Come gather people wherever you post. And admit that the ads around you have grown. And accept it that soon, organic reach will blow. The ads they are a-changin.

While reading, we recommend you listen to:

As we all know, a robust paid social strategy is essential to fight back against the algorithmic timelines and declining organic reach. Lucky for us, social channels are constantly developing their paid offerings.

Twitter is introducing a new option for your ads – Promote Mode. With Promote Mode, automates promotion of your tweets and account by automatically amplifying your tweets and profile to a larger, interested audience. This is an always-on strategy that you can subscribe to by paying a flat fee every month, but you can cancel your subscription at anytime. According to Twitter, Promote Mode is mobile-first and still in Beta.

While Twitter is busy giving you new options, Facebook is looking to remove some.

Facebook recently announced via a small notification box in its new and improved Ads Manager that it would begin removing nearly 20 metrics it considers “redundant, outdated, not actionable or infrequently used.”

Starting July 2018, you will see some metrics options leaving Ads Manager, such as Actions, Button Clicks, Canvas Component Time Percentage, Carousel Card, and more.

Some of the identified metrics, like Social Reach and Social Impressions, won’t be missed since they aren’t actionable. However, Canvas Component Time Percentage might be missed since it indicates which components – Video, Splash, Text Box – resonates most with your audience.

Facebook also intends to clarify some of its metrics by labeling them as estimated or in development.

Let us know which metrics you think should stay and which ones should go!

Here’s a full list of all of the metrics Facebook has sent to the chopping block:

Actions, People Taking Action, Cost per Any Action: The Actions metric is a composite of various actions and events, such as engagement, clicks or conversions. As our platform introduces more actions that people can take on an ad, this metric becomes more nuanced, and a less relevant signal for measuring business outcomes. We recommend customizing your own composite metric reflecting actions that are meaningful to your business instead of using Actions.

Amount Spent Today: We recommend using our dynamic date selector to see results for Today and compare results across different date ranges instead of using the Amount Spent Today metric. Select Today for the date range and use the Amount Spent metric to see how much money you’ve spent on your campaign starting at 12:00 AM (midnight) today.

Button Clicks : The Button Clicks metric shows the number of times people clicked the call-to-action button on your ad. Button Clicks is redundant because these clicks are also either reflected in the Link Clicks metric or other distinct metrics like the Event Responses metric and the Offers Saved metric. We recommend using Link Clicks, Event Responses or Offers Saved instead of Button Clicks.

Canvas Component Time Percentage: The Canvas Component Time Percentage metric hasn’t been a widely used metric. We recommend using the Canvas View Time metric and the Canvas View Percentage metric instead of Canvas Component Time Percentage.

Carousel Card: We’re no longer supporting the Carousel Card breakdown for conversion metrics (ex: Website Conversions) and for any calculated metrics such as CTR because these insights have been infrequently used. You can still see the Link Clicks metric broken down by Carousel Card and see conversion results without the Carousel Card breakdown.

Link Click Destination: After we launched this breakdown in July of 2017, a number of mobile operating system updates that followed began to prevent us from determining if someone was redirected to an app’s deep link or to an app store for ads set up with backup link destinations. Advertisers can still use use Outbound Clicks and Landing Page Views metrics to measure which clicks lead people to destinations off Facebook while we continue to explore other ways of providing more granular app deep link or app store destination insights.

Mobile App Actions Conversion Value: The Mobile App Actions Conversion Value metric is based on the value you assigned to an app action when you set up the app event. We recommend using specific app event conversion values (ex: Mobile App Purchases Conversion Value) instead of Mobile App Actions Conversion Value.

Page Mentions, Cost per Page Mention: The Page Mentions metric is an outdated metric and is not indicative of either positive or negative sentiment towards your brand. We don’t recommend using Page Mentions to evaluate campaign performance. Instead, if you’re running a Page Likes campaign, we recommend using the Page Likes metric or the Page Engagement metric, as they’re more indicative of the success of a Page Likes campaign.

