What's up everyone.
Welcome back to the Freelance Friday podcast.
We are here today at Social Media Marketing World 2024.
I'm going to be speaking tomorrow, but we're going to see if we can snag
some friends, some partners, some attendees and see how the conference
is going for them so far this year.
So let's get to it!
Who are you and what do you do?
Oh my gosh, the question of the day, after the 50th time.
Uh, I'm Valeria.
I am a social media manager as well as a UGC creator.
So, we're here at Social Media Marketing World 2024.
Tell me what social media marketing trend or, you know, format or practice
you're most excited for this year.
Oh, it's funny that I'm speaking to you, but I'm like, I wanted to delve into
like long form, uh, short form is great.
I love it.
Um, but I have, I feel like I have a lot in my mind and brain.
I can just ramble on.
So it's hard to get it into like 60 seconds or less.
So utilizing long form and then, uh, Opus is here.
So I just saw the chat with, uh, AI 50 different types of AI tools that you
can use in your social media marketing.
So definitely leveraging that to, Okay.
Yeah.
To use in social media.
So yeah, that's awesome.
I'm Aniston.
I am the U.
S.
manager, marketing manager at Metrical, um, and I also do a
little bit of SEO and copywriting.
Amazing.
Tell me about, we're here at Social Media Marketing World, tell me
what social media marketing trend you're most excited for in 2024.
I think the transition back to long form content, um, is most exciting, especially
for copywriters who, you know, spend a lot of time, um, in their content.
And I hope that, um, you know, that means more people will read.
Yeah.
Articles again.
Yeah.
So are you, for Metrical, are you like writing articles, blogs?
You guys came out with a amazing study, a few amazing studies, right?
So tell us a little bit about like how you guys are investing in SEO.
Yeah.
So we definitely, you know, want to promote our tool, but also give
education for marketing, social media, and then obviously the analytics of.
Um, so I think that's been really important of providing our
audience with the resources and the education behind, you know,
the marketing and the social media.
So we don't just give them a tool and they don't really understand it.
Um, so, yeah, um, Ashley Baker and I have a social media management business called
lavishly social and I'm based in Canada.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah.
We've known each other a little bit on social media for a So you've
been doing this for a few years now, probably so cool to meet in person.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Tell me, um, what is like a social media trend or format or platform?
Just what are you excited about in the world of social media marketing right now?
Um, I think reels.
I really, really love to create reels.
I kind of go through like creative stages where I'm just like, okay, like
I want to just, uh, I'll just batch create when I'm just feeling the vibe.
And I like to do funny ones, lip syncing and, um, kind of
like throw that in between.
Um, I know B roll content is.
like amazing right now and it's doing really well.
So it's just kind of like having that balance between the two.
Yeah.
I love it.
You're good at them.
Thank you.
What have been some big takeaways for you?
I know we're still kind of early in day one, but anything like really stand out to
you from the talks you've been to so far?
Um, it's been more of the talks outside of the actual events.
I think that's connections that we're building here.
Um, chatting with people.
There's so much, um, to take in.
It's really overwhelming.
Um, if you have like, I don't know, the all access pass, I don't have my thing
on right now, but you can always rewatch them later is the connections in the.
The people connection that you can't have on demand.
So there's that and learning from people's stories.
Yeah, for sure.
I know you guys are a sponsor, so you've been probably on the exhibitor
floor a lot, but have you been able to catch any of the sessions so far?
Yeah, I went to Jessica Stanbury's this morning for YouTube
thumbnails, which was amazing.
Um, We also do, you know, a lot of YouTube content for our channel.
And it was really, really nice to hear her tips.
Um, and she's hilarious.
So yeah, I, I'm excited to go to more and yours tomorrow as well.
Have you had any big like aha moments from social media marketing
world or any big takeaways?
Yeah, I feel like we've been kind of just going to the like speakers
where it's just like more our niche and just kind of like seeing other
creators perspectives as to like where they're where they come from, right?
Because they've been doing it for so long and they have
huge followings and all this.
So it's just like, okay, like I can do that too.
And it's just them kind of breaking it down.
And they're like, just normal people like us.
And so they're just You know, everything's always changing.
So we're all kind of learning together, but yeah, just knowing
that that's the back of my head.
Yeah.
It's so helpful to be around people that get you totally.
Yeah, exactly.
So day one themes that I've heard over and over again are long form content.
A lot of people are wanting to take the life of their short form videos and
extend that, which is actually what I'm talking about today in my session, which
is all about the video marketing flywheel.
I'm going to be using short form and long form videos together to really
like, you know, tell your story, get more conversions, more leads, all the things.
