This week I moderated another webinar from the Social Media Today Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of Measurement: Best Practices in Turning Insight into Action. This webinar was sponsored by BrandWatch. The webinar included a great group of panelists: Will McInnes the Chief Marketing Officer for BrandWatch, Travis Bernard the Audience Development Manager for AOL, Steven Burchett a specialist in digital insights and analytics for a large beverage brand.
Will started us off with a discussion of how to drive insights in today's business ecosystem with an emphasis on where social fits into that picture. One thing that really resonated with the audience was the ability to use social data as a leading indicator for "intent to purchase" whether that means searching for the use of specific words or combinations of words or even mentions of two or more of your competitors. Bottom line is social media when used correctly can be a jump start to the sales process.
Travis took over and showed us how turn insights into action. One of his examples showed how by changing the frequency of posts (by a 4X factor) that engagement increased by 4 fold as well. That's the first time I have seen a 1:1 correlation between post frequency and engagement. This naturally brought on a lot of questions about the type of posts and any tips on the creation of the perfect post as well as how Facebook is changing organic earned media.
Steven then completed the presentation portion of the program with his discussion of what is typically hidden in the numbers. He advocated making your reporting simple yet impactful so the reader can easily digest the insights. He also impressed upon the audience that your insights should answer these three questions: What? So What? Now What? which was well received and retweeted by the audience.
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: How do other companies create processes around specific comments/tweets? What's the difference between social data and social insights? How do brands evolve their listening programs as they scale up?
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 From Employee to Advocate: Mobilize Your Team to Share Your Brand Content signup or it our just view the schedule of upcoming webinars here.