Page Tab Views, Cost per Page Tab View: The Page Tab Views metric measures the number of views of tabs on your Facebook Page that are attributed to your ads. If you’re running a Page Likes campaign, we recommend using the Page Likes metric or the Page Engagement metric, as they’re more indicative of the success of a Page Likes campaign than Page Tab Views.

Positive Feedback, Negative Feedback: The Relevance Score metric already uses Positive Feedback and Negative Feedback signals as inputs, and the granularity provided by breaking out positive and negative feedback creates more confusion than useful insights. We recommend using Relevance Score instead of Positive Feedback and Negative Feedback to understand how well a target audience is responding to ads.

Social Reach, Social Impressions, Social Clicks (All), Unique Social Clicks (All): Social metrics (ex: Social Reach, Social Impressions, Social Clicks) are outdated metrics that show the number of people who saw an ad when displayed with social information. The Social Reach metric isn’t meaningfully different from the Reach and Impressions metrics and the insights provided aren’t actionable, since advertisers don’t have control over when ads are/aren’t shown with social information. We recommend using Reach instead of Social Reach, and using Impressions instead of Social Impressions to evaluate campaign performance.

In an exciting announcement Instagram posted on their own business blog that scheduling posts will now be part of the Instagram Graph API.

This is great news but isn’t being rolled out to the public. The feature is exclusive to software developers using Instagram’s platform API like Cortex, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, this won’t be native to the product itself.

Of course if you work with an agency, like Pandemic Labs, all your weekend and 3am posting is covered. No need to worry and now all it means is that we don’t need to set an alarm to wake our Creative Director so he can do it.

Cayman Cookout, Grand Cayman

Each year, over President’s Day weekend, The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman and Eric Ripert host the island’s most anticipated culinary event – Cayman Cookout. World-renowned chefs come together to create an unforgettable and delicious experience, including the hilarious José Andrés, legendary Emeril Lagasse and most interesting man in the world, Anthony Bourdain.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend their 9^th installment to cover the events through social media on The Ritz-Carlton brand’s major channels. From watching José Andrés and Emeril Lagasse jet ski onto Seven Mile Beach and pop champagne, to playing shot roulette with Tim Love after he showed us how to cook the perfect steak, these four days were some of the most memorable of my life (#RCMemories).

But it wasn’t all fun and games. My 10+ years as a social media consumer and 1.5 as a social media account executive prepared me as much as possible for the comprehensive campaign we had planned; but with about 10 events happening each day on opposite ends of the hotel, candid moments among spirited chefs and unpredictable weather, being flexible was also integral to the campaign’s success.

Our strategy was to capture as much live content as possible for Twitter and Instagram stories (The Ritz-Carlton brand’s debut on this format) to raise awareness for the event, while also gathering recipes, quotes, videos and images to later turn into long-form content for @RitzCarltonChefs Instagram account, Pinterest, and Facebook. Understanding each channels’ strengths, formats and the ways in which they are consumed was key to allocating my time and attention to each event.

I began every morning by trying to memorize times and locations of cooking demonstrations so I could be in the right place at the right time. I was never without my bag of essentials – press pass to enter events ahead of time, Theta for seeking out 360 photo opportunities, itinerary, shot list, phone and portable charger. Overlapping beach demos meant obnoxiously sneaking to the front of the crowd to take pictures of the chefs, listening intently to their ingredients and tips, and waiting until the dish was handed out to snap a picture. Once I got the shot (and devoured the dish) I rushed to the opposite side of the beach to do the same for the next demo.

By Sunday evening we had published 28 live tweets, daily Facebook posts to recap the days’ events, 20+ Instagram Stories, 6 @RitzCarltonChefs posts, and a big enough bank of images for me to #tbt for the rest of my life.

What I got out of this experience was not only an enviable “highlight reel” (and a sunburn), but a fully immersive social media experience. I learned that being able to adapt is just as important to a strategy as a step-by-step plan, as long as you know your overall goal and target audience. I got the chance to meet, collaborate, and learn the crafts of really interesting people also working the event including Tasting Table contributors, incredible photographer Trey Ratcliff and the seasoned Cayman Cookout professionals from the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without my amazing Pandemic Labs team who helped proofread and schedule my content, and FaceTimed me when I needed a reminder to just breathe and enjoy the view.

