Agenda at a Glance

Join us for all general sessions October 23 & 24, plus revisit any sessions you missed for up to 6 months! The October 22 workshop is an optional session that can be added to your registration.

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Speaker, session and ticket info

Pre-Summit Interactive Workshop

Join us for hands-on, small-group sessions with activities and discussions led by an experienced trainer. These sessions can be added to your summit registration for an additional fee.

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. PT

The Fundamentals of Running Social for Brands

In this 3-hour virtual masterclass, you’ll learn that it’s possible to jump off the hamster wheel of ineffective Social Media efforts with proven expert-level systems and processes from the strategies that built Anastasia Beverly Hills, Alo Yoga, Mattel Creations, Mindvalley Social Media, and more!

In this live and interactive virtual work session, you'll unlock the secrets to:

Strategies used at your favorite brands
How to run Brand Social like a world-class VP
The Fundamentals of Running Social for Brands
Never running out of relevant content ideas ever again
Crafting your brand content pillars to shape your content strategy
Setting yourself up for success by getting clear on your Social Media objectives
Understanding that owning & implementing clear processes is what actually makes this job easy & fun!

Agenda and Activities

Introduction

Meet Robyn
Meet each other

Building Blocks for Brand Social

Getting Clear on your social objectives to set yourself up for success
Using social objectives to create your brand content pillars
Creating a content matrix to never run out of impactful content ideas again

Robyn’s Approach to Brand Social + Self-Assessment:

Are you/your team currently set up to scale your brand social?
Illuminate your strengths and areas for improvement in your current strategy and workflows
What’s holding you back from executing Brand Social like a world-class VP?

Closing Remarks & Q&A

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Robyn Nissim
CEO + Founder
Social Proof Agency

Live Conference Day 1

October 23 & 24 have 30-minute talks and panels, including a live chat stream, followed by 15 minutes of live audience Q&A with the speaker(s).

Thursday, October 23, 2025

7:55 a.m.–8:00 a.m. PT

Welcome Remarks by Summit Emcee

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Nathan Daugherty
Social Media and Partnerships Manager
Outdoor Network (Partzilla/Boats.net)

8:00 a.m.–8:45 a.m. PT

Panel

Redefining Relevance: How Top Brands Use Social to Stay Ahead of the Curve

In today’s hyperconnected landscape, brands that thrive aren’t just following trends—they’re shaping the conversation. This dynamic panel brings together some of the most innovative minds in social media to explore how top brands identify, interpret, and capitalize on cultural moments to build lasting relevance. From mastering emerging platforms to crafting campaigns that feel authentic and shareable, these leaders will unpack the strategies that keep their brands ahead of the curve.

Hear from social media leaders at NFL, Nationwide, Betsey Johnson, and Link in Bio as they discuss their philosophies for building social-first brands, balancing creativity with data, and navigating the ever-changing social ecosystem. Expect real-world examples, practical insights, and a glimpse into what’s next for social media.

Key Takeaways:

Learn how leading social teams define and apply a clear social media philosophy that drives authenticity and engagement.
Discover how brands tap into trending cultural moments while keeping content true to their voice and values.
Explore the tools, processes, and team dynamics that help brands identify trends before they peak.
Understand how to evaluate and experiment with emerging platforms to stay culturally relevant.
Gain insights into performance metrics, content formats, and creative approaches that maximize shareability and impact.

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MODERATOR
Rachel Karten
Social Media Consultant

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Elizabeth Franz
Director, Social Media
Nationwide

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Michael Dewberry
Senior Manager, Social Media
Betsey Johnson

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Shahbaz Khan
Head of Social Strategy and Emerging Platforms
NFL

8:45 a.m.–9:30 a.m. PT

Big Results, Small Budgets: How to Build Impactful Influencer Campaigns Without Breaking the Bank

This isn’t just another influencer play — it’s a creative, measurable, and purpose-led marketing strategy rooted in social insights and designed for real business impact. In this session, you’ll explore how to lead with creators and culture (not just channels), build integrated digital, PR, and paid media strategies around a social-first core, and use social data to craft a distinct brand voice that cuts through the noise.

