SAScon 2017 The Candidate Live Blog Day 2!

SAScon is a two day Social Media, Search and Analytics conference, this year held in The Contact Theatre on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st July 2017. Now in its 7th year, it has become a must in any Digital Marketer's diary. We are here to keep you updated on what is happening and you can do this by following this live blog that we will be updating constantly throughout the day. 

Day two at SAScon! Read on to learn about a guide to social media, Google’s SEO Fred Update, SEO overview, PPC, Paid Media, Social Media, Display, Analytics, Tag marketing, influencer marketing, CRO, native advertising, virtual reality media and much much more. Read our live blogging from sessions here!

9:20am, 

We are back underway for SAScon day 2! 

9:50am, 

David Levin - Creative Director, That Lot 

David is kicking off day 2 with "a Hitchhikers Guide to the Social Media Galaxy"

10:00am, 

Writing for Social

10:05am, 

It's important to make your content as attractive as possible. 'Timeline invasions' can help to take over people's timelines with engaging and innovative ideas. 

10:09am, 

Spot Golden Moments

Try to capture everyday funny moments and turn it into a story which will capture your audience's attention.

10:14am, 

The Power of Engagement

A big part of social media is identifying and engaging with your target audience as often people reach out for advice and this can boost the power of your brand. Banter on social media can really catch fire and this can grab people’s attention!

10:18am,  

Brands have started encouraging in house writers to produce funny social media content. 

10:24am, 

Video

To produce the perfect social media video, always ensure that you follow these 4 tips:

1. Make sure that it is relatable as possible
2. Always have a strong opening
3. Ensure it can be understood on mute as many people watch videos with no sound
4. Analyse whether landscape or portrait works best for your video

10:28am, 

GIFS

GIFS can be used to tell stories or they can be topical, this is where you can put your brand spin on it in order to drive engagement

10:35am,

Social Media can help with many situations

Sometimes social media unites against evil! It only takes one post to go viral, ultimately leading to people rallying together to offer support or make light of the situation.

10:41am,

David’s parting statement - ‘Social media can be a beautiful thing!’  

10:47am, 

Dan Wigley - Director of Analytics and Optimisation, iProspect

10:50am, 

Personalisation

Use data to identfy an individual at the point of interaction; delivering a relevant addressable message.

10:52am, 

Three steps to optimise your website.

1. Get your website uploading as quick as possible
2. Do MVT and A/B testing
3. Carry out qualitative optimisation

10:54am,

Data Hygiene 

3 common mistakes

1. Pll
2. ‘Fake traffic’ 
3. Query parameters

11:01am, 

Do you know your customers? Once you know who your customers are, you can start to apply the following:

11:07am, 

Enhanced ecommerce reports are used to provide granular data.  It allows you to identify which product has the highest abandonment rate in order to provide you with an insight into the favourite products on your website. It’s simple to use and highly cost effective which can also help establish your customers’ performances.

11:10am, 

Audiences

Regardless of their interests or behaviours, people have the same website experience. Repeat customers benefit more from personalisation as opposed to companies who generate new customers continuously because of the level of fierce competition.

11:11am, 

Segments of 1 don’t exist…..

Focus should be around ‘users’ who display the same behaviour. There is no need to focus on the individual.

11:15am,

Here’s a secret! Google analytics already houses this data for you….. Optimise 360 has leveled the playing field amongst different sized businesses as it seamlessly links audiences from Google Analytics and provides them with the ability to personalise their website.

11:18am, 

Making personalisation a reality

11:55am,

Russell McAthy, CEO - CUBED

12:01pm, 

Russell talks to us about the Marketing Funnel:

Top of the funnel refers to brand advertising which will have a long term impact and very high CPA rate.

Mid funnel refers to brand, product, will have a mid term impact and mid level CPA (will look to convert these people in the future, but not today)

Bottom funnel - This will have an instant impact but very low CPA

12:06pm,

Micro-conversion

Businesses need to set up a micro-conversion because it shows us that the person has intent to purchase either a product or service with you in the future. They are engaging with your brand and trying to hint that they will choose your brand over your competitors at some point in the future.

