This week I moderated another webinar from the Social Media Today Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of The Art and ROI of Listening: Turning Your Platform into a Marketing Machine. This webinar was sponsored by Visible Technologies. The webinar included a superb group of panelists: Doug Busk, Director of Connections Innovation at The Coca Cola Company, Jaime Vignali, Director of Global Digital Marketing Operations at Novartis Consumer Health, and Ken Griffin, VP of Marketing at Visible Technologies.
Ken got us started with some background from Forrester's Analyst Nate Elliot on the importance of listening and then took us through a hypothetical case study from Honda which talked about all the great things you could listen for after winning a major industry accolade like the JD Powers and Associates award. For example, you could look for changes in brand attributes like: Reliability, Value, Gas Mileage, you could compare the Honda brand to its competition across those same attributes and look for changes in those attributes based on the report. You could find communities interested in the report and discussing your brand. You could even find brand advocates in some of those communities. A fantastic example of how important listening can be in the brand marketing toolkit!
Jamie took over and gave us a look at the selection process she went through and what she recommends other brands do when looking for a social media listening partner. She then went on to talk us through how she monitors and assesses the progress of her listening program. This was of great interest to the audience especially around the specific KPIs she uses and how she is able to tie her business KPIs to her social media KPIs. Most importantly she stressed that listening is not a "set it and forget it" strategy!
Doug then completed the presentation portion of the program with his discussion of Coke's Hub Network. Coke has set a lofty goal of wanting to be the "most socially responsive and engaged organization in the world" and this really resonated with the audience. To that end the Hub is where it all comes together - global awareness, global prediction, global consistency, global strength and global standard - it's how they deliver on the promise of being the most socially responsible organization.
Now, if you have ever been on a Social Media Today webinar before, you know they are very "participant-driven" and we love to ask your questions of our panelists. Many of the questions from our audience revolved around topics such as: What are the best practices around social listening? What KPIs do you typically look at daily, weekly, monthly? How do you prove ROI with social listening?
If that piqued your interest, you will want to hear the replay of this webinar; please check out this link. Otherwise we hope you will join us on another Social Media Today webinar! The next webinar is on Social Intelligence: Move Beyond Listening to Insights and Action. You can sign up for it or just view the schedule of upcoming webinars here.
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