So I'm really looking forward to that talk.
And another theme.
That I heard a lot of yesterday was AI, which we're going to
touch on that a little bit in my session as well in the session.
I talk about some different tools that you can use to make sort of
the repurposing process easier.
A couple of my favorites are cast magic, which is great for podcasts.
That's kind of how I started using it, but I also share in my presentation, how
you can take your short form videos like a tick tock and help expand the life of
it by getting LinkedIn posts, newsletters,
I also talk about munch, which I've talked about here on the podcast before,
which enables you to do the opposite.
So take a long form video and make it short form.
So that's my talk today.
Those are some of the trends from day one.
I'll come back for an update after the session and let you
know what else I've learned.
Oh my gosh.
Can I get that as like my alarm clock or something?
Can I need you to record that for me please?
That was amazing.
Thank you so much for being here.
This is so fun.
Well, I have a few questions.
LaTosha, do you mind?
May I ask a few questions?
Go for it.
All right.
And you've talked about a lot of things already, but I'm curious,
what are some of the common problems that you're thinking about?
Everybody who comes through and talks with you has these one, two or
three things that they're all doing.
They could all do better.
What do you find?
Well, I think focus.
Again, I think this is where I say focus on two key platforms.
You can repurpose to the rest of them.
You know, you can, I'm building my TikTok just by repurposing
shorts and podcast clips.
You don't need to do all the things, especially if you're a very small team.
And I'm back with some notes.
All right.
So I already told you that AI was a big trend at social media marketing world.
No surprise there, right?
There was a session called 50 AI tools or something like that, that you can
use with your marketing, which is wild.
I didn't even know that many AI tools existed.
Now with that said, well, I also heard a lot of excitement about AI and a lot
of tools mentioned and things like that.
I also heard a lot more hesitancy or.
You know, smart questions about AI that I think I heard last year at
this time, which is interesting.
And you all know that I've got questions for sure.
When it comes to generative AI, super generative AI, like let's
create poof, something out of nothing or the potential for.
You know, issues, scams, things like that.
A lot of people did have questions, both I heard about it in sessions, but also
just talking to other creators personally.
So I think that's good.
I think the kind of novelty of AI, I don't want to say it's worn off, but
people are thinking a little bit more strategically and saying like, what does
this all mean and how can we really use this ethically and in a meaningful way?
So that's a good thing if you ask me.
Second big trend I also talked about a little bit, but long form content,
a lot of people that I talked to said that they were looking forward to this,
that they had this, you know, on their list as something that they know, knew
they needed to do, uh, Kenya Kelly.
She is a Tik Tok, uh, educator.
She is fantastic.
Also, I got to meet her and she is wonderful side note, but she taught a
session all about converting Tik Tok.
Followers over to an email list.
And so this idea of either long form content or just email funnels or whatever
that is, I think people are, are again, kind of understanding, all right, we
had this novelty of short form content at this time last year, we were all so
excited by it, but what does it all mean?
How do we actually make it all work together to, you
know, impact our businesses?
Bottom line, and I think people are really thinking about that.
That's what my session was all about as well.
I'll give you kind of like the long story short of it.
So it was about using short form content and long form content together.
And my theory on it is that short form content is good for a couple of things.
One, it's good for.
Attracting people, getting people's attention, getting eyeballs on your
name, on your accounts and all that.
It's also good for those quick kind of impulse low ticket purchases.
So if I've got a 10 book that you can buy on Amazon.
Yeah.
I mean, I know.
So many friends, so many author friends who are absolutely crushing it on
book talk because it's just so easy.
It's so low tickets, kind of a no brainer product.
Same thing.
I have a lot of friends who do UGC for Tik TOK for cosmetics brands, things
that are, you know, under 50, they fly off the shelves on those platforms.
However, for something like coaching or consulting or a marketing agency or
online education, or even a podcast, you know, like listening to somebody's
advice week after week, that relationship is really built via long form content.
I'm not saying you can never build it through TikTok or Instagram or something,
but I really think nothing compares to the relationship that's built on a
longer form platform, ideally a longer form video platform like YouTube.
And I think a lot of short form creators are starting to realize that.
This and, and creators overall are kind of realizing that we've got to be able
to make the two work together because while YouTube is great for relationship
building, it's not necessarily as good as Instagram reels or YouTube shorts,
even at attracting a new audience for me.
So I've got to be able to repurpose this content, create new content for
those other platforms and kind of make it all work together and get
people to join my flywheel, which was what my session was all about.
Okay, LinkedIn was another big trend.
I heard about LinkedIn so much over the course of the three days of
the conference, Michelle J Raymond, she taught a class on LinkedIn.
