Upcoming Social Media Trends To Boost Your Brand Strategy in 2024 - PT 2

Speaker 2: 0:04

Welcome to socially unacceptable, from f**k up to fame, the marketing podcast that celebrates the professional mishaps, mistakes and misjudgments, while delivering valuable marketing and life lessons in the time it takes you to eat your lunch.

Speaker 3: 0:22

Welcome back to socially acceptable. This week it's part two of our social media trends webinar, which we're bringing live onto the podcast, because we just felt there was a lot of content, so we split it into two parts. Last week we covered if you haven't listened to last week's episode we covered everything from what went right in 2023 and what went wrong in 2023, some hilarious predictions that we got right and some rather stupid predictions that we got wrong, but this week we're going to talk about what is happening in 2024. So these are our predictions for this year, and Will is going to elaborate on this and we're going to see if we can get it right this year. Will says 90 to 100%, but I'm still not convinced.

Speaker 1: 1:02

That's right. Yeah, and this is the practical bit. You know, this is when we actually talk about some of those trends that you can actually start to incorporate into your marketing for 2024. So let's start with artificial intelligence. No surprise there. We talked about this a lot, haven't we? But we can't ignore this as a trend that's going to really start to no, we've got a great podcast with Andrew Bruce Smith on artificial intelligence.

Speaker 3: 1:25

that was really, really interesting, and then also Ant Cousins, which was only a few weeks back, where we covered in much more detail. We're going to get Ant back on it because he's the head of AI and strategy at Cision. He's a real expert in it. He has some fascinating insights.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Yeah, there's a lot to think about, so I'll start with a quote. A quote we like no lack of hyperbole with this one. So Sundar Bikhai, who's the CEO of Alphabet, said AI. Now you tell me if this is an exaggeration or not. Chris, ai is the most important thing humanity is working on, more profound than both fire and electricity.

Speaker 3: 2:01

I have to say they all said Didn't they say this about social media?

Speaker 1: 2:04

I think they say it about everything, don't they?

Speaker 3: 2:06

They probably said it about Vine, didn't they? In 2016, 2016, not 2016.

Speaker 1: 2:13

But yeah, an interesting quote for sure. But I think one thing is for sure we've heard a lot about AI, but we're going to keep on hearing about it in 2024, aren't?

Speaker 3: 2:21

we.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Before we go into it, a couple of things to point out. First of all, ai isn't actually that new, is it? I think it's mid-50s. It can actually be traced back to some of the origins of AI, and it's not actually intelligent either, is it? It's actually only really as good as the prompts that you give it, and it works on other reductive or generative AI, on the existing datasets, so it can't think for itself, even though we feel like it might be able to sometimes, anyway. So I think probably AI started reaching the mainstream in about November 22, and that was when ChatGPT launched and the technology existed. But I suppose ChatGPT is the equivalent of a search engine or something for AI, isn't it? And it really brought AI to the masses and everybody started using it.

Speaker 3: 3:09

It's like AI is Google, isn't it? We had search engines before Google. We had Yahoo and Bing, we had Lycos do you remember the little dog? And then Google came out Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves. That's it. Ask Jeeves, if you're still out there.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Everybody used to always type hello, jeeves. It's like the weirdest way to ask.

Speaker 3: 3:26

But then Google came out, and I think ChatGPT is artificial intelligence Google.

Speaker 1: 3:32

I think a misconception about AI, though, is that AI is ChatGPT, and actually that's not the case, and there must be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other AI apps, and I think, since ChatGPT came out, there's now hundreds of other apps doing everything from video creation, image creation, even voice cloning, which, I must admit, we've experimented with on the podcast.

Speaker 3: 3:52

It's a little bit frightening, isn't it? Yeah, the audio one's brilliant. Let's see how that goes.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So I think, yes, it's not new. Well, it is new, but it's not brand new for 2024. But what we're going to start seeing is greater and greater adoption, particularly amongst the marketing industry, when it comes to AI, and in part, this is driven by this kind of wealth of new apps and websites and things like that that just make AI so, so easy. So I mean, you look at teams, you know teams has got AI plugins now, hasn't it?

