Disney Social Media Celebration “On-the-Road” at Disneyland Resort!
By Erin
*I was invited to attend the Disney Social Media Celebration On-The-Road at the Disneyland Hotel. All thoughts and opinions remain my own.*
The Disney Social Media Conference. It’s what every Disney obsessed blogger and influencer dreams of getting an invite to, so I was thrilled to get an invite to the “On the Road” Celebration in September. I’ve been infatuated with the mouse since a very young age as you can see here. Me and Mickey go way back. lol 😉
Now just wishing to get invited to go to the main conference, I am just putting it out in the universe since I tend to be the black sheep and end up being the only one of my friends group lately (like this ENTIRE last year, it’s not like a few here and there, I can handle that, it’s been very consistent this ENTIRE year) that DOESN’T get invited. Can you say OUCH?! The feeling of what’s wrong with me, and why am I not good enough since I am the only one of the group not invited? Am I invisible or that unlikable or something? Those are the thoughts that have been running through my head a lot lately. I’ve just been keep-on-keeping-on, which isn’t that easy when you feel that way. Anyone else relate? Anyways… I know this is totally unrelated, but just needed to put it out there, since I usually don’t and this is my space to do that I guess? I usually just keep to myself.
On a happier note, of course I was beyond THRILLED to get to be a part of this special day. It was a magical day full of Pixie Dust, learning, and networking.
Throughout the conference we heard from some amazing and inspirational speakers about a lot of magical things. Some were tips for us to use with our own social media and other things were about what’s happening at the Disney Parks and Disney company. It started off with the wonderful Courtnee Collier who gave us a warm welcome as we enjoyed a delicious breakfast. Then it was time to start listening to the Disney experts. First up was Bob Hitchcock to talk to use about creating video content.
Creating video content with Bob Hitchcock
Bob spoke to us about the importance of video, not only Youtube but also on Facebook and Instagram.
Take a look at those stats above! A whopping 88% of people spend more time on a website with video and viewers retain 95% of the message if they can watch it compared with only 10% of reading the content. So long story short, MAKE MORE VIDEOS!
Sound isn’t even that important if you are making videos for Facebook. 85% of Facebook guests watch video without sound, so captions are important.
You need a plan when creating your video. Have a pre-production sheet that answers some of these questions:
It is important that during the production process you are prepared to know your audience and what they like, use common language, be authentic, and make sure your video is good and clear. After you are done producing your video make sure to edit it, customize it for the different platforms, add music, and post!
Then we listened to Mallory Wang about what’s happening with all things Disney network. Lots of updates on Disney Plus. Did you make sure to subscribe yet? Are you even a true Disney Fan if you haven’t even signed up yet? Kidding, kidding… but there are SO many cool things coming to Disney Plus! You won’t want to miss it!
Soon it was time to put our phones, laptops and electronics away. A special presentation about Maleficient Mistress of Evil was about to be shown with never seen footage. It’s out in theaters everywhere now, so make sure to go see it this weekend! 😉 We learned so much from Louie Provast, Senior VP of Production at Walt Disney Studios. The movie kind of starts with a proposal, ends with a wedding, but has lots of twists in the middle. It’s not your typical Disney fairy tale movie tied with a pretty bow.
One of the biggest questions about Maleficient is, if she is an evil fairy, where are her wings? In this film learn about Maleficient, why she looks different than the other fairies and they will introduce new fairies to explain it all to us. Maleficient is going to learn about her ancestors.
John Breckow, Director of corporate Citizenship was amazing to hear speak about all the good Disney is doing with Make a Wish and all the wishes Disney helps come true each year as well as the VoluntEAR program that is doing some amazing work in the community.
Some fun facts:
*26,000,00 people have been involved in granting Disney wishes since 1980.
* The #ShareYourEars program at Disney helps people get their wishes.
*YOU can join the VoluntEAR program! More than 600,100 hours of volunteer service was provided in 2018 and nearly 4 million hours has been logged since 1992! WOW!
We also learned about content created with the Disney Parks Blog, and then we got to meet Ashley Eckstein, founder of Her Universe, and she inspired us with her journey about working hard to achieve your dreams and of course we learned about all things coming to the parks. I really enjoyed listening to her speak.
*DREAM*
Ashely gave us some great advice on how she lives her own life which is DREAM, WISH, BELIEVE, DO, TRANSFORM, and TRUST. I took photos of each one so you could better see what she means by each one. I guess I am just taking her advice by putting it out into the Universe that I would LOVE to go to the next Disney Social Media Conference and I am willing to put in time and effort to hopefully see that come to fruition, since that is my biggest fear. Spending so much time, all the hours and nothing becomes of it since most of the “time” I have to work on these things are during the hours of the night I should be sleeping or getting ready for bed as it is 10pm on a Friday night as I write this now… HA! Having a “day job” really limits your time to work on the fun stuff like this, but I will keep dreaming.