Executives from Tumblr, EPIX, GE and others highlighted the importance of experimentation and high quality content in the morning sessions at today’s Hub Convene.
Danielle Strle, director of Product at Tumblr, kicked off the festivities with a keynote entitled “The Social Web in 2015: Culture and Trends on Tumblr and Beyond.”
Strle talked about how Internet goes beyond Tumblr, which she said was full of “magic Internet Play-Doh.” She focused on the different types of content that users and brands using it, noting that there are currently 80 million posts a day on the platform.
She discussed some of the trends on the platform, which involve complicated memes and dry, ironic humor. One of which is the “skeleton war”, which evolved from a simple tweet from 2010 into a major trend on Tumblr, pointing that Denny’s got into the act and received over 100,000 engagements for their content. She also pointed out that 300 of Fortune 500 companies are actively advertising on the platform.
Next, Peter Shankman discussed the learnings from his book Zombie Loyalists. He discussed flights and how people are have such low expectations of service from airlines that when they get from point A to B on time, they’re “over the moon.”
He also talked about how companies should stop worrying so much about social likes and focus on customer service that is likable. That is, to say, that positive actions towards the customer will encourage them to share their experiences with others.
If your customers have time to create a negative meme in the time it takes for you to solve their problem, that’s an issue, Shankman said.
In the day’s first panel, executives from GE, DoSomething.org, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and EPIX discussed how they created compelling content. All veterans of the social media marketing world, they said content has become much more high quality and partnerships with influencers have gotten much more structured.
All said they enjoyed the challenge of creating high quality content that matched the science and creativity of their respective company’s products and services.
Wrapping up the morning sessions, Levi Strauss chief communications officer Kelly McGinnis discussed her company’s growing social capabilities with agency partner Alex Jutkowitz, managing partner at SJR.
The strength of the Levi Strauss company is storytelling – @kellylmcginnis #hubconvene
— TheHubComms (@TheHubComms) May 12, 2015
She talked about Levi Strauss’ commitment to sustainability and communicating that message. While they have distributed their sustainability findings through reports, they also launched a quiz this year that made finding out about sustainability an interactive process.
“We’ve never let ‘we’re not doing it” intimate us from not starting [something],” McGinnis said.
Love the vibe & philosophy @kellylmcginnis shared abt how @LeviStraussCo creates content. Smart people doing interesting things. #HubConvene
— Brian Easter (@WBEaster) May 12, 2015
Hub Convene continues this afternoon.
