Marketers agree that earned media, that is, friends sharing content with friends, is incredibly valuable, as it adds a layer of amplification and credibility to any integrated marketing mix. Facebook added to this by stating that when a person sees their friend ‘likes’ your business — your ads drive, on average, 50% more recall and 35% higher online sales lift. However, too many of us are approaching earned media blindly and don’t take the time to optimize campaigns for earned media during integrated paid and owned media planning. MRY’s Jeff Melton will show you how to take a more scientific approach to planning earned media so that you can stop hoping it happens and confidently maximize the volume of earned media that your campaigns create.

The first panel at the Social Media Insider Summit asks perhaps the biggest question on the minds of social practitioners everywhere: whether paid media is killing social. But before anyone answers, let’s consider the context. While it’s now widely accepted that organic reach – at least on the biggest social platforms – is effectively dead, leading to a rise in paid media, any honest marketer has to ask themselves whether this change in a marketer’s status – from organic online “friend” to paid native advertiser -- has implications beyond paid’s ability to extend reach. The same pieces of content can be perceived differently by consumers when seen through the “paid” lens, and then there’s the conundrum of creating the content itself. Is it really the same content when an advertiser knows it is now paid media? Does social marketing lose a certain sensibility when its primary distribution will be through paid channels? This session will discuss how advertisers can keep it real, even when real marketing money is changing hands.

Millennials are the first generation raised on the Internet, and it has shaped the psychology and behaviors of this group in ways we're only beginning to understand. As they move into adulthood, how are Millenials’ expectations of privacy online shifting, and what are the implications for marketers? What must marketers do and what proactive steps can they take to earn Millennials' trust and loyalty in the constantly shifting online landscape? Is it even possible to be relevant to Millenials and respect their privacy at the same time? In this Social Media Insider Summit presentation, Megan Meagher, strategy director at Red Peak Youth will discuss.

It wasn’t so long ago that marketers, agencies and analytics companies talked confidently about getting a 360-degree view of the customer, a complete, holistic look at what customers wanted, and where, when and how they wanted it. But counter-intuitively, the rise of social media made the 360-degree dream more like a 180-degree reality, with social and CRM data not being merged together to form a perfect circle. Fortunately, that’s changing, as leading solutions providers begin to cobble the pieces together, making for more targeted, effective advertising. At this Social Media Insider Summit session, panelists will look at best practices for merging social and CRM, and what connecting these two data streams can do for overall marketing objectives.

It probably wasn’t shocking earlier this year when Facebook said it would further leverage its users’ behavior outside Facebook by launching Website Custom Audiences, a complementary, yet different, product to FBX, the RTB-driven Facebook Exchange. Of course, continuing to refine targeting is what Facebook advertising, and online advertising in general, is all about. However, the addition of WCA means a new day is dawning, but one that may confuse advertisers since the products are similar, and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. On this Social Media Insider Summit panel, some of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers talk about their experiences with FBX and WCA, and also tackle some other hot topics for Facebook marketers, including how Facebook’s main competitor, Twitter, is stacking up as a rival ad platform, and whether the Facebook “Like” means anything, now or will in the future.

Golf at Squaw Creek Course
ATV Tour on the Rubicon Trail
Horseback Riding at Alpine Meadows
Cable Car to High Camp for Swimming (heated), Cocktails and Roller Skating

First bus departs for cocktails and dinner at Gar Woods.

The potential to influence consumers on social media platforms is larger than ever. But even as social networks dominate time spent online, marketers may still experience resistance when recommending social as a larger part of their marketing mix. In order to evolve social media from an experiment to a leading component of an organization's approach to marketing, meaningful results need to be proven. How are best-in-class marketers measuring social media campaigns? What metrics are making the most impact and how are these metrics being tracked? In this keynote, Joe Klicsu, Senior Manager/Digital Brand Communications, Energizer, will discuss the questions to ask, review the tools used to determine the answers, and share success stories from brands such as Schick Hydro and Playtex Baby.