Speaking of highlight reel…

2017 is already a big year for social giants Facebook and Instagram. For users there are many new features that make both platforms engaging and fun to use. These changes will have a deeper impact for brands and marketers.

Facebook

In-Stream Video – With the Audience Network launch last May, Facebook now runs In-Stream Videos which allows Facebook’s 4 Million Advertisers to reach more people with pre-roll and mid-roll placements. This also includes Facebook Live. In-Stream Video has proven to increase overall CPM results and continuing to show potential as the popularity of video increases. If you have quality video to share, this may be an option for your next campaign.

Messenger Advertising – Facebook Messenger has changed extensively in the last few months. Some say it has officially emulated SnapChat with the use of filters (and stories). However, The good thing about Facebook Messenger in terms of business is the ability to interact with fans in real-time and has changed the ecommerce space entirely. For example: Jasper’s Market – The user has clicked on the call-to-action button which started a messenger chat including the 20% offer. From there a real-time conversation can begin.

Instagram
Carousel Photos and Videos – For a few weeks now, social marketers and users alike have been excited with the carousel photo and video feature that is now available on Instagram. The Carousel Ad has been in the Advertising space for a awhile but now the Carousel option lets you create a single Instagram post with a slideshow of up to 10 images and/or videos. Users can scroll them. You can tag users on individual slides within the post and marketers can upload their product catalog to the mix. This will allow for users to click on items within the photo, see how much it costs and purchase the item in just a few steps. Amazing!

Instagram Stories – With 300 million daily viewers and 500 million monthly viewers, Instagram is leagues ahead of Snapchat when it comes to the ability of advertising reach within stories. At first, Instagram only allowed 30 brands to participate in advertising within the new feature and now it is a placement option for all with access to Business Manager and Power Editor. Of course, this option should be used only if you have quality imagery and video to connect with appropriate target market.  Airbnb was one of the first brands to capitalize on this awesome feature. As the year continues, look for many new trends with video content, advertising and metrics. Remember, don’t be afraid to try new objectives to fully optimize your social campaigns.

Ogden, Utah

Dana and Ski Patrol at Powder Mountain, UT

Last year I was on location in Ogden, Utah with our photographer Nate, from Speed Photos, for a Content Spree. This is what we call our intensive quick focus shoots of an area where we capture stills, video, 360, depending on the immediate need, in a quick 2-3 days. When we are mapping out a Content Spree, the itinerary and routes are meticulously planned using Google Earth, first hand referrals and researching, but always allows for spontaneity to drive the creative flow, as when you’re on location you can’t plan for everything! Weather, talent, traffic, equipment failure and more are all waiting to create havoc in your strategically planned shoot! Sometimes, these non-calculated moments some of the best and most unique content is captured.

We were slated shoot content all over the Ogden valley including three ski/snowboard locations (Snow Basin, Nordic Valley and Powder Mountain), while also covering downtown Ogden. Temperatures were single digits the majority of the time, which makes getting out of bed early to capture sunrise over the Nordic Valley really tough, but a large hot coffee and this glorious sunrise made it worth it!

The last afternoon of the Content Spree, was shooting at Powder Mountain, which consists of over 7,000 miles of back country terrain covered in 500 inches of Utah’s pristine powder only accessible by a few lifts or hiking. Luckily Ski Patrol gave us a lift via snowmobiles, allowing us access to shots we wouldn’t have been able to capture otherwise. They were even stoked to be in the shoot!

These Content Sprees are a lot of fun, and you really get immersed into the area you’re shooting. It’s a great learning experience as well to work hand-in-hand with the photographer creating content together as we go. Most importantly, it’s a great benefit to our Clients and they’ve been extremely happy with all of our results.

Content Spree Summary: 2.5-day Content Spree | 500 stills developed | 12 hrs of B-Roll scenic video produced | 100% organic talent

Check out a few of our favorite shots: