Google+ is driving engagement… but not traffic. Important for another reason.
• Pinterest generates more clicks than LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon and Twitter.
• Make everyone part of the social media team. Increases buy-in and brings new ideas to the table.
• PBS has a 1x/wk social strategy meeting that includes anyone who has an interest in social.
• Empower your staff to become your brand. People want to follow people, not organizations.

Images/Video/Audio

• Convey the significance of numbers with visuals.
• 90% of information transmitted to brain is visual. YouTube & Pinterest are platforms leveraging this statistic.
• Storify makes anyone a journalist; Instagram makes anyone a photographer. Users will be creative w/ your content.
• An Instagram is worth a thousand tweets.
• Turn quotes into images and use them on Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr.
• 40% of top brands have Instagram.
•  Approach every campaign by thinking about how it can be represented visually and in graphics.
• Video infographics are the immediate future of video marketing.
• 20% of online video views click away from a video in the first 10 seconds or less.
• People watch 12-14 minutes of live streaming vs. 2-3 on an archived platform (like YouTube).
• #1 reason to stream live media: to amplify a brand event.
• Facebook uses live streaming to connect w/ users who can’t be there. 1500 present, 450000 online.
• There is a tremendous opportunity in digital audio. Saves time. Think podcasts.
• Mobile photo apps can do 90% of what Photoshop can do.
• Visual marketing is the trend. Infographics rule.

Mobile

• 70% of desktop searches lead to transactions within a month. 70% of mobile searches lead to transactions within a day.
• 64% of mobile time is spent in apps.

Fundraising

• Simple thank you emails without ask for donation brought higher-than-average end-of-year donations for Nature Conservancy.

Word of mouth

• 80% of all purchase cycles involve some form of word of mouth recommendation.

Content

• Content strategy must be rich, repurpose, recycle. Write once; use many.
• Sweet spot for valuable content: Intersection of your goals w/ your customers’ interests & pain points.

For more from Digital East check out “Top 10 #DEast12 Tweets We Absolutely *Love*” from Ruiz McPherson Communications and the Storify “Digital East 2012: The 10 Best Things I Learned” by Dan Oshinsky of StryUs.

What would you add to this list? What are your key takeaways? What other Digital East 2012 blog posts or links to presentations have you gotten additional insights from? (Feel free to provide links below.)

I’d also like to thank Casey Higgins, Michael Murray, Leigh George, Scott Shepherd, Joseph Olesh, Philip Luca, Chris Brooks, Merge, Timberlake, Razoo, Extole, Amy Bridges, Yvette McKechnie, Angela Brown, David Plotz, A.K. Strout, Todd Thurman, Devon Smith, Mick Winters, Heather Kuldell, Melissa Makfinsky, Susan Cato, Allison Wallace, Kevin Dando, Christie Michalec, and so many others who made it fun and interesting and for their tweets, presentations, comments, and contributions to my understanding.