Key Takeaways:

Start Social-First, Not Last: Shift your campaign planning process to lead with social. Build your big idea for creators and communities first — then scale with PR and paid.
Design Social to Differentiate, Not Duplicate: Start smart. Conduct a competitive and customer analysis to find your brand’s unique space. Avoid where your competitors have stronger share of voice. Carve out your own.
Build Creator-Driven Storytelling: Partner with creators who authentically reflect your brand mission. Empower them to co-create — not just post — to drive deeper engagement and advocacy. Work with creators who share your mission. Let them co-create content that speaks to passion, purpose, and people — not just product.
Measure What Matters: Go beyond impressions. Track metrics like premium perception, cultural relevance, and intent to pay more. These are the real levers for challenger growth. Focus on meaningful KPIs — premium perception, cultural relevance, and intent to buy. These are the levers for challenger brand acceleration.

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Alex Gilliam
Communications & Social Media Manager
Atlanta Beltline, Inc.

9:30 a.m.–9:45 a.m. PT

Break

9:45 a.m.–10:30 a.m. PT

Following Your Social Media Marketing Gps: A Map To Navigating Social Media Attribution

Social media has broken well beyond just the functionality of a brand awareness vehicle and has shifted gears to also become a demand generation engine for your sales and marketing teams. But how do you showcase the value of your campaigns to leadership? The fuel is accurate and real-time attribution.

In this session, attendees will learn:

How the evolution of B2B social media has gone from brand awareness to full business support with demand gen campaigns
Ways to evaluate what KPIs you should be measuring and how to establish measuring alerts for real-time reporting
The benefits of omnichannel campaigns towards creating multiple digital touchpoints in your buyer journey
Developing a business case for paid campaigns that utilize your budget, but can help contribute to revenue
Identifying and bolstering the relationship between the social media team and your thought-leaders, marketing operations and sales enablement teams

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Ryan Mitchell
Senior Manager, Social Media
Vertex Inc.

10:30 a.m.–11:15 a.m. PT

Breaking Through AI Fatigue: Positioning Your Brand as an AI Leader

As AI becomes ubiquitous, both B2B and B2C brands face the challenge of standing out in an increasingly crowded and skeptical marketplace. With AI messaging now saturating nearly every industry, platform, and ad campaign, simply claiming AI leadership is no longer enough. In fact, B2B buyers consider only 2.4 brands on average before purchasing a GenAI solution (LinkedIn B2B Institute), while 70% of consumers unsubscribed from brands in the past three months due to over-communication (Optimove 2025 Marketing Fatigue Report). These stats are a stark reminder that audiences everywhere are tuning out noise and rewarding only those brands that earn trust and relevance.

To truly differentiate, brands must build credibility, demonstrate tangible value, and communicate AI’s benefits in ways that resonate with both business and consumer audiences.

This session unpacks new research on AI trust, skepticism, and fatigue to reveal how different audiences perceive and respond to AI-driven messaging. Through real-world examples, we’ll explore how leading brands have successfully positioned themselves as AI leaders by refining their messaging, humanizing technology, and building long-term trust.

Attendees will leave with a clear framework to cut through AI fatigue, strengthen audience trust, and position their brand as a standout AI-driven solution—whether selling to businesses or consumers.

Key Takeaways:

Apply Proven Tactics from Leading Brands to Cut Through AI Noise. Learn how top brands are standing out in a saturated AI landscape and walk away with practical ideas you can adapt to make your own messaging more distinctive and memorable.
Use Creativity to Humanize and Differentiate AI Messaging. Explore how creative framing, language, and storytelling can transform AI content from technical to relatable and practice applying those techniques in your own campaigns.
Build Trust Through Transparency and Proof. Discover how leading marketers are earning credibility in the AI space through clear, concrete examples and learn how to apply similar strategies to overcome skepticism and build lasting trust with your audience.

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Emily Peterson
Principal Content Solutions Consultant
LinkedIn

11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. PT

Lunch Break

12:15 p.m.–1:00 p.m. PT

Modernizing Social KPI's: Introducing Velocity Level Metrics and How to Use them for Strategy

HOT TAKE: Engagement rate is becoming a flawed metric in today's social media world. It can be calculated in so many different ways which then results in the metric being inflated or even deflated. This presents the problem of misunderstanding how engaging your brand's content really is or can be. Being an analyst in social for over ten years, I've seen a mindset shift in ways to measure social media posts more efficiently and effectively. There is a new era of metrics among us

