This week we had the opportunity to chat with, Katy Howell, CEO of social media agency immediate future, for actionable tips for brands leveraging social media monitoring.
With over nine years of social media experience and 25 years in marketing, she’s a recognized authority in social communications, speaking at events around the world and helping companies create robust, measurable social media strategies. From social business to community management, she works alongside a team of consultants at immediate future to support initiatives and build client capabilities with training and mentoring.
Katy provided us with so many great tips on social media strategy – we’ve decided to break her interview up into two parts – be sure to stay tuned for more expert insights from Katy next month.
What are your recommended top 3 best uses for social media monitoring? Why should brands listen to social media?
Brands should, at the very least, listen to the conversations in social media. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of hearing the voice of your customer? Listening is a challenge. It certainly entails more than looking at streams of information 24 hours a day. It requires organization, process, and most importantly resource. In other words, it needs investment.
In return you can achieve a great deal by monitoring. Sure you can see tweets and posts on a minute by minute basis and respond if it’s part of your plan. Dig a bit deeper though, and you will find a mine of business value. My top three…
1.Harness the Trends
Whether it’s product or industry trends, business intelligence from social media can inform everything from your marketing communications through to your stock levels. Uncover the right moment for your campaign or the best way to launch a product – there is nothing so powerful as aligning your business with your customers’ interests.
2.Optimize your Engagement
2013 is apparently the year for content to be center stage. But before you spend your entire budget on videos, photos and apps; dive into social analytics to identify behaviors that inform what content you should create. Discover what gets shared most, what motivates comments and the types and styles of content that inspire engagement.
3.Evaluate Performance
Reporting the results of social activity is so much more than quoting followers, fans and retweets. Dig into the detail. Compare data with competitors and previous activity. Better still; attribute social activity to the sale – proving value from first to last click.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, Katy.
Tune in next month for more actionable tips on social media strategy from Katy, and check out our Quick Start Guide to Social Media Monitoring[:es]
