Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
The last year in social media has been insanely busy for professional marketers all around the world. If you manage any aspect of social media marketing for your brand or your clients, you know how hard it can be to keep pace.
If you’re currently stressing about how you’re going to pull your social strategy together for next year or balance the time and resources you do have for social marketing, you’re not alone.
Here’s a cliff-notes guide of advanced tactics and social media strategies over 60 expert speakers will cover at our upcoming #SocialPro Conference for social media professionals.  We’ve also include highlights of some of this year’s hottest stories here on Marketing Land, just in case you missed a few important announcements, you can study up before the event!
There are still tickets available for the last major social media marketing industry event of 2015, so purchase yours now and join us in Las Vegas at the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Conference Center.
1.  Playing Within The FTC Rules For Social Endorsements
The big story of 2015 is the FTC’s crackdown on disclosure of ‘sponsored’ social media content. In our recent SocialPro keynote preview, Danny Sullivan summarized the top reasons why social media marketers need to adhere to FTC guidelines. Conference attendees will hear directly from the FTC and learn how to navigate the rules going forward into 2016.
2. Advanced Facebook Ad Tactics
New ad formats are rolling out furiously, and it feels like many marketers are constantly playing catch-up on the platform. With recent reports that advertiser budgets continue to rise, particularly for mobile ad spend on Facebook, the challenge is on to capture audience attention and maximize ROI.
At SocialPro, speakers will dig into innovative and advanced tactics to meet specific performance goals from current (and future) opportunities in Facebook advertising.
3. Competing With Social Video Superstars
On the content creation side of things, beating out YouTube’s original stars and media moguls like Buzzfeed, Jimmy Fallon and the WWE seems like a near-impossible task.
Yet, rising video marketing opportunities on other platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and Snapchat means marketers will continue to tweak their approach to video creation and optimization — is it time to refresh your efforts too?
4. Real-Time Marketing Moments
At this point, it’s a fact of life for large companies and agencies to have war rooms stacked with social strategists ready to push out crafted quips, generate GIFs on the fly and drop on-brand messaging during mainstream media and live sporting events.
It’s one thing to engage in the conversation around such popular events, it’s another thing to turn a culturally relevant moment into real return. As we learned with Landy Award winner Mophie, it’s not only possible, but profitable.
For companies of any size, there are opportunities to make your own real-time moments happen, and the case studies we’ll hear from the brands and agencies seeing social success in real-time. Contributors Ben Spiegel of MMI Agency and Chris Kerns of Spredfast will walk us through them.
5. An Expanding Social Ad Landscape
Just when you’ve got basic to advanced advertising on Twitter and Facebook under control, here comes new ad units and audience targeting tools to test out on secondary platforms, including Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr and beyond.
Make it your 2016 New Year’s Resolution to set aside some budget and time to create campaigns for these platforms after learning how effective these social advertising options can be.
6. Coping With The Facebook News Feed
Continual changes to the Facebook News Feed over the last year have not only tested the patience of social marketers, but frustrated users. With the sheer amount of content being shared on Facebook and a shift to share trending news, it’s not all that surprising to hear just 3% of all news feed content is generated by paid advertising.
We what we know for sure is that an algorithm of more than 100,000 variables determines what users see when they log into Facebook. But darned if most of us know how to unlock the secret to getting our content included.
That doesn’t mean marketers will stop trying to figure it out. SocialPro speakers and attendees will get the change to share tips for creating the kind of “quality†content that Facebook engineers seem to favoring in today’s flavor of the news feed recipe.
7. Next Level Twitter Ads
On the topic of real-time engagement, there’s no better place to take advantage of trending topics and engaged audiences than Twitter during a live event. With the new Promoted Moments native ad product rolling out, plus event targeting, advanced retargeting and new native video ads options, there’s significant opportunity for advertisers in 2016.
Marketing Land contributor Sahil Jain of AdStage will be sharing in-depth tactics to take advantage of the innovative ad products Twitter has been rolling out.
8. Scoring Sales With Social Commerce
Between Facebook’s new Canvas Ad format, the Twitter Buy Button and buyable pins, 2015 was a year of significant growth for online retailers, and there’s every reason to expect that trend to continue into next year.
To that end, this topic is so hot for social marketers that we have a power line-up of speakers ready to dive into making social commerce work for you.
9. Wrangling Your Social Metrics
Unless you are in a position where you’re using social to leverage direct sales via social e-commerce in near real-time, you likely have a huge challenge with social analytics and attribution as part of your mix.
Whether you’re an in-house marketer or an agency managing social for clients, proving ROI via social and getting more budget in 2016 to support your social activities should be at the top of your list. After this session, packed with analytics tools and measurement methods from the pros, you’ll be able to conclusively demonstrate the value social media brings to the marketing mix.
10. Maximizing Social Markup
It’s usually responsible the first impression you make on social media, so you have to get it right the first time. Dealing with social metadata can often be tricky, but every social media team needs to ensure they  are making the most of their content sharing with well optimized elements to take advantage of Open Graph Protocol, Twitter Cards and Pinterest Rich Pins.  In this general session, all attendees will learn the value of getting social markup dialed in to help your content go viral.
