“Facebook is not dying. It is all total crap.”
That was something we weren’t expecting to hear at VidCon London, a YouTube-sponsored conference for media and marketing industry professionals, content creators and their fans that took place this past weekend at London’s Excel Center.
Jumpwire Media’s Gavin McGarry isn’t afraid to be blunt when sharing his thoughts on promoting video and cultivating an audience on social media. Even if it has to do with Facebook, a platform many believe to be “on the way out.”
McGarry is President of Social Media at Jumpwire Media, a social media marketing agency based in California. He has been picking apart social video trends for 15 years. He knows a thing or two when it comes to capturing an audience’s attention on “crowded” social media platforms.
During his 50 minute talk, “Hacking Social Video: 57 Surprising Things You Didn’t Know” at VidCon London, he whipped through (what felt like) an entire university course worth of information on social community development strategies and promoting video content on social media platforms.
As McGarry speed-talked his way through his presentation, sharing both common sense (“Women are 40% more likely to create Facebook groups that become meaningful to people”) and controversial school of thought (“Up to 75% of views on YouTube and Facebook may be fake”) audience members furiously jotted down notes or filmed him on their smartphones, not wanting to miss a word.
Planning on removing Facebook from your social media strategy? Don’t do it.
According to Jumpwire Media’s sources, 82% of 18 to 29-year-olds and 79% of 30 to 49-year-olds have Facebook accounts. If you’re trying to target multiple demographics at once in your social media marketing strategy, the social networking giant is certainly the place to be when promoting your branded content.
“Facebook is taking the newspapers, television and radio advertising at 50% year-on-year,” he said. “If you were being attacked by some technology and you had a newspaper, or a radio, or a TV station what would be the first story [you would run] all the time?”
So… what’s the most efficient way to build an audience (and convert them into paying customers) on social media?
According to McGarry and Jumpwire Media, brands and marketers should never underestimate the power of reposting user-generated content.
He shared a case study with the audience that showed dramatic, organic growth of a Jumpwire Media client’s Instagram. The account only reposted content created by fans and other accounts and saw an increase in followers by 200% within three months.
For those brands and marketers who don’t have resources to create original content, you don’t need to worry. You can still have a great social media strategy and build up an audience by sharing other peoples’ content (with their permission, of course.)
Other big takeaways from Gavin McGarry’s VidCon London talk?
“If you’re not on TikTok, you need to get on it NOW,” he said. “It’s the number one in the app store downloads. Get. On. It.”
(He admitted his wife sometimes gives him odd looks when he’s experimenting on the platform. “I tell her it’s for research,” he said.)
He also advised against promoting content that that includes images or videos of open mouths, smiles showing teeth or, even, close-ups of horses faces.
Huh?
Algorithms will apparently flag it as pornography and your content won’t perform as well (if it appears at all within users’ feeds).
“Better avoid those shots,” McGarry said.
Duly noted.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
Follow Gavin McGarry on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Photo credits: Unsplash.