Speaker 1: 4:20

So, Autopilot, which is a massive favorite of ours at Prohibition, takes notes during your meeting, during your teams meeting and it's so sophisticated and it saves hours and hours and hours of time.

Speaker 3: 4:29

And Copilot from Microsoft has now rolled out in the UK, but it's £30 per user and you've got to sign up for 12 months and, to be honest with you, I don't think it's worth it yet. It's still. It's pretty good. We've tested it out and friend of mine, stuart Bruce, has shared a video on YouTube where you can generate a deck straight from a Word document and it is quite cool. But is it worth £360 per person? Not yet, but it's getting there. It's getting there.

Speaker 1: 4:56

They've got some costs to claw back, haven't they, after their billions and billions of money they've invested in it. But I think marketing in particular is going to really be impacted by AI, and I think there's a number of reasons for that. One is a lot of what we do in marketing is quite kind of resource heavy. There's lots of analysis, there's lots of admin type work. And the second point is we use data a lot, don't we in marketing, and that's one of the massive advantages of AI. You can take massive data sets and analyze them and pull insight from them, but much quicker through AI, and I'll come on to some examples in a sec. So what does this actually mean for you as a marketer?

Speaker 1: 5:36

I think the important thing first of all is to get out there and start using AI. Like I said, there's hundreds of different apps. You need to get your head around it. Certainly use chat, gpt, but think about what else is out there and just start playing with apps and start getting a better understanding of what's out there. So only then you can start to understand the use cases and start applying them to your day job.

Speaker 1: 5:57

And really the areas we can save time tend to be those kind of admin heavy tasks, so things like note taking, things like media analysis and things like that. But I mean a few other key areas that you know. At Prohibition, for example, we're using AI, for I'd say content creation is a big one. You know either writing papers, blog posts, white press releases, and there's tools like, obviously, chat, gpt, write, sonic, which is a bit more kind of geared towards those in-depth technical papers. But the point is it's not going to be perfect. It's a starting point. It's almost like getting an account executive to draft your press release. You're always going to have to finesse it.

Speaker 1: 6:34

You know, you can never kind of create the.

Speaker 3: 6:36

It hallucinates, it makes stuff up as well which you can't just trust that it's correct.

Speaker 1: 6:41

That's right, I mean that really.

Speaker 3: 6:42

Ask for sources and then ask for links to the sources as well, because otherwise you could get hallucinations in your content. You've got to be careful there. It's just to start, just like you double check a junior member of the team's work. Oh yeah, but it is a start of a 10. I do find some of the content not to be Well. It's just not as good as humans, yet I don't think.

Speaker 1: 7:00

No, I mean, it's a tool, isn't it? I mean, that idea of hallucinations is interesting. It's like when we asked it to write the press release about you and it described you as one of the leading minds in social media.

Speaker 3: 7:11

Oh, actually it sounds quite accurate.

Speaker 1: 7:13

And you can get a little bit more creative when it comes to AI as well. So one thing we love doing at Prohibition is actually uploading our press releases to a relevant AI tool and you can actually ask it to interrogate the press release as if it were a journalist and actually ask you difficult questions based on that press release. Or, equally, you can upload a press release as a PDF and it will actually pose you crisis scenarios that you might encounter as a result of that press release. And this is something we would do anyway through our own experience. But it's a really great way of kind of adding additional thinking, I suppose, into what we do, and then lots and lots of other benefits. I mean, brainstorming is something we can use chat, gpt or other tools for coming up with. In fact, the name of this podcast, socially Unacceptable, is a result of AI, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 8:03

Yeah, we got it to generate 10 names and then we picked the one that we liked the best.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Yeah, exactly so it's a tool that can drive efficiencies. And final point if you hate spreadsheets as much as I do, there is a really great tool called chat GPT for sheets. I think you have to pay for it, actually, but it's a Google Chrome plugin. So when you use Google sheets, you can then ask it to do all the kind of complex formulas and analysis at the touch of a button and actually what you can do. You can do some really cool stuff with it. So if you've got a big spreadsheet of media coverage, you can actually ask it to analyze the URLs and give you sentiment or key messaging analysis. So in terms of you know, taking shaving hours and hours and hours off the kind of classic PR jobs that you have to do week in, week out, it can be really, really effective. Trend number two threads. So who's on threads here?

