In today’s ever-changing landscape of digital media, it’s important to know what the industry’s top thought leaders are sharing as these influencers set the standard for the nascent social media industry. In this post, I caught up with our CEO – Americas, Todd Grossman, after he attended The Big Boulder Conference to learn about some of the emerging themes from the 2-day event.
Some conferences attract the best of the best in any given industry.
And The Big Boulder Initiative, held annually in Colorado, is a forum attended by some of the most prominent individuals in the social media analytics industry. It really is a platform for the “who’s who” in social data, monitoring and analytics.
The conference is produced by The Big Boulder Initiative (BBI) – the first trade organization for social media and data monitoring founded with the intention of helping to educate professionals, and establish learning and standards for better social media monitoring and analytics.
The event attracts leading experts, university professors, and top data analytics companies. During this year’s conference, several major themes bubbled to the surface including Dark Social, Ad Blocking, Visual Analytics, Social Data and Finance, and of course, Video.
We’ve compiled a list of The 5 Biggest Themes from Big Boulder 2016, and key takeaways from the esteemed speakers because we at Talkwalker believe great ideas should always be shared!
The term #darksocial comes from dark matter: all the things in the universe that we are unable to perceive or measure #bigboulder
— Susan Etlinger (@setlinger) 24 June 2016
Simply put, Dark Social is media and web traffic that you can’t find, listen to, monitor or locate. They’re the conversations being had behind walls in private conversations, and in messaging apps on big platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These conversations occur outside of what can be measured by web or social analytics platforms. A term coined by Alex C. Madrigal, Dark Social refers to all of the sharing activity that occurs through the copy and pasting of URLs, but goes undetected. Moreover, most of these untrackable activities take place on chat tools, email, messaging apps, and numerous Twitter clients – some applications consider the traffic to be direct while inaccurately detecting the true origin of the user traffic.
Key Takeaway: Despite the dark areas of social and web traffic, find unique ways to activate the data that you can find and identify to grow your business with. Develop the insights you have access to by using platforms and tools that reveal new information about your business, product or service.
Mobile ad blocking - it's about data costs as well as intrusive ads https://t.co/j2oTWvioGX #bigboulder
— David Kamerer (@DavidKamerer) 23 June 2016
If you’re an advertiser, Ad Blocking can make mobile advertising on Facebook/Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest even more laser focused and targeted toward specific (and desired) audiences. It can offer better targeting and ad units specifically tailored for mobile phones. This is a positive as digital consumption continues to move from PC to mobile.
Key Takeaway: Ad blocking isn’t about annoyance, it’s about privacy concerns. It can also help to serve more relevant messages to your target audiences.
The emergence of Image Recognition Technology for visual analytics means more than just the growth of visually-oriented social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. It tells us that users are sharing more and more images on the traditional social networks of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In fact, there are 255 million images a day being uploaded to Instagram and Twitter alone.
Key Takeaway: Image Recognition and visual listening is now a key component of a strong social media monitoring strategy as today’s top social networks are focused on visual content.
The market for social data in the financial sector is growing faster than ever before. Financial institutions are investing more and more in social data and learning how to implement their findings in order to serve their customers’ needs and requests. But social media data presents a new challenge. Rather than analyzing figures to predict future economic movements or develop new financial products, effective social media monitoring allows companies to collect and analyze online conversations.
Key Takeaway: What financial companies like Wells Fargo and Ameritrade are seeing online is a true depiction of customer opinion. They are seeing what’s really happening, and are able to take the pulse on an entire industry. Implementing a social data strategy is now a no-brainer for financial institutions.
The future of video is more video. We hold our phones vertically 94% of the time, and some of the best innovators in video know that this medium is here to stay. Additionally, video posts have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. It is clear that video is only going to get bigger due to the proliferation and growing user-base of visually-oriented platforms. As Snapchat’s user base continues to see strong growth, the platform is creating new ways to monetize its users and brands should prepare themselves with a winning video-analytics strategy.
Key Takeaway: Add text to your video since 80% of video is consumed without sound and be sure to implement a clear strategy for Periscope & Snapchat as video is the new frontier.
These were our CEO – Americas, Todd Grossman’s key takeaways from this year’s Big Boulder Conference, but we’d love to hear your views too in the comments below.
To learn more about how your business can benefit from social media analytics – across text and visual content – talk to one of our expert consultants.