Fifteen representatives. More than 10 organizations. Three news stations. One community. One goal: to discuss how individuals and businesses could effectively use social media.
Representatives from various organizations in Wichita Falls conducted a panel on Sept. 25 in the Wichitan newsroom, hosted by Bradley Wilson, associate professor of mass communication, and moderated by AJ Lopez III, social media coordinator.
It begins like most businesses usually do: role call.
Those on the panel, Logan Draper, digital marketing director for DesignWorks Group, Samuel Pak, financial advisor for Ameriprise Financial and Benjamin Remmert, social media specialist for the city of Wichita Falls, took a series of questions from Lopez, first pertaining to how they operate social media and insight they have for fellow members of the community including how unpredictable social media can be.
Pak, for example, talked about how the short videos he produces, sometimes on off-the-wall topics, get traction online.
“It’s crazy how these stupid little videos get so much attention,” Pak said. “The idea is to capture the audiences attention within the first five seconds. Whether they are going to watch it or not or they’re going to stay engaged.”
Pak, as well as the other panelists, stressed the importance of video in the social media world. Consumers do not want to read as much as they used to and prefer a lot of their advertising to be visual. It is what draws their attention.
Draper said, “We have been around for 35 years so we have all this equipment and technology, but what we have learned is you can spend all this time planning, prepping and buying equipment. In reality, if you have an iPhone or an Android, you have a device that you can create content fast.”
Draper also highlights the importance of organic and natural advertising as opposed to manufactured content.
“I would go speed over quality to some degree. You gotta have something good though,” Draper said.
To highlight the point, Wilson said, “In the journalism world, it is all about the timing.”
Panelists also discussed the future of their own social media marketing careers and which paths they think they will be pursuing.
According to Draper, dump your money into Facebook advertising now, because it will reap a lot of rewards. Facebook has studied approximately how many ads users will tolerate before leaving the site and has made advertising space slightly less than the calculated amount. With that limited amount of space, the price of an advertisement will increase as more companies try to utilize that space.
As for representatives of the city of Wichita Falls, they plan on sticking to what they have seen to be most effective: organic marketing.
To Remmert, when content producers give the people what they like, they are going to keep coming back. In fact, Remmert said, companies that produce cool content give users a reason to come back. He added that it is nice to experiment and see what works but it is also important to still set aside time with what you are comfortable with.
Social Media Day 17
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Leo Gonzalez • Oct 5, 2017 at 12:33 PM
It was fun to listen to people that could you could potentially be in the near future. Their experiences and discoveries all put on table to discuss. Glad I attended!