Social Media in a Mobile World – Pubcon Liveblog

Two social media managers are sharing their strategy when it comes to social for mobile specifically, in this Pubcon Las Vegas session aptly titled “Social Media in a Mobile World.”

Tips for Surviving Social Media in a Mobile World

Cynthia Johnson (@CynthiaLive), director of marketing and social media at RankLab, has five tips for social media on mobile.

Tip 1: Know where to spend your time. You can’t be everywhere all time. Mobile web traffic surpasses desktop. 85% of the time spent on mobile is spent on apps. Mobile users tend to share twice as much as desktop users.

Top Apps

• Facebook
• YouTube
• FB Messenger
• Google Search
• Pandora

Tip 2: Understand the goal of mobile app: it’s that you never, never leave. Once you leave an app, chances are you won’t come back for 15 minutes.

Tip 3: Be aware of dark social media. Dark social is the direct traffic that you can’t track. According to RadiumOne, “dark social represents more sharing activity than Facebook and all other public sharing channels combined.” An example of direct traffic on social is when a user clicks a link from Instagram. The solution is URL building.

Tip 4: Make sure your content is mobile-friendly. If content isn’t structured to fit a mobile device, it won’t be seen properly. To learn more about your Facebook audience, use Nuvi.com. Use Twitter cards. You get more space when you create a Twitter card:

Tip 5: Before you optimize connect and inform. Link everything. When they leave your app or site, you ideally want them going to another one of your properties. Use markup on your website add your social profiles to the Google Knowledge Panel. Even if it doesn’t show up, this is important because it’s letting Google know who you are.

Super-Charged Social Media Analytics

Kendall Bird (@SimplyMeK), handles social media for Collegis. Social media, she says, is all about expression and connections. Photos, videos, tweets, likes, shares – we’re doing this as people and as brands. It’s more than this, though – you must know the ROI. Social media is not just fun and games.

Social media is a powerful weapon for a brand. All platforms have native diagnostics. How do you tell the story based on these numbers? Track the numbers through native dashboards and third-party app vendors like HootSuite Analytics.

Turning Diagnostics into KPIs

You must look at web traffic from social media. You must track with Google Analytics. Use the Social report found in Acquisition. Here, you can find network referrals, trackbacks, conversions, user flower and more, and you can segment these factors by specific social platforms.

Build a dashboard that highlights your KPIs. This is how you showcase economic value to stakeholders.

One of Bird’s clients had a piece of content was shared more than 2,200 times on Twitter. After a little digging, Bird discovered it was a professor from Texas who tagged three people in his original tweet, and then those people tweeted it out, and it spread like wildfire. These are the kinds of stories she uses analytics to find.

How do we work smarter rather than harder? Use tools, like:

• HootSuite: analytics platform.
• RiteTag: Google Chrome plugin that automatically populates hashtag info.
• Keyhole: a hashtag helper.
• TrueSocialMetrics: plugin in social networks and analyze historical data up.
• Google Analytics: fall in love with it; this is where stories are told.

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.