Speaker 3: 8:53

Pretty, much everyone I am. I'm on threads, I'm all over it. Andy's putting his arm up. Andy's putting his arm in the air.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Yeah, that's right, Zack. Zack's not heard of threads. Zack's on Zack's too Gen Z. Yeah, Zack's much too Gen Zed for that.

Speaker 3: 10:09

Zack's wears threads. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1: 10:12

So threads is an interesting one because, yeah, a lot of people are on it, but how many are actually active users? And I think I mean you're an active user. I'm not. That's no surprise.

Speaker 3: 10:20

But threads is all like any social platform that comes out. When a new social platform comes out, what's the benefit you can offer your users? Initially, organic reach, and that's what threads is doing. Threads has got scale and it's giving organic reach at the moment. It won't do it forever because it's owned by Meta and that's this business model. If you want organic reach, at the moment threads is a platform you can get on.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Yeah, and I think threads is a funny one because it launched in July 2023. Big fanfare got loads of media attention. Everyone on Instagram immediately had an account. So suddenly they've got 100 million signups in the first week or something, which was extraordinary, and then it kind of died a bit of a death, didn't it? People didn't really know how to use it. There wasn't much interesting content on there, people weren't really posting.

Speaker 3: 11:03

And the features weren't that cool.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:05

It was like a Twitter, but without some of the cooler features. There's still not a threads list like there's a Twitter list.

Speaker 1: 11:10

So yeah, so people got a bit down on it. But actually, meta being Meta have just been busy away in the background, investing, developing features, and it's starting to really grab people's attention and really start building up its active users. So there's all sorts of things available now. There's a web version of it. There's a much more sophisticated keyword search. You can do voice posts. They're also integrating much better with Instagram, if you've seen that. So every three or four posts you scroll through on Instagram, you then get a really enticing threads post that you click on and takes you to the platform. So this is all happening in the background and this investment and these new features are continuing and continuing and it's starting to work actually. So in December 2023, it was the Apple Store's most downloaded app, and active users month-to-month are increasing. So there's now 120 million active users I think that was as of January.

Speaker 3: 12:03

And each month that's increasing. That's what it is. People are going. Hang on a minute, this is working. This platform's sending me traffic.

Speaker 1: 12:07

What does this mean for you? Should you all go all in on threads? And we kind of warned you about the dangers of going all in on the platform before you've done that kind of market research and understanding your audience?

Speaker 1: 12:19

And actually a great episode on customer understanding from Katie Tucker a while ago, so make sure you check that out. But the point is, threads is potentially an exciting new channel to add to your mix and it could be against the context of Twitter or X, in decline be the new home for text-based content. But what we would say, as with everything, is look at your audience and look at your insights. So where are your customers and your prospects hanging out? They might be on threads, or they might be interested in threads or they might not, and if they're not, then probably you should save your efforts for something else. But, yeah, keep an eye on it, get on the platform, understand how it works and keep on checking these features, because this 120 million active users could be doubled or tripled in a few months, and we fully expect that to happen in 2024. Right, everyone's favorite platform at Prohibition Well, mine, anyway LinkedIn. So what do you think about LinkedIn, chris?

Speaker 3: 13:09

I think LinkedIn has copycatted a lot of the other social channels. There's a lot of homogene is that a word? It's become homogenous with the other platforms. But LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and Microsoft own ChatGPT. They've invested heavily in it. They own teams, they own all the little bits and pieces that we use every single day and I think LinkedIn is the B2B platform of choice and you get proper engagement and if you want to get leads from any platform, especially if you B2B, linkedin is the platform for it.

