We are no longer the "Facebook crazy people"

shimu1215

From my point of view, which is conditioned by my personal experience, I see a more professional social media sector (better tools, better prepared professionals, better developed products), more integrated (in the rest of the company's departments and in the rest of the agency's products) and more recognized (we are no longer "the crazy people who spend the day on Facebook when they go to the office").

2. Have you seen any topics that were trending at the time that are now real or close to becoming real?
I can think of a few… but… I’ll stick with the WhatsApp Number Database mobile. We’ve been saying for years “this will be the year of the mobile”, and when it finally seems to have arrived, we’ve realised that “this isn’t about mobiles”, but about “mobility”.

3. How to design a social media strategy? Brief description and phases
A while back when we had to be very educational with customers, I worked with a very simple cycle:

Listen: monitoring, listening, consumer insights…
Build: development of apps, microsites, platforms…
Engage: content, interaction with users…

Amplify: paid media campaigns.
Today, we work with a much more complex planning process, where we analyze the role of each medium, we try to understand in more depth the points of contact with the consumer, we analyze their purchasing process, the market, we create a strategic platform, we establish the metrics and success factors, we allocate budgets to campaigns... in short, we create a high-level strategy and then we adapt it to the different channels.

4. Of the elements you described in the previous question, which are the three most important and why?
Regardless of channels, campaigns and budgets… if we analyze consumer , product and market , we will always have a solid base on which to work.

5. We have evolved from an approach that said social media is not a sales tool to starting to look for and measure return on investment (ROI). Were we right before or now? What is your approach to this issue and how do you measure ROI (if at all)?



The problem here is, as always, that we try to see the world in black and white, when in reality, almost everything is grey. We have read a thousand times from supporters of “social media is good for selling” and “social media is NOT good for selling”. The problem is that the formulation of the phrase itself is so imprecise that it is not even worth discussing.
If we do branding , let us measure in terms of branding. If we do direct response, let us measure in terms of direct response. But, we cannot judge social media with sales KPIs when almost 100% of the actions in the channel are branding. NO MAN, NO.

6. In recent years, social listening and monitoring have become more established in companies. Could you briefly define them and highlight the most important points of an active listening strategy?
Since these are English terms, I have read a lot in Spain, people who differentiate between them, people who use them as synonyms… here in the US we differentiate between them: Monitoring

is usually carried out with specific tools, to analyze specific topics (e.g. attributes of a product/brand) and their evolution over time. Social listening is more open, and tries to find out which are the “hot” topics, instead of being pre-assigned. We could easily explain it with an example of an automotive brand that is modifying its positioning to focus on a target whose main decision factor is design. On the one hand, you want to try to find out how effective your campaigns and new models are being, so you will monitor attributes such as "design" or "models" and all the adjectives that can refer to them (beautiful, elegant, innovative, etc.). On the other hand, you will " listen " to be alert and be able to detect other issues that may have gone unnoticed, such as an aesthetic defect in a door, a malfunction of some part, etc. Active listening , which for some is "pure meddling", for others is an act of good intention by a brand, which, detecting a need/problem of a user, intervenes and suggests a solution.