In this session, you'll learn how we've made the shift at Autodesk from engagement rate to velocity level metrics in our content performance reporting. You will be introduced to how velocity level metrics are calculated and how they can be utilized for content strategy. This session will highlight what kind of tech stack offers them, what type of social media posts and channels they can be applied to, as well as what types of content insights they offer for a brand social strategy team

You’ll learn:

What velocity metrics are, why they matter and how they can be used for content strategy
How to educate and introduce your social teams to velocity metrics from an analyst POV
A framework for creating a benchmarking process for velocity metrics
What kind of tech stack supports/offers them

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Leo Hunt
Social Analytics Lead
Autodesk

1:00 p.m.–1:45 p.m. PT

Panel

Building Communities That Stick: Retention, Loyalty, and Real Engagement

In an age where audiences are fragmented and attention is fleeting, building a loyal community that sticks is more valuable than ever. This panel brings together community and content experts from Shake Shack, YouTube, and University of Washington (with brand experience spanning Microsoft, Disney, and Starbucks) to explore how brands can foster real engagement, boost retention, and drive long-term loyalty. From surprise-and-delight tactics and AI-driven personalization to community-informed content strategies, hear how top brands turn casual followers into devoted brand advocates—and why community should be treated as a two-way street, not a one-time campaign.

Key Takeaways:

Understand the difference between fandom and audience—and how each contributes to brand loyalty
Explore how real-time, proactive engagement turns conversations into community touchpoints
Learn how to leverage community feedback to shape broader content, marketing, and ops decisions
Discover tactics for building community across both short-form and long-form content platforms
See how personalized moments and niche alignment foster long-term retention and connection

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MODERATOR
Carolyn Cohen
Global Content Strategist
Lockton

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Kelley Myers
Senior Adjunct Professor
University of Washington

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Omar Altimany
Social Media Community Manager
Shake Shack

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Sonali Karmarkar
Head of Content and Community
YouTube Shopping

1:45 p.m. PT

Day One Concludes

Live Conference Day 2

Friday, October 24, 2025

8:00 a.m.–8:15 a.m. PT

Welcome Remarks by Summit Emcee

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Nathan Daugherty
Social Media and Partnerships Manager
Outdoor Network (Partzilla/Boats.net)

8:15 a.m.–9:00 a.m. PT

Beyond the Comments: Turning Fan Signals into Brand Strategy

Sure, sending a free t-shirt is a nice gesture, but for "surprise & delight" to truly move the needle, it needs to be more than a random act of kindness. For the past five years at Intuit TurboTax, I've developed a strategy to build a scalable program that goes beyond vanity metrics and ladders up directly to business objectives. In this session, we'll dive deep into how we’ve created a community management program that drives brand preference and affinity. You'll learn how to craft "delight" moments that are not only cool and shareable, but also involve strategic, targeted outreach to turn consumers into brand advocates.

You'll Walk Away With:

A framework for building a surprise & delight program that moves beyond vanity metrics to drive business goals.
Insights on how to leverage social listening and data analytics to inform your surprise & delight strategy for maximum ROI.
Actionable tips for creating "delight" moments that are so good, they become shareable social currency for your brand.

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Audrey Willis
Social Media Manager
Intuit TurboTax

9:00 a.m.–9:45 a.m. PT

AI, But Make It Social: Prompt Engineering & Tools That Actually Help

Hot Take: A bad prompt = a bad output. AI tools are only as powerful as the prompts you feed them; learn to speak the language of LLMs and make the most out of your AI assistants.

In this session, I’ll show you how to level up your AI game by mastering prompts for free tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. We’ll focus on practical, social-first prompting techniques that actually save time and spark creativity.

You’ll walk away with real-world prompt frameworks, tested by a social strategist, that you can plug directly into your day-to-day work. This isn’t about theory; you will walk away with actual prompts you can use the same day.

You’ll learn:

The art of prompt engineering for social media
The nuances for prompting between different LLMs
Prompting frameworks
How to avoid AI hallucinations

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Aminta Iriarte
Associate Director, Social Media
Crunch Fitness

9:45 a.m.–10:00 a.m. PT

Break

10:00 a.m.–10:45 a.m. PT

Is This On-Brand? Building a Strategic Framework for Platform Evaluation

Not every trending platform is the right platform for your brand. The rush to “be everywhere” often leads to diluted messaging, wasted resources, and audiences that never fully engage. Instead of asking, “Should we be on this platform?” marketers need to ask, “Does this align with our brand?”