Speaker 1: 13:40

Yeah, I totally agree, and I think LinkedIn for a long time has been the kind of unloved social network, hasn't it? But it's just been so busy in the background innovating, developing the platform, introducing cool features, and that's really working. Now there's a billion users globally now of LinkedIn and something like 38 million in the UK alone, so it's really starting to get that scale, isn't it? And you mentioned about LeadGen. Actually, it's the number one platform for B2B, leadgen, which is pretty powerful when you think about it. It's really driving results for people and, anecdotally, when we've discussed this on our webinars, everybody's saying look, this is where the lion's share of engagement is coming from.

Speaker 1: 14:16

We're getting such great engagement from LinkedIn. So you might be wondering what's kind of changed? I mean nothing in particular, it's just this kind of constant innovation and development of new features. So they've changed the algorithm, so they've got more of a Twitter-like algorithm now, haven't they, where you can post and then people outside of your network can actually see that. They've introduced this follow button as well, where you don't actually have to connect with people, you can just kind of subscribe to their posts. They've really kind of doubled down on the LeadGen side of things. They've introduced organic and paid LeadGen forms, which are driving really good results. So, yeah, they're just doing some really cool stuff. One of the big criticisms of LinkedIn that we've seen from a lot of people is that it's lent a little bit too far towards being a personal platform, and I think there's only so many kind of holiday snaps and baby photos you can really deal with on that platform.

Speaker 3: 15:03

I think it did that during the pandemic, a lot of people when they didn't have anything business related, there was people sharing pictures of what they were doing at home and et cetera. But I think we've gone back to well normal business returned.

Speaker 1: 15:14

I think yeah and, encouragingly, linkedin's actually tweaking its algorithm and they're now going to be prioritizing knowledge and expertise content. So, essentially, anyone sharing original viewpoints backed up with data, that content's going to increasingly work and that content's going to increasingly rise to the top. So anyone that wants to use it to become a thought leader or a subject matter expert you know you're laughing, just keep on doing that. Basically. And then the final point the way the most innovative B2B brands are using LinkedIn is this kind of interception between the way your employees use it and the way your company uses it. So most companies have now got a highly optimized corporate page, and that's great.

Speaker 1: 15:55

But with any corporate page on any social network, organic reach and engagement starting to get throttled back because they want to sell you advertising. That's not the case with personal pages and really the lion's share of engagement is coming from individual accounts. So we did this at prohibition quite well and we advise a lot of clients about this. We need to be training our people to basically talk about what they do in their day-to-day role Authentically. We need to make sure that their profiles appropriately tag up their companies and we need to kind of give them the autonomy to do that, and we need this kind of optimized company presence and this combination of the two is where the real engagement and the real results is going to come from.

Speaker 1: 16:35

So look at your team as a chance to really kind of advocate your company. So, linkedin, what does this mean for you? Obviously, keep using the platform. It's great, but we need this kind of joined up company and team approach. So train up your people to become company advocates in an authentic way and keep on doing what you're doing from a corporate presence. I would say get creative on LinkedIn. I think the days of having to do very dry corporate posts that a text only have gone, aren't they? You can do polls, you can do videos, you can do carousels, you can do documents that you can scroll through. There's so much cool stuff on LinkedIn now. And also, if you're not, use LinkedIn for your lead gen, because it's really gonna drive results for you.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Next point, and again maybe not a surprise for anyone that listens to this podcast regularly, but business podcasting has gotta be a big trend. But it's not just. I mean, podcasting isn't new, is it? It's been around forever, but traditionally it tends to be audio only and really what we're seeing and this is something we're really driving at Prohibition is the kind of the evolution of the podcast into something altogether a little bit different and it's really now kind of an integrated medium, isn't it? It's not just audio, it can be long form video, it can be short form video, snackable social media content. It can be long form written content, and one hour's podcast can give you so much amazing, engaging content that can really support your goals as a business In terms of those benefits.