12:11pm, 

Russell states that LAG between first interaction and conversion is underplayed!

12:15pm, 

‘I’m of the opinion that any business in the world will need attribution in the future, therefore, they will need to have a solid understanding of the middle funnel today’ Russell states. 

12:20pm, 

We should be looking at customers which have an intent to purchase, but haven’t yet converted. We need to analyse whether or not they are going to convert in the next two weeks by looking at their history. As an example; if a customer adds a product to a basket then they are more likely to convert as opposed to someone who leaves the website within a short period of time. This is where algorithms are useful for businesses because they help companies to identify the probability of conversions, based on a number of key factors.

12:25pm, 

A quick summary:

1. Marketing to the middle of funnel is the future
2. Micro conversion are amazing
3. PPC spending is typically inefficient
4. LAG analysis is key to understand consumers
5. Last Non-Direct is scarily in accurate
6. Attribution is key to understand value

12:35pm, 

Hana Bednarova, Digital PR Manager - Techmark

Hana talks to us about how to adapt your content campaigns for maximum results.  

12:40pm, 

Campaigns 

Unfortunately, plan A doesn’t always deliver the results you desire even after you’ve researched and budgeted your campaign to perfection. Businesses then need to analyse where it all went wrong! From time to time, tweaks can be made to drive the results that you desire when the product or service is relaunched.

12:45pm, 

The best plan of action is to have a Plan B already in the pipeline as you can use elements to support your original plan.

Plan B tactics must have the following elements:

12:48pm,

Steps that need to be taken to relaunch:

1. Review your data, there must be some other (maybe slightly less interesting) newsworthy story
2. Create several images (little media-friendly visuals) and pitch it to the press that like using images in their articles
3. Always review your content - turn your content campaign upside down and if your original content was negative, go with a positive angle instead
4. Turn your press release into several features and articles featuring your original data

12:54pm,

Here are some quick plan B tips for creating coverage:

12:57pm,

“Odd numbers work much better for blog publications” Hana states

13:02pm, 

Watch out for journalists’ requests

There are mixed relationships between journalists and clients, often a love hate relationship.

'HARO - help a reporter out. Great website for getting your content into journalists hands'

13:05pm, 

Competitions are always beneficial, creates great coverage and promotes entries. This results in producing new data sets which are useful to analyse.

13:07pm, 

Always have a... 

14:40pm,

David Norris, Creative Director - Snapchat 

14:45pm, 

It’s the final talk of SASCon 2017 and David Norris from Snapchat talks to us about why the minidisk still matters!

Snapchat is different for everyone, it’s taken a stand for how things should be now. Its making the switch between cursor and camera by being an invitation to create.

This has resulted in an unbelievable 3 billion snapchats a day! 

14:58pm, 

From a user point of view, Snapchat has a really unique audience because 40% of daily snapchatters cannot be found on Instagram. A key differentiator is that you only share it with your best friends

15:02pm, 

As a brand, you can utilise filters and snap ads to promote your brand to users worldwide. It allows companies to bring creative ideas to life whilst engaging with users

15:10pm, 

Businesses are also able to build experiences for their users to share globally

15:17pm,

The word playtime is the most powerful metric in marketing. The ability to play with the world around you is exciting for everyone. We are getting to a place where the experiences we create will be astonishing.

15:23pm, 

Snapchat is a private place where sometimes you can share it with snapchatters across the globe. A lot of high profile companies such as Formula 1 have decided to share their story with fans.

15:25pm,

Human Curation

Over 200 employees across the globe, quality check all videos to ensure that they represent all brands accurately before distributing it on their Snapchat’s story.

We work with brands, by getting them to create exclusive content which can be utilised on our platform.

The mini disk is important, from a Snapchat perspective, because as user you save it and have chosen to save that memory.

15:30pm, 

Thats a wrap from this years SAScon 2017 convention! Thank you for joining us throughout this blog!