Even as marketers continue to focus on understanding established social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, they’d be foolish not to be taking a serious look at Pinterest and Instagram, two growing platforms that are maturing both in terms of their user bases and their advertising. Pinterest has recently released a Business Insights API, and had advertisers including Kraft, Gap, General Mills and Expedia all buying into the first round of Promoted Pins on the site. Instagram, meanwhile, is on its own promising trajectory. It too is showing signs of maturity in terms of its API, its analytics and its monetization. And, of course, these two highly visual platforms long ago proved that users love them. How should advertisers approach these platforms’ distinct approaches to social media? What constitutes success? And how should social initiatives on these platforms complement other social media campaigns?

Even when they are not sure what the payoff is, advertisers are always looking to play with the next bright, shiny object. In social’s case, this usually means platforms with almost entirely unknown advertising models, but promising user adaption that simply cannot be ignored. This brings to mind a number of burgeoning platforms, including Twitter’s Vine, Snapchat – which doesn’t save its users’ messaging – and even WhatsApp, the messaging platform bought by Facebook earlier this year that has a pointed no advertising policy. While Vine has spawned a number of advertising efforts, and Snapchat an interesting handful of them from marketers including Taco Bell, that doesn’t mean these platforms are for every advertiser, or at least not just yet. On this Social Media Insider Summit panel, we’ll look at how advertisers are using social’s next, next wave, and when -- or whether -- it might be time to jump into this particular fray.

As companies develop new strategies to reach customers via social media, they should keep in mind the potential legal issues that might arise. Jeff Kosseff, a media and technology lawyer at Covington and Burling in Washington DC, will examine some of the most important legal questions related to social media marketing, including: What privacy rules apply to social media marketing? Are you responsible for customer comments on your social media accounts? When and how must you disclose that a customer comment on social media is a result of a payment, free product sample, or contest entry? What should your company’s internal social media marketing policy include? What disclosure rules apply to native advertising via social media?

In the early days of social media – particularly on Twitter – social media was seen as a key customer service tool. It was powerful enough to even alter the perception of some beleaguered brands, whose customer care in other channels was lacking. But, as social has evolved into an all-purpose marketing channel, some of the initial fervor for using it as a key customer relations tools has waned. What are today’s so-called “social care” practitioners doing? What platforms are they using? How are they tracking success? And how are they mapping customer service outreach in social to align with other social efforts?

Working With Legal To Create Social Success - Table Lead: Jeff Kosseff, Covington & Burling LLP
Is My Brand Ready for Emerging Social Platforms? - Table Lead: Kristin Hersant, LiveFyre
Best Practices for Using Social for Customer Service - Table Lead: Jeff Melton, MRY

Golf at Coyote Moon Course
Lake Tahoe Kayak Tour
Mountain Biking at Burton Creek State Park

At a time when organic social marketing is largely giving way to paid strategies -- that potentially lead to organic distribution -- MediaPost's Gavin O'Malley talks to Reid Benson of Netflix about this shift in how to reach consumers on social platforms.

One of the biggest challenges for brands today is to find the right outlets for the content they are increasingly creating themselves. Audiences differ, as do the strengths and weaknesses of different social platforms, and on top of all that there’s the ongoing need to determine what content is working, in real-time, and optimize distribution around content successes. This is compelling many brands to pick a content management solution, a new type of vendor from what they may have dealt with before. But, if you’re looking to hire one of the new breed of content management companies, where do you start? How do you figure out which set of tools will accommodate your needs? And how do you construct an RFP that will help you choose the right player for you? On this Social Media Insider Summit panel, brands and agencies that have hired a content marketing platform divulge what they have learned from the process.

Nothing makes a social marketer’s heart skip a beat more than having a piece of content go viral. After all, who doesn’t want to see their Instagram photo rack up loads of “Likes”? Or see a nice seven-digit number of views for their video on YouTube? But, too often, people in marketing and advertising pursue viral because it harkens back to the scale that used to come so easily. Meanwhile, they may be missing what’s right under their noses: influencers, who not only have a passion for their brand, but can be true advocates for it; while reach may be harder than ever to achieve, data gives marketers a much better grasp on the people that move their marketplace. This leads to a few central questions for social media marketers: Is it even worth pursuing virality? Will key metrics move more by targeting influencers? And is going viral even possible without them?

Figuring Out the Right Social Media KPIs - Table Lead: Tom Thai, Quantifind
How to Nurture Your Brand’s Influencers - Table Lead: Alex Rivas, Unmetric