Revenue, customer acquisition costs, market share. If you’re an executive, these are the metrics you’re likely monitoring to understand the health of your business. Are social media insights on that list? If not, they need to be.
Business leaders share a singular goal: growth. But traditional metrics don’t always illuminate how to get there — whether you’re looking to grow market share, grow your physical footprint, grow your donor base, etc.
Massive volumes of data exist on social media, and much of it has the power to influence departments across a business. In fact, 95% of business leaders agree that they must rely more heavily on social data to inform decisions outside marketing.
The insights executives can glean from social don’t just make a brand — they make a business. Let’s dig into why you need to be proactively asking for this information.
What social media intelligence reveals
Leadership involvement in a brand’s social media strategy has to go beyond the occasional reshare of a company’s LinkedIn post. Driving the most ROI from social depends on your organization’s ability to act on social data across teams.
These are the types of insights executives should be reviewing on a regular basis, and what they uncover about your brand:
Discoverability
Audiences are inundated hourly with content and ads across channels, social being just one of them. Metrics like impressions, views and share of voice answer a critical question: Are we cutting through the noise? The more discoverable your brand is, the greater the likelihood that consumers will keep you top of mind when they need a particular product or service.
But don’t just dig into these reach metrics at face value. Ask your team for context around what’s driving them — be it organic social content, influencer collaborations or employee posts.
Brand resonance
It’s one thing to get your brand or product in front of people. It’s another thing entirely to compel them to act.
Engagement metrics such as content likes, shares and comments (and their sentiment) paint a more nuanced picture of your brand health. These indicators highlight the content that’s most memorable or valuable to your audience, not just what they see and scroll past.
Within this bucket you should also be asking your team for conversion metrics. Depending on your market this might look like leads driven from social, registrations or even direct sales.
Voice of customer feedback
Your executive social media scorecard shouldn’t be limited to quantitative data. Insights from social listening offer what five-figure market research can’t: real-time, unfiltered customer feedback. Trends gleaned from social media conversations — whether they mention your brand or not — can clue you into emerging audience pain points, preferences and attitudes toward the competition.
Of course, this is intel that can inform your go-to-market strategy and creative campaigns. But that’s just the start. The Dunkin and Scrub Daddy partnership was hatched in the comments section, not a conference room. Glossier’s decision to reformulate one of its products was heavily influenced by customer backlash on Reddit.
Competitor insights
Regardless of industry, new competitors are emerging faster than ever. Social media’s “everything, everywhere, all at once” nature means you’re competing for attention with brands well beyond your vertical, too.
Ask for competitive data and industry benchmarks that contextualize your brand’s social performance in this bigger picture. This should encompass your competitors’ reach, engagements and share of voice on certain topics, and qualitative insights that reveal where audiences think competitors fall short. Knowing these details can allow your entire business to set better goals and refine your sales and product strategies.
It’s your job to be a social data steward
Making it a point to ask for and regularly review a social media scorecard is only step one. As a leader, your actions set the tone for whether social is viewed as just another marketing channel or a source of mission-critical information.
Model the right behaviors by:
- Asking questions: It’s okay to admit that you’re not an expert on all things social. Trust your team and give them the opportunity to educate you. If you’re not sure what metrics to ask for, make that known.
- Encouraging collaboration: Create a culture where it’s expected for social data to be shared across departments. This information can only be so powerful when siloed within your marketing team.
- Staying focused: Just because you can track everything doesn’t mean you should. Work with your social team to identify the most relevant metrics that align with your business goals and vision. Based on those indicators, what do they recommend starting, stopping or continuing?
A social media scorecard with the right data can change how businesses market themselves and what they make, who they make it for and how they sell it. Unlocking that impact, however, requires more support from the top.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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