2017 Program

Rather than leave it to chance that your PR and marketing messages are reaching their intended audience over your competitors, attend this pre-conference workshop and learn how to make Google’s vast and growing suite of tools and applications work for you. This workshop will grow more advanced as it proceeds, beginning with the basics and ending with a master class.

Our SEO trainers will cover these topics and more:

• Understanding Google’s latest search engine optimization (SEO) ranking factors and how they affect the success of your daily communications efforts
• How to write for Google search
• Establishing a process for structuring content that gets traction
• Analyzing your site to determine whether it is optimized for search
• Advanced techniques: How to use the latest tools to uncover new SEO opportunities

This workshop is sold out!

This workshop is designed for marketers, communicators, leaders in customer service, research and sales and anyone who believes that to shake up the way you communicate with your customer, you need to understand what your customer is doing and why. Attend this pre-conference workshop and learn:

• The ins and outs of customer journey mapping
• New ways of mapping your customers across social channels to gain a better understanding of their behaviors
• How to develop a strategy roadmap to address identified customer experience challenges
• How customer journey maps can be developed for an entire customer lifecycle
• How to use customer journey maps for a single interaction at a single touchpoint
• How to use customer journey maps to develop an end-to-end experience for a new product

In this session, you’ll learn a proven six-step process to building the business case for community that’s centered on achieving business impact and competitive advantage. You’ll also learn ways you can spotlight potential returns and benefits, and how to best secure executive support and demonstrate operational opportunities.

In this workshop, you will learn:

Find out what’s shaking and who’s attending this year’s event at the opening night party for The Social Shake-Up community! You’ll meet new people, reunite with friends and colleagues, enjoy Southern fare and get a taste of the signature drink of the 2017 Social Shake-Up.

The Dutch Dine-Around is a fun way to network with your fellow Shakers all while enjoying the tasty food Atlanta is known for. As this is a “Dutch” dinner, each participant is required to pay for his or her meal.

Shake off the sleep in your eyes, and come out for a beautiful city walk with your peers. No registration required – just your willingness to put on your walking shoes and get your muscles warmed up for a great day of learning and networking.

Coffee? Check.
Bagels, eggs and yogurt? Check.
Juice and smoothies? Check.
Cereal and sausage? Check.
Bloody Marys? Sorry.
Finding a table with new friends? Check.
More coffee? Check
Join us for a buffet-style breakfast before we officially kick off The Social Shake-Up 2017.

Artist, entrepreneur and social media personality Shaun McBride, better known by his online handle Shonduras, lives at the intersection of fun content and social media. A self-described “professional fun haver,” Shaun is living proof of how to grow a dedicated following by making people smile.

In this keynote, Shaun will discuss how to build a brand by leveraging platforms like Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook to create authentic content that keeps people’s attention—and keeps them coming back for more. Shaun will look at best practices in social storytelling, the power of video and the most effective ways to reach millennials and Gen Z. You won’t want to miss this high-energy, high-impact keynote.

During this general session, you’ll also hear an exclusive research presentation, “What Our Presidential Politics Teach Us About the Shifting Roles of Social Influencers,” by Evan Kraus, president and managing director of operations at APCO Worldwide.

Snapchat has more than 100 million users each day, with at least 60% of the smartphone users being between the ages of 13 and 34 years. It’s one of the hottest, but most complex, networks out there. From geofilters to Memories to Story Explorer and more, creating a content strategy requires creativity, authenticity and innovation.

Some of the cool things you’ll learn at this session include:

• Secrets to using Story, Influencers, geofilters, Snap to Unlock and other features
• Employing cross-promotion tactics to build followers
• How to engage Snapchat influencers for your brand
• Using Snapchat for sneak peeks at your brand
• Measuring your success on Snapchat

Are you producing enough video and is it resonating with your audience? More than a billion people watch countless hours of video every day. Google has YouTube Live, Amazon has Twitch, Facebook has Facebook Live, Twitter has Periscope and Tumblr has teamed up with other platforms to allow live videos.

At this session, you’ll learn:

• How each platform works and which features are important to understand
• How to determine what kind of equipment you’ll need based on the level of production value
• How to create live-streaming videos that resonate with your target audience
• Real-world examples of live-streaming success stories and duds
• Reality check: Measuring the impact of your video against your business goals

Facebook has gone on record with its top three business priorities: Capitalize on the shift to mobile; increase the number of brand marketers using its ad products; and make Facebook ads more relevant and effective. Nearly 75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising, which is why the company has squelched brands’ organic reach.

