Social Media
Conference

With your social media strategy in a constant state of evolution, designing and refining your own image and video assets is a constant strain. In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore the tools, strategies and software for social design that can help every marketer and communicator — even those without large teams – improve their visual and video storytelling appeal and impact so it rivals those of big brands. You'll learn:

• Which images, photos and videos perform best across multiple social channels.
• How color theory, fonts and other design considerations can give images and videos the right context and impact.
• A step-by-step guide for creating infographics and other social-ready designs.
• What you must know about low-cost design tools like Canva
• Video toolkit: Quick tech recs and shooting tips for getting the most out of your equipment.
• On-camera design and branding considerations to make yourself or your spokespeople stand out.
• The TikTok effect: Adding fun, filters and flair to your videos—no matter what channel.

The podcasting boom is still on—with 504 million podcast listeners projected globally by 2024. So how can you compete for attention in today’s busy market? The answer is to ideate, script, record and produce your own niche-specific podcast as a critical asset to your larger social strategy—not as a standalone. In this workshop, you’ll partner with peers to:

• Ideate and refine a podcast idea that fits your brand voice and social strategy. 
• Learn how to start scripting and structuring your podcast based on your goals. 
• Select the best platforms, mics and audio software for your team. 
• Try your hand at recording and sourcing audio using tools like Squadcast. 
• Tap into the latest podcasting trends—like integrating podcasts with Twitch/YouTube to capture Gen Z and younger livestreaming audiences 
• Discover how podcasting can help drive DEI, employer branding and retention. 
• Discuss podcast publishing and promotion, including using RSS feeds and repurposing clips across social channels for maximum exposure.

There’s no need to stress the resources needed to pull-off an effective TikTok strategy. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to easily create a TikTok presence that drives awareness and generates ROI. Our trainers will guide you through a step-by-step process for adding a TikTok presence to your social media program — or improving the one you already have.

We’ll cover:

• Templates to borrow: Anatomy of a successful TikTok strategy and how to tailor it to your brand and audiences.
• How to set up and optimize your TikTok profile — and why this is so critical.
• How to identify the best formats, features, elements and trends on the platform that make sense for your brand.
• How to master TikTok ads.
• What’s next: What’s already outdated on TikTok — and how to stay relevant in 2023 (examples and approaches to emulate).
• Ways to make your first (or third) TikTok video a success. (We’ll workshop one together!)

Effective storytelling is algorithm agnostic. It creates connection and is the key to moving hearts and minds — no matter what channels you post to. Join to discover your best brand story — and the story structure, formats and elements you can use to bring it to life in a way that conjures emotion, drives inclusion and leads with empathy. This is the Rosetta stone you’ve been looking for if you want to galvanize your social media audiences while building trust, social equity and even corporate innovation through storytelling. You’ll learn:

• New research: How to achieve brand love with the ❤️and 🧠 of storytelling.
• The 5-Step Haystack Method: Interactive story prompts to hack your brain around storytelling. (We’ll do this together — it’ll be fun!)
• How to mine your organization — and TikTok — for the best brand stories.
• The 8 basic story structures and how to story design your own.
• How to extract the overarching themes of your story to make it social media ready.
• Data-driven storytelling: How to adapt stories to any feedback—and any channel.

Over half of marketers say they struggle to effectively execute multichannel audience strategies (Sprout Social). But showing up across various channels doesn’t mean your campaign will deliver the results you need—not if your efforts are fragmented. Join to see how to drive the convergence of promotional strategies across social, site, search and, yes, even email—by building campaigns around your organization’s “big moments.” This Condé Nast case study will show you how to connect the dots for more cohesive campaigns and better results. You’ll learn:

• Template: Anatomy of a winning multichannel audience strategy.
• Team: How Conde Nast structures and empowers a “central audience development group” that unites its social media, data/analytics, email, newsletter and SEO teams.
• Tentpole moments: How to align cross-platform promotional strategies on social, site, search and email around your organizations “big moments” (like Allure’s “Best of Beauty” awards).
• Testing: How Condé Nast uses learnings from TikTok, Instagram and SEO to inform its newsletter strategy—and vice versa.
• Trends: Where today’s audience behaviors are trending—and how to adjust accordingly. 
• Bonus: How Condé Nast uses Google Analytics to determine segmentation and digital personas—so you can do the same.

A crisis can strike at any moment, as we saw these past few years. The good news is you now likely play a more critical role than ever in keeping your public and employees informed, engaged — and safe. Here’s how to live up to those expectations with a monitoring plan that starts with listening and moves responses up the org chart. Together, we’ll hear some case studies on how brands deployed keen social strategies to manage and mitigate a crisis. You’ll learn:

• Lessons from the front lines: How others engaged and inspired friends, fans, followers and staff during the last few years of cascading crises.
• How to craft messages that convey confidence and eliminate uncertainty.
• Scenario training tips for using social media dashboards to identify emerging issues.
• How to design and deploy a social listening strategy on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and beyond.
• The best monitoring tools to track your reputation and adjust after the crisis.

