Okay, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for inviting me. If you're using social media on a personal level, please stand up, please rise. If you have Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Snap... Whatever account.
Just right. You should stand on the chair. Right. Very good.
Now, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. I need you all standing up.
All standing up. Now, sit down if you have only a personal account and you don't have an account for your business. Okay? If you don't have social media accounts for your business, sit down. Okay, so all of you have a personal account and business account, right?
Okay, sit down if you think that you're still at the moment far beyond reaching the full potential of social media, of what it can do for your business. Well, that was a really easy way to get people sitting down. And what we'll do today...
Okay, and what we'll do today is we'll try to look at three things that change the digital environment in which we're operating. Look about the people using it, a little bit about the technology which will match some of the things that we heard earlier, and end up with 10 practical things, or actually more of 10 questions, that by answering them can maybe help you that the next time I'll meet you and ask you this question, you won't immediately sit down. So starting with people, as you've seen around you, living in the age of social media.
If we have now over 2 billion Facebook users, over 800 million Instagram users, everybody are on social media. On the one hand, it's an opportunity, it's a marketing platform. Where the only, only limitation, as Robert said, is your imagination.
Everything is possible, everything is within reach. And at the same time, there is so much competition that's happening on the social media. There's so much information.
Every 60 seconds on Facebook, a quarter of a million... picture are being posted and 70,000 hours of videos are being watched. And the strongest muscles in our body, I suspect to be this one, the scrolling one. And so we have these endless opportunities, but in order to really capture the opportunity, we have to battle All these notes really stand out from the crowd, really to see how we are becoming the thing that will get an attention span of more than three seconds, which is what most posts usually get. If you are on vacation, you're definitely going to share your holiday pictures online, right?
Of course, you have to brag about it. You earn it very well. You want to brag.
That's perfect. Now, the people who are seeing it are not, some of it are scrolling through it for sure, but also some of it helps to bring in inspiration. And we know that at least half of travelers admit that seeing other user pictures and their posts on social media inspire them in traveling, in choosing an attraction, in choosing a hotel.
So... We know that it's not only an opportunity, but this opportunity actually leads people towards conversion. And it brings us even further into the question of how should we capture this opportunity? We've heard the word millennial a few times earlier today.
This is a global generation, a digital generation, a generation that sees no barriers between people, a generation that believes that travel is an essential part of life. a consumerist generation, a generation that sees themselves as the sum of all their experiences. That's why they want to get as much experience as possible.
But this generation communicates completely different than any other generation. And if you want to connect to these people, these people account now for about one third of outbound travel from Europe. If you want to hook into this market, we really have to speak in their language.
So another challenge that we have here. Let's look a little bit about technology and see a few of the things that are happening around there. First of all, maybe I'll start with a question. Who here, raise your hand, if you think that video is the most important type of content that should be published on social media? Raise your hand if you think that video is the most important.
Okay, so I'm not going to continue to my second question. And I'm going to convince you that... When the heads of Facebook were asked on several different interviews how they imagined Facebook in two, three years from today, all of them said that they imagined a platform that 90% of it is going to be video. If we're looking at the algorithm of Facebook and Instagram, it promotes video. A video post can get...
Twice organic reach, twice better organic reach than an image. Not mentioning sharing a link or a picture or anything like that, that really get the bottom down of organic reach. Video is the king, is king.
And we see it in all kind of platforms of video. Could be just regular video, could be live video, could be now what? the Facebook TVs happening and launching around us, or it could be a video in a story.
All of that. So it has to be. We have to transform together with the platforms and create more video content. If we mention the algorithm, so we've slowly seen, and I'm sure that you as business owners saw it the most, how our organic reach, that used to be around an average of 16%, about three or four years ago, has dropped down to as low as 2% these days. And actually, there are some chances that organic exposure of businesses will drop down and be very, very close to zero.
