Top 3 tips to a better social strategy

Kristina: Kristina: What do brands need to change about their current presence on social media?

Ben Cockerell, Director, Global Marketing, Crimson Hexagon: For brands, social media should be used proactively - not just reactively. They often use social to respond to things like customer complaints, which is great, but there are ways for them to get ahead of these issues. Is there an incoming complaint that's starting to become repetitive? For example, airlines often see this with social media posts about delayed or missed connecting flights. By analyzing social media posts, they are able to identify a pattern - is it a certain airport where flights are getting delayed most? Or a specific plane? These conversations can then trickle down throughout the organization, from customer support to engineers, pilots, marketing, and so on. When social insights permeate an organization, crossing into different functions, that's when it's most effective.

Kristina: 4. What are your top 3 tips for brands to better use social media data to shape their ad strategies?

Ben: 1. Start every campaign with a question. Just like any research project, it's important to know what you want to get out of the data before you start running any analysis. Otherwise, you're left with a huge data set that will just leave you perplexed (and completely overwhelmed).
2. Don't just use the data to determine if your campaign was successful - make sure you apply it to future campaigns as well. Be sure to identify trends and patterns to improve not only your targeting, but your messaging as well.
3. Use the agile marketing method. Today, marketing is all about being in the present. With social media, consumers can react to campaigns instantly - meaning your ads can be rejected and ridiculed rather quickly if they're a flop. Instead, build campaigns with smaller, strategic goals that you can easily update.

Tags: advertising, Crimson Hexagon, social marketing, social marketing tips, social marketing trends