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Anastasia Balezdrova

Social media are neither cheap nor is it easy to use them for advertising purposes. Leading experts in the field presented their experience in managing advertising strategies within the context of the conference "Social Media 13" organized by the company Boussias Conferences in Athens.

80% of users view their Facebook profile in the first 15 minutes after waking up and 62% do so even earlier. Therefore, companies must find ways to draw their attention to their activities. Facebook provides a variety of tools, the most important being the constant changes in appearance of the page of updates. "A couple of days ago, users noticed that the photos have been made much larger and the text much smaller. This is what users want. According to research, 93% of them look at the photos first, and texts and videos are preferred by the remaining 6%," said Vanina Leka, sales manager at Thinkdigital, in her presentation. Therefore, advertisers should give them exactly what they want. For this purpose, Facebook has developed a variety of tools. Several countries have already successfully applied the appearance of an advertisement that the users see when they log out of the social network.

Engagement or drawing users' attention is the goal of all advertisers. But how can this be achieved? According to Stavros Kondaktsis of Avakon +, photos of cute and fluffy kittens do not work in this regard, although they usually get hundreds of likes. "The content of the message is everything regardless of the way we have chosen to present a product and to draw users’ attention." He presented the campaign of a company producing medical materials for which his company has decided to create a blog in which users describe their experiences. Accordingly, their opinions and posts of gratitude appear on the company’s Facebook page, thus establishing a link between them.

"To reach them and to put companies in their profiles, we should properly use all means provided to us by technology." Of course, it should be targeted and connected with the subject. In situations where there is a serious "threat" of haters’ attacks, this could be done in a funny way and it would not be necessary for the company to organize a competition with prizes to gain supporters and to spread its brand. This method is much more successful than the effect of expensive advertising banners.

In order for a publication to be successful, there must be a photo or a video added to it, its content must be specific and related to the activity of the company; it should not be a direct advertisement. "Users log on to social networks to connect with their friends, not to watch ads as on TV. The aim should not be to attract them to press the like button, but to retain their interest by offering them  interesting ideas in which they can participate," says Dimitris Savakos of OlgivyOne company.

U.S. expert Ruben Quinones presented the tools that Facebook provides its users to track the progress of their posts and to change their strategy according to the results. "Research results show us that only 17% of our fans will see our post. In this sense, the likes do not indicate a continuing interest." According to Ruben Quinones, in the majority of cases, users of social networks pay attention to the publications late in the morning and in the afternoon. The same applies to Monday whereas during the other days up to Friday, the interest gradually decreases. At the same time, more than 30% of users pay attention to a publication in the first 10 minutes after its appearance. He also recommends that companies be careful about the content, the frequency and the size of a publication and that they should focus on 3-5 topics that they would regularly update on their pages in social media. His recommendations can be found for free on socialtofu.com.

The founder of the company Rabbit, which has recently been proclaimed "Social Media Company of the Year," Dirk Singer, presented solutions for the use of photos and videos in companies’ publications. "The advent of smartphones has changed the way we express ourselves and the world as a whole. Research results show that the number of smartphones is the highest in Europe," he said and showed photos from the Vatican taken while announcing the name of Pope Francis. Smartphones and tablets with which the people on the square were taking pictures contrasted with the digital cameras during the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

"We use smartphones to browse the internet in the first place, for social networks in the second, to listen to music in the third, to play games in the fourth and we use them as phones only in the fifth place." As a result of this turnaround, last year’s ratio of sales of smartphones and digital cameras was 6 to 1 and exports of cameras from Japan decreased by 42%.

This has led to a "boom" of photos, whose number reaches 300 million per day. It is estimated that 20% of the photos that are taken every day are published on Facebook. Publications with a photo increase the users’ engagement towards them by 180, 120 and 100% and the photo is a crucial factor in the purchase of goods online in 67% of cases.

Dirk Singer presented in detail all social media offering the option of sharing photos and videos. His advice:

1. Start a strategy with photos

2. Use the correct hash tags (keywords)

3. Find collaborators who can exert influence on the users.

As regards the question of whether an internal employee or a specialized agency should undertake the management of social media, the second answer prevailed. "The argument in support of the first choice is that an internal employee is very well aware of the product. But on the other hand, the occupation with social media is actually a full time job and it is better undertaken by people who have experience in that particular area. They deal with different projects, which provide them with ideas and solutions. Furthermore, they follow and are familiar with all developments in social media, which are evolving and changing rapidly," said Alexandros Manos, founder and director of the communications company Valuecom.