If you want to advertise in a newspaper, you have to pay the newspaper. That's part of life, right? That's obvious. And maybe the day that if you want to advertise, if you want to have content, published by a business on Facebook, you would have to pay for that. Maybe these days are not as far as people might imagine.
And we see some changes in the algorithm that leads towards that way. By the way, until about half a year ago, if you want to advertise on Facebook, you needed to have an account. There needed to be an account that this would be the center of activity. And from this account, you would run campaigns or boosts or whatever.
Today, all you need is a credit card. You don't need to have an account. So it's really become much more like the traditional advertising. Following Snap and the stories that get lost within 24 hours, we see more of these stories. We have stories on Facebook, on Instagram, on WhatsApp, on Messenger, and just...
Two weeks ago, also YouTube launched stories, which are at the moment limited to people only that have a certain number of followers. And this is a different content that we should produce, a content that is much more playful, much more fun, much more colorful. But also we should plan for that. And wherever there is a new technology, wherever there is a new platform, All the algorithms are in favor of early adapters. So when we step up with technology and take advantage of live video, which is not so fresh anymore, and stories and so forth, we get a better promotion in the algorithm.
Just to remind you, you have the regular algorithm, the top-down, the scroll-up-to-down algorithm, and then on Facebook and Instagram you have a horizontal. Algorithm for the stories which work differently and it's another opportunity to get exposure and create content which is much more fun and much more engaging for your audience. When people are thinking about social media marketing, it's mainly Facebook and Instagram, right?
But with different audiences, we're looking at, with different audiences and with different age groups, we're looking. at different platforms. Youngsters these days, millennials, they have Facebook, but they don't use it very often.
If we're looking at American youngsters in the age group of 18 to 24, only one quarter of them see Facebook as their main platform for communication, and the most common one is Snap, which is a whole different game. Some audiences prefer Instagram, Pinterest and others. Like we have to communicate in a way or in the words that cater for our audience or maybe listen to their pain, we should also look up and see which channels they are using and see how we can tap into these channels.
So we've seen that there are changes in the way people act. And there are changes in technology, and there are many more changes. We've just mentioned a few.
But how should this affect what we're doing today afternoon when we're going back to our business and say what we should do with our social media? And I want to bring you 10 things that you can bring to the social media that reflect on these changes in people and in technology. This is Lori.
Lori is a Canadian. She's a food forger. It means she goes around the... Around the forest, she gathers food, and she gathers all kinds of food, and she cooks whatever she finds. She has a highly successful social media activity, and because people are driven, are following her, because there's something authentic, inspiring, and real about her story.
She doesn't give us a nice suit-and-tie persona. the cliches that we've mentioned, but she brings a real lorry that sometimes has a good day when she finds good things in the forest and sometimes has a lousy day and cooks whatever she makes and sometimes it's becoming really delicious and sometimes it doesn't taste very good. And you can see how she spits in front of the camera. That's authentic.
That's real. Like we can identify a fake. We can also identify when something is real and happening. And if you manage to bring your unique you, your inspiration, the thing that really drives you...
I can tell you that I was trying to pull myself out of bed this morning at 7 a.m. It was complete dark outside. It was really hard. I come from a sunnier place.
And the thing that drives you, that pulls you out of bed in 7 a.m., well, maybe it's the kids screaming, but if it's not the kids screaming, if it's something that has to do with your business... That's what should be on your social media. That kind of content. The content that's inspiring and engaging. Before coming here, that's a promotion, right?
Before coming here, I searched on my favorite social media 10 things to do in Riga. Free afternoon in Latvia. I wonder, I'm part of that.
400 touch points. I keep on searching for the last, since we agreed that I'm coming here for the last few months, I've been keep on searching randomly about things to see, things to do, Latvian food, hotels, whatever. And at least for me, I keep coming back to content that provides me value. Not talking content that talks about the brand and how good they are, because that's boring, but watching it for me.
