3 social media essentials from the Thorpe Park experience

Back in November last year, the amazing Marketing Director at Thorpe Park, Jason Wills, joined the Social Speakeasy to tell us how he drives the success of his social activity.

The insights were so valuable that I thought it was worth revisiting. And in particular highlighting three central points focused on balancing detailed planning and targeting with a more intuitive, responsive activation.

1. Precision targeting in social gives you surety in your investment

Gathering social conversation data is not just about uncovering volumes and sentiment. Smart insights will allow you to segment your audiences. Segment and assign topics, platforms and motivations – that plot your customer touch points across social.

The value is immense. Not only does it inform your content approach, but it also allows you to optimise performance throughout the campaign.

2. Experiment, test and trial if you want a higher success rate  

Whilst a planned approach gives you a degree of certainty in where you should focus investment and resource, social also needs flair and creativity to break through the noise.

Sometimes you need to take a calculated risk. Go with the gut feel. Jason suggested that stepping outside the plan and going with your instinct can have terrific results.

3. Paid social drives your reach

It can be hard to hear, but social is not free. Not if you want reach. Facebook already makes it incredibly hard to grow a page on organic alone. And Twitter won’t be far behind.

So allocate some media spend, if you want your customers to actually see your campaigns!  Even Jerry Daykin from Mondelez made the point at our last Social Speakeasy: You need to pay if you want views.

Visit IFSlideshares for additional insights, and to learn more about our Social Speakeasy events.

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