Our experts will teach you how to:

• Develop a cost-effective video strategy for Facebook, and find ideas for short-form videos
• Buy smart on Facebook by focusing on what you want people to do and what your business goals are
• Align your content strategy with the shift to mobile
• Develop engaging content first, weave in brand positioning second, for both paid and organic posts
• Create eye-popping Facebook ads that strike the right balance between visuals and text

Your employees can form a powerful network of brand ambassadors by taking to social media and sharing the latest company news. But employee advocacy programs require more than just sending out pre-written posts—you need to set and communicate clear objectives, align the right resources and build a corporate culture that encourages such a disciplined multiplier effect. Whether you’re just starting such a program or are looking to refine a current program, you won’t want to miss this lively session.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Create and educate staff on social media guidelines
• Get employee and executive buy-in
• Track the right metrics to measure effectiveness and adjust on the fly
• Build and motivate your team of ambassadors

Stop by the Relaxation Bar for strawberry and mango smoothies, a scoopful of healthy fare and network with your fellow social media practitioners. Also during this break, take time to meet the technology partners that can fuel your digital initiatives. As an added bonus, take a visit to the Minute Clinic where you can ask an expert any social media question that might be keeping you up at night.

During this session, we’ll share some of the most impressive content marketing strategies among your brand peers and how you, too, can take your digital storytelling to a level that really shakes things up.

Our experts will share:

• The new rules of storytelling
• Ways to create authentic and creative content
• Tips on developing a multi-platform content strategy
• How to manage the content distribution process
• Editorial calendars you can use as templates for your own content marketing strategy
• How to integrate video organically with your posts and messaging
• Developing a mobile content plan that converts
• Tracking ROI from your content marketing efforts
• Partnering with the right media outlets and avoiding the traps

If your job is to support your brand’s business goals by communicating with stakeholders on Twitter, it’s on you to prove that this work is paying off with business results and that it’s tied to your overall marketing and communications strategy.

Among the topics we’ll cover during this highly interactive session include:

• Examples of brands hitting it out of the park with their Twitter strategy
• Identifying influencers and effectively engaging with them on this platform
• Establishing business goals for paid Twitter posts and using tools to prove ROI
• Setting measurable goals for your paid and organic Twitter strategy
• Leveraging Twitter’s promoted tweets to maximize engagement and awareness
• Using long-form direct messages to communicate with your customers, members and general followers
• Developing a smarter integrated social strategy that includes Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more

Impacting an audience starts with understanding that audience. Easy enough, right? We know how hard it is; that’s why we’ve put together a killer panel to discuss real-time data and analytics, social listening, dashboards with impact and competitive intelligence tactics.

Our panel of experts will show you how to:

• Set up a social listening campaign that works
• Profile your audience—demographics and psychographics to understand customers’ unique wants and needs
• Choose the best tools available for social monitoring
• Use dashboard data to transform a campaign
• Turn customer feedback into impactful initiatives
• Convert conversations into sales
• Leverage data to manage brand reputation
• Know what types of data can dramatically improve marketing performance and reduce costs
• Find your competitors’ audience

The Honorable Kwanza Hall of the Atlanta City Council will welcome us to the city. Then, join us for a delicious lunch and to celebrate the first-ever Movers & Shaker Award winners recognizing those in our midst who are blazing new trails in social media. In memory of The Social Shake-Up’s late founder, Robin Carey, we will award one deserving social professional the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

How you handle a crisis can mean the difference between a short-lived stumble and a significant and lasting smear on your brand’s reputation. We’ll bring you case studies of organizations that have made lemonade out of lemons by employing best practices in digital communications.

You’ll hear:

• Real-world examples of actual crises and how they were handled via social media
• How to create a social crisis plan—and execute it
• Key elements of your crisis plan (including what nearly every organization forgets to include!)
• Social media monitoring tactics that keep you aware of potential crises while not derailing your time management goals
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities among your internal departments
• Post-crisis, how to rebuild trust, platform by platform

The average engagement per Instagram post has grown by 416% over the last two years. Is Instagram right for your brand? If it is, you’ve got to find time to keep pace with its new features, and given the rate of innovation, it’s not surprising that so many brands can’t keep up with the changes. We’ll tackle these two topics and more during this interactive session.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How to engage with your Instagram community with visually compelling stories
• How to prove ROI on this platform
• How to creatively and effectively use Instagram Stories
• Use creative takeovers as an integral part of your influencer strategy

We’ll show you how to use promoted posts on social networks to reach your business goals, engage the largest possible audience and shake up the skepticism or your senior leaders—all without breaking the bank.