Drawing on over 20 years of experience in marketing, branding, and digital media strategy, I’ll share a proven framework for evaluating platforms through a brand-first lens. From understanding audience fit to assessing brand voice consistency and long-term ROI, this session will help you distinguish between shiny new objects and meaningful opportunities.

You’ll walk away with a roadmap to make smarter platform decisions that strengthen, not scatter, your brand presence.

You’ll learn:

A brand-first framework for evaluating emerging and existing platforms
How to assess whether a platform amplifies or dilutes your brand voice
Ways to align platform choice with audience behavior and strategic goals
Tactics for presenting platform recommendations to stakeholders with confidence

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Dr. Jessica Little-Chair
Business Department & Associate Professor
Marian University, Fond du Lac, WI

10:45 a.m. - 11:20 a.m. PT

Edutainment That Engages: How to Create Social Video That Educates, Entertains, and Converts

Educational content doesn’t have to feel like a lecture, and if it does, it’s time to uplevel your approach. Platforms like TikTok have proven that short-form, scroll-stopping creativity can teach, inspire, and convert all at once. The trick? Make it feel less like a lesson and more like content your audience chose to engage with.

Whether you're educating customers, employees, or fans, this session will leave you with fresh tactics for creating content that hits hard and helps your audience learn—without even realizing they’re being taught.

You’ll learn:

How to create content that educates and entertains without compromising either goal
Why creative storytelling is your best asset in making educational content feel organic
How to use platform-specific social tactics (like trends and audio) to boost reach and engagement
Why short-form, high-impact video is essential for capturing attention and sparking curiosity

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Autumn Black
Content Creator
Ford Motor Company

11:20 a.m.–12:10 p.m. PT

Lunch Break

12:10 p.m.–12:45 p.m. PT

Scaling Smart: How Regulated Brands Can Build and Engage Loyal Audiences

Healthcare doesn’t just operate under regulation, it lives in it. But within that framework lies a rich opportunity: to build real trust, foster authentic relationships, and create communities that feel seen and supported. In this talk, we’ll explore what it means to grow a regulated healthcare brand without losing the soul of the message. As the voice behind Florida Blue’s social media presence, I’ll share stories, strategies, and lessons learned on navigating compliance while creating connection, building loyalty, and showing up where people need us most.

Key takeaways include:

How to build audience loyalty without compromising on compliance or empathy
Ways to create authentic content that resonates with members and communities
Smart strategies for scaling reach while staying true to your brand’s purpose
Tools that help healthcare brands listen, learn, and engage in real time

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Orlando Gonzalez
Social Media Lead
Florida Blue

12:45 p.m.–1:30 p.m. PT

Panel

The Age of AI: Knowing When to Automate and When to Be Human

The rise of AI in social media has opened new possibilities for speed, scale, and efficiency. But with audiences demanding authenticity and human connection, the challenge for brands is knowing when to lean on automation—and when to let people take the lead. Moderated by Carley Cori, Director, Social Media and Creative Services at Stony Brook Medicine, this panel brings together leaders from Bayer, Hershey, and Procore to explore how they’re striking the right balance between AI-driven efficiency and the irreplaceable power of human voice, empathy, and creativity.

Hear how social teams are using AI behind the scenes for content ideation, social listening, and rapid responses—while still protecting trust, staying true to brand personality, and ensuring genuine connection with audiences. You’ll walk away with real-world strategies to sharpen your automation approach while making sure the human element remains at the heart of your brand’s social presence.

Key takeaways:

Determine when to automate tasks and when to rely on human oversight
Leverage AI to strengthen social listening, reporting, and creative development
Preserve brand personality and voice across AI-powered interactions
Avoid the risks of over-automation and audience backlash with practical safeguards
Balance efficiency with empathy and trust in customer engagement strategies
Anticipate the future role of AI in social media to keep your team prepared

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MODERATOR
Carley Cori (Weinstein)
Director, Social Media and Creative Services
Stony Brook Medicine

Bryan Frossard
Head of Global Brand Social Media
Procore

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Julia Richardson
Head of Social Media & Digital Paid Amplification
Bayer, Global Communications

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Paige Walker
Associate Manager, Consumer Insights
The Hershey Company

1:30 p.m. PT

Day Two Concludes

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