February 10, 2014
Key to any effective social media strategy is the ability to monitor what people are saying about your brand across social networks, blogs and forums. There’s a wealth of data available at your fingertips – the challenge is how best to turn that collated data into real-time actions.
We asked Jerry Daykin, European Social Media Marketing Manager at Mondelez International, at our Social Speakeasy – a brand-only event for marketers to keep up with the hottest social media topics – for his thoughts on the power of real-time social media marketing. And despite the tube strike there was a great turn out!
Jerry’s presentation was insightful, honest and raised a lot of laughs. He took us on a real journey – from the basics, such as the importance of a call-to-action (CTA) in your posts, to weighing up tough decisions, like can you really afford to stake a marketing strategy on one moment?
Scaling your brand activity was a point of contention. When you hear that Oreo’s famous Super Bowl tweet reached 15,885 retweets, you’re impressed. But as Jerry said, put your results in context. Because when you learn that the US has a population of 317 million, is your reaction still the same?
Jerry shared a smashing diagram with us too, detailing the difference between planned and unplanned activity. He made a point that resonated with a lot of our guests; that sometimes you need to break processes. Because real-time social is not suited to traditional marketing when it takes weeks or even months to secure approval. The moment has passed, the opportunity is lost. So we must change our methods and evolve processes.
Essentially, the event laid bare 3 fundamental points, and a few home truths…
1. Know your data
Relevance is a crucial part of making real-time marketing a success. And as Jerry pointed out, you really need to know your brand – and your audience – to properly navigate the social landscape in real-time.
But real-time marketing does not guarantee reach. To counteract this, you need to plan and manage content quantity, bringing your brand voice and opinion to the fore, with content that is relevant to your audience.
Take Oreo’s Daily Twist campaign. For 100 days, trending news stories and important calendar events were given a new twist. These predictable moments built muscle memory with their target audience in the States, keeping Oreo front of mind and aligning the brand with moments that were relevant to the US.
2. Have great community managers
Traditional marketing does not align well with real-time social media. Much like the evolution of the marketing funnel, brands need to move from a social funnel to what Jerry termed a ‘social megaphone’.
The concept is brilliant and works to deliver social at the scale of your business. And you need those amazing, trusted in-house community managers to combat the restraints of traditional marketing processes (think how long it takes you to get approval!)
Let’s look at the Creme Egg campaign. With 2.5 million UK followers, the brand promoted its most engaging content with paid media. Which led to BIG results. The results on social matched the impact of TV with nearly 16 million users reached on Facebook, and over 5 million actively engaged with the brand!
3. ‘Pay to play’
But ultimately, the biggest take away of the night was the fact that you have to ‘pay to play’ in real-time social media marketing. Marketers are allocating more and more time and energy to monitoring real-time social conversations and quickly developing content to make the most of those conversations. But, like Jerry said, being truly effective in real-time marketing means investing in paid advertising – and then optimising your approach based on real-time events.
Quick decisions can be hindered by content creation, which is still a painstaking and time-consuming task for many brands. But revising your approach can help you to make faster spending decisions in support of real-time marketing. Although you may strike gold with a timely tweet or post, real-time marketing is notably more successful when marketers align their content creation with paid media. Ultimately, viral adds value, but paid adds reach.
Like Jerry said: “With great money comes great views.”
Join the LinkedIn Social Speakeasy Club and stay up to date with our events https://bit.ly/SocialSpeakeasy It’s an brand-only group specifically designed to put you in touch with fellow marketers.
You can view Jerry’s presentation at https://bit.ly/SpeakeasyRealTimeSocialMedia