Our panel of senior marketers, digital experts and PR pros will discuss how to:

• Choose where and when to spend your ad dollars by determining the best social platform, timing and content for your audience
• Maximize lead generation using paid posts to drive and prove ROI
• Use Facebook and LinkedIn as sponsored content distribution channels to showcase thought leadership and raise brand awareness
• Be cost-conscious on a lean social budget—while evaluating which tasks are realistic to assign in-house and which goals might require outside support
• Measure your results throughout a campaign’s life cycle, using tools like Google Analytics as well as audience data
• Evaluate paid social against other forms of advertising that compete for budget dollars

Rehydrate, connect with your fellow attendees and speakers and learn a thing or two in the Partner Marketplace.

We’re bringing the Shake-Up community together for this general session because everyone attending needs to master the true art of storytelling on social. Doug Busk, global group director, digital communications & social media at The Coca-Cola Company will discuss Coca-Cola Journey’s content amplification strategy and key success measures across its social channels.

This session will discuss:

• How to discover the core of your narrative
• What makes a compelling story
• The importance of being creative and authentic
• Pitfalls to avoid
• Real-life examples of compelling narratives and ones that failed to connect

Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer and Cecily Strong as Melania Trump have become must-see live TV in the digital age. Join SNL’s Cecily Strong for a candid chat with Rob Gregory, president of WHOSAY, about how the power of social media influences her character choices, impacts her performances and has helped build her own audience.

We’ve lined up three activities for you to choose from, and we’re hoping you’ll partake in the opportunity to check out Atlanta with your Shake-Up peers!

• Ponce City Market Visit: Join us as we explore this Atlanta gem, the Ponce City Market, which is chock-full of shops, restaurants and Atlanta-based companies with innovative digital strategies: Howstuffworks, General Assembly, Twitter and MailChimp.
• Yoga: Looking for some flexibility in your life? Join your peers for Downward Dog and Savasana during this relaxing yoga session. Namaste!
• Motorized Bike Tour: Discover Atlanta through a 90-minute motorized bike tour where you’ll visit the World of Coke, Fox Theater, MLK Historic Sites, Joystick Gamebar, the Georgia Aquarium, Georgia Tech, See “Atlanta,” and Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Cap off a busy day of networking and learning at our rooftop party at the top of the W. Light bites and drinks will be served, as you reconnect with peers and make new friends.

Start your day with a hearty breakfast and straight talk from Millennials themselves as we bring together a group of 18- to 34-year-olds to share their social media habits, how they view brands like yours and what they think is the next big thing in digital.

During this session, you’ll also see “A Day in the Life of a Social Media Champion, Featuring Danielle Kovac, director, office of the president and social media support, Rogers Communications”

YouTube videos are a great way to connect with and expand your audience, but your content needs to be catchy, creative and engaging. Come to this session to view YouTube content that works, and learn how your brand can use video to great effect.

In this session we’ll:

• Show examples of brands that have effectively produced high-impact video
• Teach how to create a compelling and cost-effective video strategy for YouTube
• Provide the only tips you’ll need to optimize your YouTube videos with keywords, title tags and descriptions to make your content easier to find
• Illustrate how to make better use of YouTube Analytics to stay on top of your video strategy
• Show how to repurpose existing video content for YouTube
• Help you maximize your ROI on YouTube and other video platforms

This session will focus on the metric dearest to the hearts of CEOs and CMOs—sales. We’ll share success stories from B2B and B2C brands that use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr to interact with existing and potential customers and investors, and how those interactions have produced leads for sales and marketing.

You’ll learn about:

• Building trust and sharing content that matters to your brand’s potential customers
• Finding the right people to connect with on social platforms, with sales leads in mind
• Discovering valuable information about potential customers on LinkedIn and Facebook
• Responding authentically to a potential customer’s social media or blog post
• Reporting your social-selling success to senior leaders

Organic search is shrinking as networks like Snapchat, Facebook and others ramp up their paid channels. Some social media pros will even tell you that organic is dead. But one thing’s for sure: It is increasingly tough to get traffic through organic reach. So, what tools and techniques do you need to stand out from the crowd?

Our panel of experts will tell you:

• Tricks and tactics to conquer organic search
• How to balance organic with paid reach
• Real-world examples that show how innovative thinking won the organic reach game
• How to position your content to drive search
• How to mine internal site search data

While some industries such as legal, financial services and healthcare face stricter standards when it comes to social, it doesn’t mean that you have to sit on sidelines.