In addition to guest speakers Jennifer Lopez from Moz and Kevin Shively of Simply Measured, Marketing Land’s own Monica Wright will be talking about utilizing social markup from the publisher perspective.
11. The Rise of Real Time Video
Twitter’s fast acquisition of Periscope signaled that this quickly uprising form of mobile video was something to pay attention to, and marketers are working overtime to fit the platform and its competitors like Meerkat into social strategies. Right now, Periscope is pulling far ahead with 10 Million Accounts With 40 Years Of Watch Time Daily, yet Meerkat still has the corner market on celebrity influencers.
As the battle between them and others continues, we’ll help marketers navigate how to use real-time video platforms to grow and engage with audiences.
12. Building Time & Budget For Snapchat Into The Social Cycle
Since the launch of Snapchat Discover earlier this year, this platform is sending significant traffic to brand and media sites, and is now reporting 4 BILLION video views daily. Coupled with its recent announcement of “Sponsored Lenses†on Snapchat selfies, it looks like serious marketers can’t ignore this platform in 2016.
If you’re still behind the times on this one, start with our Marketer’s Guide To Snapchat & How Brands Can Build Followers Through “Stories“, but make sure you catch the live version of contributor Nick Cicero’s What You Need To Know About Snapchat article at SocialPro all about working within the platform.
13. New Engagement Opps On Instagram
Recently topping 400 million monthly active users, it’s no surprise that the Instagram platform continues to get significant attention from social media marketers. Even more so now with expanded ad options and continued growth in video. And let’s not forget about the new standalone app, Boomerang for looping 1-second videos.
Meanwhile, we’re having a little bit of fun with it for the @SocialPro Conference account.
14. Integrating Social With Other Channels
At the CMO level, this is a key area of focus as social continues to require resources, though by many executive accounts, integrating social media activation alongside traditional advertising and other marketing channels has resulted in significant amplification for many brands. At SocialPro, we’ll continue the conversation about how social fits into the “big pictureâ€.
15. Using The Right Social Tools
With seemingly hundreds of social media tools available for social content production, publishing, ad optimization and measurement, one of the most frequently asked questions we get from attendees is “What Tools Should I Use?“.
This year, the Social Tools Super Session returns as a general session so all marketers attending SocialPro won’t have to choose between catching it or another track.
16. Creating Fresh Content for Social
The cornerstone of all social media marketing is content creation. One of our top contributors here and on Search Engine Land, Eric Enge will teach attendees how to craft a content strategy that not only helps boost your social presence, but aids organic search visibility.
17. The Expanding Social Ad Landscape & Linkedin Ads For B2B
Social marketers dealing in B2B focused verticals often lament that using the major social media platforms just don’t work with “boring, business-to-business†content. With increasing targeting opportunities coming from Pinterest, Tumblr and YouTube, and LinkedIn’s continued dominance in the B2B sphere, social media marketers are turning to paid social to drive leads and sales effectively.
At SocialPro, the experts will be doing a deep dive on all the paid social advertising opportunities available on these platforms and talking about advanced targeting tactics. Before you get to the conference, get started with these primer articles on Promoted Pins,  Linkedin Ads, and persona targeting for Tumblr sponsored posts.
18. Do You Know How CMOs Really Feel About Social?
Are you a social media marketer trying to prove real value and ROI through social media, or are you a CMO yourself, still struggling to justify budget and resources dedicated to social media?
Whichever camp you fall under, it’s always good to find validation in others successes and failures across social media. If you’re not reading our CMO Zone regularly, you should be! Here are just a few recent gems:
19. Pinterest Is A Powerball
If you’ve made it this far, you might have noticed Pinterest has been mentioned about a zillion times. Beyond the world of pinning recipes, DIY projects and fashion, the platform continues to allure users with the promise of living an inspired life. And that means real return for social marketers, as we learned from how Intel turns pinners into profits.
In addition to all of the sessions that touch on paid Pinterest advertising, we’ll also explore content optimization for the Pinterest platform.
20. Growth Hacking Your Paid Social Efforts
If 2016 is already the year you’ve decided to invest more in paid social advertising, then you can’t afford to miss this in-the-trenches session by Marketing Land contributor Larry Kim.
The tactics you’ll take back to the office to implement will help your team drive exponential, qualified traffic from paid social and provide practical conversion optimization tips. Focusing your efforts on converting 3-5x more paid social clicks into leads and increased sales is the most critical step of seeing return on your social media investment.
With all of these social marketing opportunities to prioritize in your strategy for 2016, it’s hard to know where to begin, and it’s our job to help you sort it out. Hopefully, with all of the content here on Marketing Land we gave you to review for homework before attending the in-person sessions, you’ll be on the right track.
If you’re not already planning to attend Marketing Land’s SocialPro Conference, there’s still time to register. If you take away even just a few key tips from the conference, you’ll look like a social media superstar this time next year, we guarantee it. See you in Las Vegas!
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