Speaker 1: 18:02

when it comes to business podcasting, it's really about trust building trust and building credibility. I mean there's a few stats here I'll talk through which are pretty compelling. So 80% of listeners will stick around for the entire podcast episode, which is fascinating. What other content?

Speaker 3: 18:16

Does that mean 20% of? Just stop listening to you.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Well, I think ours, I'd like to say our stats, are 100%, are they not, chris?

Speaker 3: 18:22

There he goes with these 100% again.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Absolutely. But the point is, what other medium can you get an hour's worth of audience attention? You think about a social media ad or even a blog post. You're looking at a few seconds to a few minutes aren't you. 77% of marketers swear by podcasts as their most efficient content for lead gen, so it's driving real business results. And then 43% of B2B decision makers regularly tune into podcasts for their business related content. So if you're a business and you've got some sort of expertise, podcasting absolutely presents an opportunity.

Speaker 3: 18:55

It's done properly, though it has to be done properly, and a lot of people. I'd love to know what the statistics are on just audio podcasts, because there is a lot of podcasts out there that are just purely audio. I mean, ours is, you know, we've got multiple cameras and we do it, we do it video and we do it audio, but I think what you're saying there is like integrated podcasting is the future. It's what it's the stuff you're seeing on all the different social channels, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 19:17

Yeah, I mean our approach at prohibition that we've developed three stages. First stage is insight led concept creation. So we use insight tools to find that kind of content white space, if you like whereby we can come up with a concept that nobody else is talking about. It's really going to resonate with that target audience and don't underestimate the importance of doing that. We then do this kind of integrated creation of the podcast. We film it, we take stills, we, you know, we do a high quality audio, but then it's the amplification as well.

Speaker 1: 19:48

So it's taken all of those assets. And that's a lot of work, it's a huge amount of work, but that's what's going to get you the results and really it's that three parter. You can't just record a couple of podcasts and hope people find it. It just doesn't work like that.

Speaker 3: 19:59

No, record it and they will come is not, is not a good thing to say, because it doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 20:03

No, even no. And this is a journey we've gone through at prohibition. Interestingly enough, something like 78% of podcasts don't actually last beyond five episodes as well, which I find shocking. So we've really stuck at a prohibition. We've got this really kind of focused concept. We really focus on the kind of the high quality delivery and we amplify the hell out of it, don't we? And it's really given us good results, hasn't it?

Speaker 3: 20:25

Yeah, but it's been hard, bloody work like to amplify a podcast to get to. If you, if you're there thinking, actually we'd love to get our thought leaders in the business to get a podcast to give you some, some idea of scale. We've been doing this for ourselves and for some of our clients and this podcast that we're doing, that you're listening to and thanks for listening because we appreciate every single one of you. You're one of 34,000 subscribers that we've currently got. That has taken quite a bit of undertaking on lots of different key learnings. Everything in marketing is about data and learning. I have been through every strategy, every blog post, every strategy that you could read. I've tested on our own podcast and on some of our customer ones just to see what would work. So we've got like a magic formula and you have to have a great concept and good people for your podcast. You can't just, like you say, create to and expect people to turn up, but if you have got a good concept that's well thought through.

Speaker 3: 21:17

You've got a slightly different and it's well researched, and you put maybe fight. You could do five to 10 episodes and then market the hell out of them, and you could, you could. You could have 50,000 downloads within eight months. I'd say yeah, which is good.

Speaker 1: 21:31

And it's really super charged. Our content marketing hasn't it? I mean, it's just extraordinary the amount of brilliant content we get from a single episode. So what does this actually mean for you? First of all, it's a chance to look at those subject matter experts within your business and actually get more from them. You know you might already write white papers, you might already do the odd media interview, and we know it's hard to get time with those subject matter experts. One single hour podcast can give you a month's worth of content around that individual. So, yeah, it's about using those subject matter experts more smartly. It's a chance to grow your brand trust and authority. I think there can't be any brands out there that don't want to. You know, don't want to grow those areas and also super charge and support your lead generation efforts. So massive, massive benefits. But Chris is right, you need to commit to a minimum. You know minimum five to 10 episodes to get anywhere to get any traction.