I think there was one other session on LinkedIn that I wasn't able to
catch, but we were actually talking at the speaker party about it as well.
And I was just telling her, I was like, I think LinkedIn is
really having a moment right now.
It's where I have gotten most of my leads already this year.
And I teach freelancers and I'm always trying to encourage them
to start Scoot over to LinkedIn.
And, you know, one of the things that I think people are hesitant
about, why they're hesitant to get on LinkedIn is because of
this kind of stigma of LinkedIn.
Or let me rephrase.
I think I hear from a lot of people that I'm afraid to get on LinkedIn.
It intimidates me.
I don't know what to say.
I don't want to sound stupid.
And I think that going deeper is because of the stigma of LinkedIn, that it's
like very like sales bro, or that it's just very polished and professional.
You know, most of us get on LinkedIn to upload our resume
and apply for traditional jobs.
So it's kind of like, how do I build a personal brand on LinkedIn?
It can be challenging, but I actually don't really think it is.
And Michelle's session talked about this, the features that you should be using and
how to find your voice and all of that.
But.
That's my answer is be yourself, you know, be yourself.
You do not need to pretend to be somebody that you're not.
I actually really want to do a LinkedIn workshop for freelancers specifically.
I've been wanting to teach this just because I'm really passionate about it.
And I just see so much opportunity on LinkedIn right now.
And I see a lot of people focusing on platforms where there isn't a
lot of opportunity or where it's really hard to get your content seen.
Okay.
The next trend I saw a lot of, not really a trend, but just.
topic that was being talked about a lot, which I'm really happy
about is analytics and data.
There was a GA4, Google Analytics 4 presentation.
There was a meta ads data session.
I think there was one for LinkedIn ads as well.
I don't think I caught that one, but also just the sponsors that were on the floor.
It was interesting because a lot of them had a data element and
were really You know, leading with that data element as well.
My favorite and longtime sponsor of the Freelance Friday
Podcast, Metricool was there.
They have amazing data and analytics in their tool, but there were other
tools that were on the floor too, that really focused on analytics
and spreadsheets and reports.
And I love to see that because, you know, social media is great.
Uh, looking pretty, looking nice, all that stuff, but it really means
nothing if you don't have the data.
To support your decisions.
And I'm a creative through and through, but data really is how I make
my decisions at the end of the day.
So I'm happy to see that this is being encouraged and that people were
attending and we're excited about it because, you know, this is how we
prove ourselves, this is how we prove ROI of our services when your client
asks 000 a month to run my social?
Well, if you can go into GA4 and show them, well, it looks like 90
percent of your leads are coming from Instagram, which I manage and
your product is a thousand dollars.
So you know what I mean?
Like you're able to really tell that story and you're also able to make decisions.
It is a noisy and confusing world out there.
Long form, short form, Instagram, Tik TOK, YouTube.
Like, how do you know which platforms to really focus on?
Especially if you're a small team.
And my answer is data.
I can look at my GA and see.
Yeah, most of my leads are coming from YouTube and by most, I mean like 90%.
So if I need to choose between TikTok and YouTube of how I'm going to spend my time,
you already know the answer to that one.
And the last trend that I want to talk about was more of just the
conversation that I was having.
With other speakers and with some of the brands, I see this trend for
long term partnerships popping up, which I am very, very excited about.
So in the creator world, you know, you can get a sponsorship and do an ad
read for a brand and it's one and done.
You get paid for it.
Boom, boom, boom.
And those are great, but.
I have never really been that into it for a couple of reasons.
I've never been into one off partnerships.
One, because it takes a lot of work for me to learn a tool or a product
and really be able to speak to it authentically and fall in love with it.
Because I only talk about things I actually love.
It also sometimes just Isn't that effective?
And I don't want to do something and feel weird and guilty if I know something
didn't perform super well for a brand, because I only talked about it once ever.
And then it was like, they were expecting to get a thousand sales from it.
We know as marketers that products or services, you know, we need to talk
about them multiple times before an audience starts to take action on them.
Sometimes as many as like eight times before people, you know, take action.
So a long term partnership, in my opinion, just makes more sense for.
Everybody involved.
So yeah, I was excited to hear both brands and creators talking
about that and understanding the value of those long term partners.
And huge shout out to my long term podcast sponsor, Metricool,
who I mentioned was there.
They're amazing.
It's always such a great opportunity to see them in person.
So those are the trends that I saw at Social Media Marketing World 2024.
Let me know what you think.
Is coming up in the world of social.
Let me know what you're excited about in the world of social for the year.
And let me know if you have any questions about any of this stuff as well.
Thanks for being here.
And I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Bye.