And in every piece of content that you publish, I want you to ask yourself, why should someone read it? Does it provide real value? Will this article be of real interest? Will someone search and find this piece of content and see how you can get more and more yes to this answer? One of the best times to post content on social media is...
after lunchtime. Why is that? What's the level of energy in the brain after lunchtime? Zero, close to zero, let's say. Okay, people still breathe, close to zero.
People spend the most time on social media after lunchtime, when they can't work, and after they put their kids to bed, which is exhausting by itself, at least in my case. Sorry. So for sure, your content should be something that people would love to consume at 10.30 p.m. And when you're creating content, you should think about content, not all of it, that would be fun to consume, just the way people enjoy seeing cats'videos in the middle of the night. We've mentioned the algorithm earlier, and I want to crack into the algorithm again for a minute.
The number one thing that will drive your organic reach up is engagement. Content that's being shared and content that in the first half an hour or an hour creates real engagement, real conversation. And you should ask yourself in every piece of content that you create, what kind of conversation... Does it create?
How can people take part in co-creating this content? Will someone share this post? And why will they share this post?
It could be something quite cheesy, which is surprisingly still effective, such as, I don't know, what was the most romantic sunset, or what kind of food would you like to try while in Riga? But it could be anything creative. that will really drive the conversation.
And you will be surprised to see how people are looking forward to start a conversation just when they are being asked. I keep seeing it and I keep being surprised by how easy it is sometimes to get this kind of engagement. At least half of your content, half of the content that you're publishing, should not come from you. It should be done by your partners, ambassadors, clients, visitors, league of whatever. Whatever you have around you, this should be creating at least half of your content.
Okay, even if you're a small business. You should really think how every person that comes in your door is an ambassador, a content creator, and this person will create a story, and this story will be much better from the story that you're creating, because it will be real, it will be authentic, it will be trustworthy. There's going to be something genuine about it that you as a business will never be able to create.
Nick told us earlier how in Helsinki, in our destination, they'd be coming into a situation from the destination creating 100% of the content to the destination creating 0% of the content. And I don't think necessarily this should be the case for small businesses. But we should try to get to the situation where half of the content that we upload should not be our content, but content that tells the story of our brand for people who actually experience their brand.
experience this brand and they can share how they feel about it. We learned earlier that Lantvia brings in a lot of influencers, which is very common in the industry. But we should think, as small and medium tourism enterprises, not on influencers, but on micro-influencers. People that have maybe 10,000 or 5,000 followers on Instagram or other channels and see how we can get these people engaged.
Maybe a local celebrity, maybe a chef that has a lot of followers, maybe a local model, maybe someone. We will bring someone from the target audience. Someone not a mega-slab, but someone on a small scale who can help us just to get a little bit better. On exposure, or a little bit better, on the number of followers that we had, I was running a campaign for the city of Jerusalem quite recently, and we brought millennials, we brought people in their mid-20s who had something like 15,000, 20,000 followers on Instagram. These are not Instagram celebs, but these are micro-influencers.
They were really easy. It was really easy to get them. We didn't have to...
wait in line a year and a half ahead, we didn't have to pay them anything, we just covered their expenses. And these people created amazing content that, first of all, we used it as user-generated content, but also they created an amazing exposure for us. And you know what? They were much more engaged and excited about creating this content than these big influencers that do it all day long as a full-time job.
And we should really think about identifying these little influencers who can really help us to boost our business in this type of audience we're searching for. This is a restaurant not far from where I live. An average video they upload to Facebook gets around 500 views. The video that you see behind you got... 60 000 views okay 120 times more views than a regular video and the difference is very simple there are regular videos oh you jumped sorry okay the video played very briefly so now i will not touch it Just to be sure.
And the difference is very simple. The regular videos they upload is just one of their employees take with their phones about people coming to restaurant or the chef cooking a dish or whatever. But they decide, okay, let's spend some money on creating this video.
And instead of creating this video yourself, we'll pay someone, a video editor, we'll pay him a few hundred dollars. to create a video that would look half professional. It's not a fully professional video. And the results were amazing.
