Takeaways from Social Media Marketing World 2016

We had the pleasure and privilege of attending and speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2016 recently. What were our major takeaways from this massive social media marketing conference?

The map of takeaways:

Click for a larger version

What’s Hot Right Now

• Live Video
• Periscope
• Facebook Live
• Snapchat

Social Media Marketers at wildly varying skill levels

• Some folks asking about the data layer in Google Tag Manager and pushing cross domain tags
• Other folks asking what the little @ name on their badge meant

How data-driven are social media marketers?

• 89% of social media marketers believe exposure is the top benefit of social media
• Translation: 89% of social media marketers don’t understand analytics

What’s Next for Social Media Marketing?

• Artificial Intelligence
• Wit.ai, IBM Watson, Amazon Web Services, Google
• AI means scale
• Scale means automation
• Automation can mean job elimination
• Virtual reality/augmented reality
• Marketers can create rich, immersive experiences
• Pay attention to first mover advantage!
• The Internet of Things (IoT)
• Much more metadata available to marketers
• Example: the Dynamic Signal booth

Be sure to catch our Google Analytics table talk video on Facebook as well.

Christopher S. Penn
Vice President, Marketing Technology

[cta]