Speaker 1: 22:21

The demise of Twitter. There's a. There's a Mark Twain quote, isn't there? Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, which made me think of Twitter or X.

Speaker 3: 22:29

They haven't been exaggerated on this Well well, that's the debate, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 22:33

Is that actually the case? I mean, chris has already given a bit of context around this. Since Elon took over, all sorts of rumors in the media, misinformation. Suddenly people are going to be charged $5 a month, or whatever. It is lots and lots of discussion about, you know, is it? Is it a right wing platform? Is it a left wing platform? What's he doing? This has affected advertising revenue, active users. That's all on the slide. But in our view, we should stick with it to a degree. If it's already a key channel for you, you know, you shouldn't just chuck it away. And I think there's been a lot of talking, a lot of people. We know.

Speaker 3: 23:09

A lot of people I know have have been it off.

Speaker 1: 23:12

I feel there's a danger of, you know, being in the social media bubble. Yes, there is a lot of people that are bidding it off, but actually, by and large, it is still quite, a quite handy platform. I mean, it's the de facto platform for journalists still In the medical profession, pharmaceutical, educational news.

Speaker 3: 23:30

it's still the platform, despite people saying all the things, of jump off it. Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1: 23:35

And it's still got scale. I would say stick with it for now. You know, don't, don't, don't throw the baby out with a bathwater. But is that even a phrase?

Speaker 3: 23:45

What the fuck.

Speaker 1: 23:46

I would say stick with it for now. But again it comes back to it comes back to where your audience are hanging out, doesn't it? You know, like I said, we live in this social media bubble where lots of people are abandoning it and heading for different channels that may or may not ever become anything. But actually do a bit of persona research. Are your audience still on Twitter? If they're not, then why are you? But chances are they may be on it. And also look at how you use Twitter, and really this comes down to kind of a nuanced channel strategy, which we talk about a lot. You shouldn't be using every channel in the same way, should you? Each channel has different algorithms. It's different types of content.

Speaker 3: 24:21

Different audience, different target, different strategy.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Yeah, exactly, and because of all of the changes on Twitter, it's probably an opportunity to look at how you use it, you know, is it that you shift it towards just customer service or do you shift it towards just broadcasting news? So it's a chance to take stock and look at how you use the channels and where your audience are. But don't bin it off quite yet. We would say watch this space, the evolution of Facebook advertising, or meta advertising if you like. So, for anyone that's been advertising on meta for a few years, it's been a bit of a turbulent ride, hasn't it.

Speaker 1: 24:52

I think, what used to work doesn't work and it changes every week. And your 10 to one row ass suddenly reduces to one to exactly, so it's been tough. And I think it started in 2020. Apple introduced, I think it was, the iOS 14 update, which basically meant that meta couldn't get any kind of personalization data from iPhone devices, which represents a huge amount of meta users, and that meant that, just like I said, row ass dropped off a cliff. Our kind of previously highly targeted audiences became incredibly vague.

Speaker 3: 25:25

But Apple's downloads doubled overnight and their revenues went up.

Speaker 1: 25:29

Yeah, and Apple's still at it. I mean, there's iOS 17 now and that's Apple calls it link tracking protection, which means advertisers can't now track user clicks from Safari and mail, so we're not going to be able to track any referrals from anybody browsing on the iPhone. So this is not going away and it's going to stay with us. It's all about privacy.

Speaker 3: 25:50

Well, it's all about privacy.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Well, it is. It is and it's a bit of a political battle going on in the background there as well as in there, between meta and Apple, but this, consequently, has meant that a lot of advertisers have started to turn their back or lose faith in meta as an effective advertising medium. But, obviously, meta being meta, they've addressed it and they've introduced a number of new technologies which are developing, shall we say as we speak.