And on any given day, I suggest you to save the money that you put on promotion and boosting your content, and put that money into creating super high-quality content. Instead of having an okay content and then paying a lot of money to promote it, Just create a re... Spend this money and create a really good content and that would be much easier for this content to go around the net.
If we will work, it's not our... I put it in different ways. It's not enough to work hard, but we need to work hard over time.
We talked about, we've mentioned a 365 work plan for social media, and I think that maybe for small businesses that's a little too challenging to think so far ahead, but what is much more applicable is to think just one month in advance, have core guidelines about what are stories, what's a unique selling proposition, what's the tone of voice, what kind of message we try to convey, who's our audience, what kind of fun and creative and playful stuff we want to get, and seeing how, from month to month, we can develop this content plan that will touch on three points. On regular, like the day-to-day content, seven days a week content. By the way, content on the weekends gets better exposure than content on the weekdays, so don't be lazy. Think about lives and stories and all kinds of this, let's say, more informal content, and also about how we're there not only to put the content, but also to drive the conversation and to lead engagement and make sure that when someone posts something on our wall or creates a comment, it's not just there and being left there, but it's being used. to really create a conversation, a lively conversation, that would engage more users and would engage the friends of the person who commented, and really see how this day-to-day work will bring over, will be built over time, to build our strength.
So we should look at it not as a sprint run, but as a long-distance running. Take the patience, do it on the right volume, with the right people, and work overtime. Raise your hand if you know what was your organic engagement rate in November. Just one, thank you. Evaluation or improvement could be a big management word.
But if we want to bring them down to simple numbers, things such as what was our last month's reach and how we topped it this month, what was the last month's... engagement rate and how we top it that month, this month. What was the exposure to videos and how we top it this month and really see how we improve from month to month.
Find the time in the beginning of every month to conduct an evaluation of all the content that was posted on the previous month. See what you have done, what worked, what didn't work. Learn from it and see how you can improve from one month to the next one. If you're doing the same things and you're expecting different results, that absolutely doesn't make any sense. So you really have to learn and see how you can get better and how all the insights that you have and all the data is out there.
It's on your profile. You just go there and see. You should use it to learning and for improvement.
And the last point, this is a picture of a living room of a hotel. where I recently stayed in Portugal. My wife found it, not on Google, and not on Booking, and not on TripAdvisor, but on a blog that deals with interior design.
She's a designer. We read, and she said, oh, we're going to Portugal. I saw on this really beautiful blog about design, I saw they were talking about this hotel. Let's go and visit there and stay there if we're already in the country. And we should not put all our eggs in one basket.
The Google algorithm, it changes. Booking algorithm both changes and also they might become even more, don't quote me on that one, even more greedy than they are today. Facebook and Instagram. constantly changes, and in small businesses, it will become, or it could become, harder and harder to compete with the big businesses on top organic results on Google, on Booking, and on Facebook.
And we should think 360, think beyond the giants of Google and Facebook and Instagram and Booking. and really see how we can use public relations, and blogs, and podcasts, and little influencers, and even the printed guidebooks. People still read them.
Some people still read them, I don't. And really see how we can work in every possible channel that we have in order to bring people to us and get the message across. So, to conclude...
People are changing all the time, especially when it comes to technology. Ten years ago, nobody here would really know what's Facebook, what's Instagram, and why do we need internet on our phones 24-7. Today, about two-thirds of Americans, the first thing that they do in the morning is they check their mobile phone in bed, okay, before brushing their teeth. People are changing.
Technology, algorithm, platforms, stories, videos, all that is changing, transforming on a day-to-day basis. So if both of these are changing, it doesn't make any sense that our marketing would be the same as it was last year, or even three years ago. And we should transform and move forward. And I hope that these little 10 tips, or these little...
Ten points of attention help you to go back to your businesses and see how you can take what you learned today and put in your business for growing and for having a better business tomorrow. Thank you very much.