EAE News
From social media to chatbots: A decade of evolution
10 de August de 2020
“Good content isn’t intrusive. It fits in perfectly”
Which social media are the most important nowadays? How about chatbots? Where is the world of digital marketing heading with the increasingly common emergence of disruptive digital players? The lecturer on EAE’s Master in Digital Marketing and Electronic Commerce, Raquel Recolons, expertly discussed this topic, explaining the key factors of social media in an online session entitled “From social media to chatbots: A decade of evolution”.
In her introduction, Recolons explained that, as well as teaching, she works as the Head of Content, Social Media & Digital Strategy at Ogilvy Barcelona. Moreover, she is the founder of The U Plan and a great cat lover. Over the course of almost two hours, Recolons led an interesting discussion with a great deal of interaction, dynamism and humour.
Let’s check out the most important points raised in the session.
“What do community managers do?”, asked Recolons, “What is our mission? Well, to sum it up in a few words, what we do is create solutions from start to finish to help achieve business goals”. Therefore, it is essential to have certain elements and skills, such as teamwork and strategy development, as well as being aware of the impact you want to generate in your audiences.
What are the key factors of social media?
After outlining the main objective of a social media expert, Recolons then listed the key factors of social media nowadays:
Content:Content is crucial because it is everywhere. Thanks to good content, we can create marketing that works so well that users decide themselves to spend time on the content, and even save and share it.
Data: Data is another increasingly important element. Nowadays, it is essential to include insights into our intuition in order to identify audiences, design strategies and foster creativity.
Media + Strategy:Paid advertising through social media is and will continue to be a great engine for dissemination
Influencer: In recent years, influencers have become the great stars of social media and social commerce.
New Channels
The lecturer explained that “social media platforms have mutated, disappeared, appeared over time. Nowadays, for instance, they are more specific and the audiences are more dispersed”.
Some networks, like Vine and Myspace, have vanished, while others are as relevant as ever, such as WhatsApp, Twitch and Tinder, but what about new channels and new social media? In response to this question, the lecturer mentioned a few of the most modern and powerful social media platforms.
Tik Tok:
This short video platform is designed for a mobile format. In addition, it enables users to create, edit and upload 15-second selfie music videos, with the option of applying various effects and adding a soundtrack. It also has various AI features and includes, special effects, filters and augmented reality.
As the lecturer explained, Tik Tok has over 500 million users, so it generates a lot of influencers and is also a key element for positioning brands among very young consumers.
How can brands capitalize on Tik Tok? To explain, Recolons gave the following tips:
Visual product experience: In 15 seconds, you have to promote a content in a creative and highly visual video format.
Interaction through the advertisement: We must aim to generate engagement. Purely commercial contents do not tend to work.
Chose creators of perfect contents: It is an ideal platform for collaborating with influencers. We have to ensure that they are well aligned with the brand and the app format.
Very active community: Generation Z needs fast responses, so we have to interact with them without delay..
New developments in Instagram and Facebook
Instagram and Facebook are two platforms with a great social impact and Raquel Recolons knows this better than anyone. Therefore, she spent a few minutes in the session explaining the latest most important developments on each of them.
Instagram Threads: messaging feature that focuses on sending photographs and videos only to your best friends.
Nuevos stickers: Stay at home, etc… They help to identify audiences.
“The networks evolve depending on the needs of the audiences”.
Augmented reality: The use of augmented reality on Facebook enables companies to test products and improve communication and interaction with consumers. Moreover, it facilitates a shift from one-way advertising towards a continuous, direct dialogue.
Surveys: The use of surveys promotes participation and brings brands closer to their audiences.
Activatable formats: This format consists of offering a preview of the app in the advertisement so that the consumer can test it before downloading it.
Marketplace de influencers: This facilitates the brands’ search for influencers who are perfectly aligned with the target audience. In addition, it boosts the use of influencers for Facebook campaigns.
Social Commerce
“73% of internet users are online shoppers and 85% use social media, so it is almost certain that you can have an impact on your customers with social commerce strategies”.
IAB Spain
Recolons went on to explain that Social Commerce is a branch of e-commerce that consists of direct sales of products through social media. In Spain, Electronic Commerce continues growing and, in the second half of 2019, it increased by 28.6% year-on-year, to reach 11,999 million euros.
New developments in Social Commerce
Facebook Loyalty:A new program that enables people to earn points and rewards from the brands that they follow on the Facebook app, and keep connected to ensure that that they do not miss any offers.
Instagram Shop: In the lecturer’s opinion, Instagram’s marketplace is one of the best and most optimized in the digital world.
Live Shopping: Another significant development is the option of shopping live on Instagram or Facebook.
CHATBOTS:
From human management to technology
Chatbots or conversational user interfaces are platforms that emulate a conversation with a human being to help users resolve problems or doubts related to the company’s products. They are primarily used in sectors such as retail, healthcare, utilities and entertainment.
There are 3 types:
Chatbot: The simplest interface. When it receives a command, it makes an interpretation and gives a response.
Conversational agent: It can generate a conversation with the user to understand what they want, with the ability to interact to get a more in-depth idea. It is more personalized.
Virtual assistant: The most sophisticated interface, which strives to create the sensation that it has its own personality and is aligned with the user, requiring knowledge of the user and artificial intelligence to achieve this. Optimal understanding of natural language and high response capacity for conversations.
What advantages do these chatbots offer?
- Easy, streamlined shopping processes.
- Better user experience: simplifying processes, saving time, extra information.
- Personalized service.
- Service integration.
- Saving resources.