Speaker 1: 26:16

One of them is Meta Advantage Plus, which is a kind of an automated AI driven audience targeting service, which meta actually which sounds very compelling estimates it could lower CPR by 33%.

Speaker 3: 26:30

We've tested it and it does work, and what it means is the old days of choosing your target audience, making it really refined, doing multiple testing to multiple audiences. Use Advantage Plus and it uses the content to target to the right audience, which is interesting. It's using AI, but then you've got to leave it and trust it.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Meta's actually pledged $30 billion in the next year to develop Advantage Plus. So there's going to be a whole load of new changes and developments and it's probably going to get better and better. Prohibition's position is slightly different. We'd recommend a three-stranded approach which is getting us a lot of success on meta advertising. So, by your means, use Meta Advantage Plus. You should be using that and should be experimenting with that. However, also target your audience very, very broadly, and this is a slightly different approach, but we would recommend very, very broad audience targeting, but very, very specific creative. So make your creative so specific to your product or service, whether it's a video, whether it's an image, that nobody's going to click on it unless they're interested in what you've got to sell. So naturally, you're filtering out your audience through your creative and that then gives you a warm audience you can retarget to. So it's a three-stranded approach Meta Advantage Plus, targeting through your creative and retargeting and we find that is highly effective.

Speaker 3: 27:46

Check out the podcast we did with Josh Lachovic, which was all about targeting in Advantage Plus. It was quite interesting that.

Speaker 1: 27:54

So we've got to the end.

Speaker 3: 27:56

Final one which is the. I bet you're delighted, aren't you? This is the one In the gym. Oh my God, thank God for that.

Speaker 1: 28:01

So this is a bit of a fun one. So in the last year we've seen this massive rise in what we call celebrities taking back control, which cynically means a self-produced, self-funded and, in some cases, self-broadcast documentary telling their own truth, shall we say, in a way whereby there's no negative narratives, and we've seen this from so many people. Famously, harry and Meghan did it. The Beckums have done it, largely to a warm audience reception.

Speaker 3: 28:35

I thought Beckum's team did a good job of it. They managed to skirt over the affair and bit some pieces that he didn't want to talk about.

Speaker 1: 28:42

It's their version of the truth, isn't?

Speaker 3: 28:44

it yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Robbie Williams, which was a bit of a waltz and all.

Speaker 3: 28:47

actually, if you saw that I wish he'd just got out of his pants and that and put some clothes on Not out of his pants, obviously. That flageant gentleman, sorry about that. I mean I wish he'd put his clothes on because he was in his. He was sat on his bed.

Speaker 1: 28:58

The whole documentary wasn't he Very weird, very troubled man. But I do like Robbie Williams.

Speaker 3: 29:03

I thought he was quite enlightening.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Beyonce's done it, Taylor Swift has done it, but essentially they're self-producing these documentaries and they're bypassing the PR people, aren't they or some other? No, sorry, Taylor.

Speaker 3: 29:17

The PR people are actually running the Netflix film teams.

Speaker 1: 29:19

Yeah, sorry they're bypassing the traditional media, and generally the public received these pretty well and generally the media received it fairly well as well.

Speaker 3: 29:27

Tyson Fury as well.

Speaker 1: 29:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:32

I mean that was a waltz and all yeah. You really did see how he struggles with the yeah, he regretted.

Speaker 1: 29:36

He said he regretted it. I felt quite sorry for him.

Speaker 3: 29:39

when he was sat in Mork and Bay. He was sat on the beach front. I used to live there and he sat on the sea front and somebody just walked up to him and started giving him and saying, joshua would beat you easily. And he was like who is that? Just people walking up to me giving abuse, it's like it just because you're famous. It made me see a slightly different side to Tyson Fury than him just bigging himself up all the time.

