Add #SocialSkateOfMind2 to the board of success!
FvS media brought skateboarding’s social media managers, team managers, and brand managers together at the DVS Shoes office in Costa Mesa, CA on Thursday, March 10th.
Fred van Schie, owner of FvS Media, began the day with a walk through of all social media platforms and then introduced the guest speakers who focused on “Innovation & Value”, driving sales, Snapchat, podcasting, the Hookit index, and YouTube. A great deal of information was shared throughout each of the presentations followed by some Q & A.
There were many more people at this event than the one last year (#SSOMuno). I felt like a kid on the first day of school when I sat down and scanned the rows of tables, the projector, and all of the familiar and unfamiliar faces. I got out my notebook and began to jot down notes as each guest speaker shared their presentations. Here is what I took away from each one:
Tyler Culbertson (Tum Yeto & Tony Robbins)
- “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said” – Peter Drucker
- “Constant and strategic innovation is a MUST! It’s about providing more value than anyone else” – Tony Robbins
- To add value with social media, you need to engage fans, provide great customer service, support/promote (retailers, other brands, team riders, causes, and skate scenes), entertain, do giveaways, and give a behind the scenes look
- “It’s not the lack of resources, it’s your lack of resourcefulness that stops you” – Tony Robbins
Marco Feller (GM of Supra Distribution in Canada)
- 5 pillars of social media: promote skateboarding, create brand awareness & product awareness, promote retail partners, be active on all social media platforms, have fun & be social
- Teens are mostly active on IG, then Twitter, then Facebook and Snapchat
- Vine: 3 years with 200M users, Snapchat: 4 years with 300M users, Instagram: 5 years with 400M users, Tumbler – 8 years with 277M users, Twitter: 9 years with 330M users, and Facebook: 12 years with 1.4B users (if you don’t have Vine for your brand, that’s 200M less people that you could be tapping into).
- As a brand, do not plug in your in store. Shout out shops and push people to them!
Lauren Feldon (Tilly’s)
- Focus on Snapchat
- Make a story board before creating a snapsterpiece
- Interact with followers and get creative!
- You can copy & paste text from your Notes app to bypass the Snapchat character limit
- Tilly’s added a snapcode on the back of their catalog and gained 12,000 followers in 2 days
Chris Cerrone & Laci Urcioli (The Cerrone Show podcast)
- Podcasting is much like YouTube when it first came out
- 91% of advertisers say they’ve seen a return on investment
- 26% of listeners have household income of over $100,000
- 64% of listeners have bought product they heard advertised on a podcast
- You can give a detailed experience about yourself/brand
- Respect the platform and don’t forget about your loyalist!
Rich Houseman (Hookit)
- They track athletes’ total reach on social media
- 350,000 athletes are tracked by Hookit, 5.2M social posts, 6.9B social followers, 2.1B social interactions
- GoPro brought all of their team riders to Hawaii and tracked their Social Media analytics the entire time
- Hookit takes the data and applies it
YouTube Panel Discussion: Joel Jutagir (Metro/Skateline), Corey White (The Berrics), Julien Berndt (Whistle Sports)
- Monetize audio. YouTube favors monetized videos
- Add a “Subscribe to Channel” button at the end of videos to gain subscribers
- Keep videos around 5 minutes
- Frequently post new videos
The brief takeaway from everything: Play on all of the platforms, track your analytics, engage with fans, be creative, get people into skate shops, educate fans about your brand, and take care of your customers.
Thanks to FvS media for putting on this event, I look forward to the next one!
And thanks Pizzanista and Lola’s for the nice lunch.
Photos by Moi Martinez (@moimrtnz)