The DIY mindset is taking over social media. Mastodon’s open-source social media platform is a prime example. But it’s also taking over what once was the domain of graphic designers, photographers and (potentially) videographers — thanks to AI art generators. Ad agencies are already using these tools — and now so can you, thanks to this interactive session. Learn what the buzz is about, including:

• The top AI generators: DALL-E2, Midjourney, Simplified, Stable Diffusion and more.
• Using AI image generators to hone brand voice and aesthetics. (FYI: Creating mood boards and brand guidelines is a snap!)
• Producing visual content at scale: Examples of social media posts, social ads, infographics, web site banners and even 3D videos created with AI imaging.
• Using AI images in long-form content like blog posts, newsletters and whitepapers.

• Updating your toolkit: Essential social media measurement tools. 
• How to set more meaningful social media measurement objectives in a downturn. 
• How to audit and adjust your social media in real-time so you can optimize results (i.e., reallocate precious dollars from what’s fizzling to what’s sizzling). 
• How to create an integrated dashboard to show how your social media positively impacts trust, internal and executive comms, employer branding and even media relations. 
• The trust factor: How one national organization is building trust via more authentic social media — and harnessing data to show progress. 
• Speaking the boss’s language: How to tie social media to ROI (yes, they’ll ask!). 
  

When the world changed in 2020, we were forced to change with it and pivot our approach from always needing to have an answer to learning how to ask the right questions and, most importantly, listen to our people. In this session, we’ll look at the strategies for surveys, active listening and other tried and true ways to collect employee feedback with a focus on what to do when engagement falls flat.

You’ll learn:

• Strategies for launching pulse surveys with the optimal cadence and length to keep engagement high.
• Tips for preparing people managers to hear individual employee concerns and escalate feedback when appropriate.
• Strategies for moderating difficult conversations around interpersonal conflicts, personal struggles and more that build trust and create a sense of belonging.
• Considerations for employee resource groups that give participants a voice and communication channel with executive support.

While you may recognize the value of our organization's leaders and experts crafting thought leadership, doing it right requires a good amount of work to happen before rushing right into it. In this session, we’ll explore some best practices from LinkedIn for identifying the right thought leaders that align with your goals to help shape the topics, content and cadence for your thought leadership.

You’ll learn:

• The latest research and insights on LinkedIn to help you better understand the audiences you can activate and how.
• How to take a goals and outcome-based approach to your thought leadership strategy with a focus on audience.
• Strategies for figuring out what topics align with your brand and the right execs.
• Tips for using LinkedIn can help you uncover data—with the help of an analyst or without.

Employee activism gets a bad rap, as the phrase is a misnomer for those who are speaking out against the practices or behaviors of your organization, leaking information and more. In this session, we’ll look at what it takes to address those internal critics directly with accountable, transparent dialogue that can transform those posing reputational risks into drivers of positive corporate change.

We’ll discuss:

• Recent examples of employee activism that could have been addressed sooner through employee advocacy.
• How to revise your employee ambassador program to include those who are most vocal and outspoken.
• Ways to process negative feedback that empower employees to drive positive change.
• Strategies to remind employees of policies around leaking confidential, proprietary information.

With every instance of employee turnover, merger and acquisition, brand crisis, and more, your organization faces pressure to manage the change proactively, communicating its impact on business and the stakeholders most closely affected. In this session, we’ll look at what it takes to communicate changes on social media and other 24/7 channels.

You’ll learn:

• How to determine when to deploy a social strategy to communicate change and when to hold back.
• Tips for using empathetic language that puts people at the front and center of your message.
• Strategies for partnering with legal counsel to craft language that feels human but protects your org from blowback.
• Social listening and response tactics for mitigating misinformation, disinformation and bad actors who post about your news.

In today’s landscape of reputational minefields and looming crises, employees and external audiences alike look at the words and behaviors of leaders as models for what an organization believes and practices. When the messages your executives share internally can become external news in an instant, it’s crucial that your executive messaging strategy includes comms, marketing and social media pros alike.

We’ll explore:

• What research says about the most effective platforms and mediums for executive comms, from LinkedIn posts and podcasts to blogs and micro-sites.
• Tips for coaching your leaders and executives to speak with intention for maximum social impact and stay on message in town halls, social media posts and more.
• Strategies for crafting ‘mixternal’ executive comms that can are safe to share internally and externally.
• Tactics for mitigating reputational damage when an exec goes off message on social media.