Speaker 1: 30:01

So you might be wondering what this actually means for brands and what's it actually got to do with social media as well. So, from our perspective, this comes back to the opportunity and the importance of engaging storytelling as a brand and just in the way that these celebrities are telling their truths or their stories. We believe, as a brand, every brand's got an interesting story. You know, whatever sectarian, whatever you do, it's about storytelling and people have always wanted to hear stories about brands. So find your stories and tell them in an engaging way, and also find those. When you tell your story, I mean this can be through video content. It can be hosted on your website, on your social channels.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Find out, find those interesting, engaging characters within your business as well, because people connect with people at the end of the day. And it doesn't have to be your chief finance officer, it doesn't have to be your chief exec In fact, it probably shouldn't be your chief exec. It could be one of your field staff, it could be one of your customer service team that are in middle management and just connect with people and are engaging. And this is something we're doing an awful lot of with our clients. It's telling the stories of their brands, but in a really entertaining, engaging way.

Speaker 1: 31:07

So, yeah, it really comes back to storytelling, as it always has been about storytelling. So what does this mean for you? Yeah, find the heroes in your business. Every business has these engaging heroes that have the potential to connect with prospects, connect with audiences and don't necessarily default to a load of people in suits, presenting your corporate story from a very dry perspective. Embrace storytelling as the powerful, creative communication tool it is and also look at how we can kind of tell these stories through premium content and typically in today's kind of landscape, that is, video content.

Speaker 3: 31:45

So check out the latest Netflix film. We're Locked Under the Movie. It's coming out in June 2024.

Speaker 1: 31:51

It's very short.

Speaker 3: 31:53

Unlike Will.

Speaker 1: 31:54

And not particularly interesting. Okay, so lots and lots. Not particularly interesting, I'll cut that out.

Speaker 3: 32:00

I like that. Keep that in.

Speaker 1: 32:02

So a quick summary, and then we'll let you get on with working out how you're going to incorporate these trends into your strategy. The trends are recap what have we got? At number one, chris AI. Number two, the.

Speaker 3: 32:13

LinkedIn boom Followed by threads With A demise of Twitter. I feel like we need the music.

Speaker 1: 32:20

This is good Next generation business, podcasting, the evolution of Facebook advertising and, finally, chris Controlling the narrative. Very good so.

Speaker 3: 32:30

We're Locked Under the Movie out June 2024.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Yeah, you watch it you watch it. There's a strap, so you might be overwhelmed. That's absolutely fine. You might be thinking I really like some of these trends. What am I actually going to do to incorporate these into my strategy? So the first step we would recommend is revisit your social strategy first of all. Actually, we did a survey with marketing directors recently and something like 70% had reviewed or revised their strategy in the last three months.

Speaker 3: 32:57

Which is absolutely brilliant. That was yesterday. We did that and we got a massive resounding. They'd reviewed it in three months. I was like bold over by that. That was impressive.

Speaker 1: 33:06

If your strategy is more than a year old, you haven't got a strategy.

Speaker 1: 33:09

It's the way to view it. Also, look at your audience personas and refresh those Audience behaviors change so rapidly, particularly in the world of social media. So every six months or so, just refresh your audience personas and think, okay, what are they interested in, where are they hanging out, what's changing? And then identify some of those trends that you can incorporate into your strategy and experiment with them on the test and learn. Don't go all in straight away because you're gonna waste a lot of time and effort if they don't work. If they do work, do more of them, do more of what works, less of what doesn't work, and constantly measure and refine and be guided by the data in terms of what's actually moving the dial in terms of your marketing objectives.

Speaker 3: 33:48

Great Well, thanks for that, will. That was fascinating. I think everybody will have enjoyed that part one and part two, if you've listened to both. Big Gold Star, thanks for listening. As I said, this is our most popular event and we've split it into two parts because there's just so much interesting content. That's happened in the previous 12 months and what we're predicting that's gonna happen this year, let us know in the comments and send your emails in to sociallyuaprohibitionpruk, because we'd love to hear what you think is gonna be the big thing for 2024. And that's the end of this week's show, so be sure to subscribe to the podcast and we will see you in a couple of weeks' time. Thanks very much. Bye.