Our panel of industry insiders will discuss:

• Legal and regulatory rules around social media
• How to be creative on social without breaking industry regulations
• Crafting an innovative content strategy across multiple platforms
• Which channels are best suited for your industry and your message
• How to compete against paid social posts when your organization forbids putting money behind social media

During this Shake Break, you’ll enjoy deliciously refreshing fruit smoothies while mingling with other Shakers. The Minute Clinics will be in session so you can ask an expert a social media question or two.

Learn what separates brands that use social for all touchpoints from those that use it just for customer care or marketing messages. You’ll get case studies from forward-facing organizations whose customer communities deliver powerful strategic value.

You’ll learn:

• What digital competitive advantage means to brands
• How online communities work
• Identifying obstacles to success (and the methods to overcome)
• How brands plan to leverage digital engagement and communities to impact business in the future
• The measures and metrics being used to track the impact of communities on sales, services, marketing, supply chain, product development, partner and client relationships and buyer journeys

Social commerce revenue was $14 billion in the U.S. in 2015, and that number is expected to triple by 2020. To increase customer retention and build brand loyalty, companies need to understand the complexities of social commerce to maintain customer engagement after the initial purchase.

Our panel of experts will discuss:

• How to connect your social strategy to revenue
• How companies can turn to their customers for inspiration and product
  design
• How curated shopping can help your customers engage with your
  products
• Examples of brands selling products and services on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms
• Pinning for sales: What you need to know about Pinterest
• Real-world examples of successful e-commerce campaigns
• Tools and technologies that can accelerate your social commerce strategy

While social has been a catalyst in breaking down the silos among sales, PR and marketing teams, there are still logistical and budgetary considerations to be worked out. If you’re going to shake things up in your organization, it most likely begins with how you address your sales, marketing and PR structure.

You’ll learn:

• What an integrated communications team looks like
• How to deploy resources effectively
• Secrets to a successful division of labor while fostering collaboration
• Examples of innovative and disruptive campaigns from a combined PR and marketing staff

Gather in the main room for delicious Southern fare and engaging conversation with your peers on what’s shaking up the future of social.

Over half of Americans believe companies should engage around issues of socio-political relevance. This session will explore ways in which brands are raising awareness of social issues, taking stands and engaging their audience on behalf of specific causes. We’ll look at the wins and the mistakes.

In this case study you’ll learn:

• What’s needed to create a socially and culturally relevant campaign without pandering
• The key questions to ask before taking a stand
• Real-life examples of campaigns that have succeeded and those that missed the mark
• How to back the campaign with meaningful action

In this session, you’ll first learn how to define and identify influencers in your market. Then we’ll show you how to effectively communicate to influencers across the social platforms.

Real-world influencers and their brand partners will discuss:

• Potential pitfalls to influencer campaigns
• Influencers’ big pet peeves
• Different models of compensation
• Legal considerations
• What works—and what doesn’t—when creating an Influencer social campaign
• Real-world examples of successful influencer campaigns

Learn what it takes for bloggers and podcasters to shake up perceptions of their brand – and what success looks like in business terms.

Our experts will discuss:

• Researching and organizing your blog strategy and determining what will make your blog content interesting and discoverable
• Designing your blog with your user in mind
• Determining post frequency and management
• Choosing the appropriate platform for your brand’s blog
• Tumblr: Do’s and Don’ts
• How to determine if podcasting is right for your brand
• Cost-effective podcasting tools
• Distribution strategies
• How to develop a measurement strategy for your blogs and podcasts

During this general session, you’ll network and brainstorm with your peers at our Birds of a Feather roundtables.

You’ll also be treated to a one-on-one conversation with keynoter Dan Gingiss, author of “Winning at Social Customer Care” and head of digital marketing for Humana.

And you’ll see “How Innovation in Social Analytics Ignites Marketing Success,” featuring NetBase CMO Paige Leidig.

Plus, we’ll raffle off an amazing trip to the Bahamas to one lucky Shake-Up Finale attendee.

Birds of a Feather Roundtables
Choose among 10 topics, from crisis management to Snapchat issues, for this one-hour roundtable session. The roundtables will proceed in three 20-minute durations, allowing attendees to sit in on three separate topics.

Among the topics:
• Podcasting
• Crisis management
• Social Media Analytics
• Media relations in the social age
• Paid social
• Video
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• Instagram

Raise a glass to celebrate new friendships, new business contacts, and all of the new knowledge and insights you’ve acquired at The Social Shake-Up 2017.