It was once the great charge of marketers to attract as many customers as possible across as many social media platforms as possible to increase reach and visibility, with the long-term goal of generating leads. The emphasis has changed; today social is increasingly about quality of interactions on the right social sites over quantity of fans scattered across the social sphere.
And as the number of user interactions on social networks continues to swell, so too does the opportunity to derive purchase intent from those posts. “Social is a great avenue for people to talk about life events and preferences,” says Jeffrey Revoy, president and CEO at social media marketing platform Viralheat. “Having that data available is extremely important to marketers because you can deeply segment your audience.”
Acquiring that data often requires social listening technology, but marketers must first recognize that social listening alone won’t do the trick. Marketers will benefit most from having complementary data such as behavioral insight to create a more holistic image of their customers. “One of the challenges I faced as a CMO was the passive nature of the data you get from social listening. There’s honestly not much you can do with it,” Revoy says.
“True social intelligence data available on Facebook is something most marketers want, but few have,” adds David Guy, CEO at Facebook research and targeting firm Loud Door.
So, what can marketers do to augment existing and future social listening efforts beyond simply crawling followers’ pages? Well, there are five things they can do:
Understand the value of social interaction
Yes, the value of social can be measured. Measuring users’ engagement with a brand is valuable on its own, but marketers must remember that it’s possible to track many interactions through the funnel to a purchase—and their businesses only stand to gain if they do.
“It’s possible for brands to measure the monetary value of social media interactions—the path from reaching a social media user, engaging him, and getting him to conversion is measurable,” says Jan Rezab, CEO and cofounder of social analytics company Socialbakers.
Prioritize social
“There’s a lot of noise in the market about social, but it’s just starting to really get on people’s wish lists. [Social] still isn’t a priority,” Viralheat’s Revoy notes. He’s not far afield. According to a study by Polaris B, 36% of executives say their CEO either “does not care,” or “cares little” about the company’s reputation on social media.
Though many (maybe even most) businesses have made the jump to at least one social network, concerns about the long-term viability of individual social sites persists. At some point marketers must commit to social media as a bona-fide marketing channel. This will make more sense for some verticles than others, but the decision must come from up top. “Don’t leave social decisions to mid-management,” Revoy cautions. “[You] have to make sure the social media directive comes from the C-level.”
Unify social with other marketing
Once marketers determine that social will be a priority, they must weave it into other marketing efforts. “Social media has to be integrated into the whole of [a brand’s] marketing,” Revoy says. “Don’t think of social as a category, think of it as one collective, end-to-end thing. Otherwise, you may end up targeting the same person in multiple areas without realizing it. It’s no different than how we think of email, really.”
Amplify social reach through content
Many marketers look at social media as a means to increase reach and visibility, which certainly happens. Great content is essential to increasing not only reach and visibility, but just as important, social engagement, which in turn further influences reach. “Make sure that you have stellar content to [increase] your brand’s reach, and apply paid media to amplify—and measurement to understand—the true conversion,” Socialbakers’ Rezab says. “Social media reach does correlate with your business results.”
Incentivize social engagement
Giving consumers a reason to interact with a brand’s social accounts can help foster loyalty in a space that’s clogged with innumerable businesses vying for viewership. Take e-retailer Zappos and its “Next Outfit of the Day” initiative. The company allows consumers to use the hashtag #NextOOTD on Instagram photos to get a Zappos personalized shopping recommendation. “If we look at Zappos’ project, it’s clear that there’s more of a direct connection between social dialogue and product,” Rezab says. “This is especially true for the fashion industry as a whole, which has become attuned to visual social channels and content networks like Instagram that allow them to showcase product in a natural way.”
