One of things I’ve always liked about my business is the diversity of marketing challenges that are out there. For example, it’s hard to imagine two more different situations than those faced by Stacy Braun, SVP of Marketing at AXA Equitable and Evan Greene, CMO of The Recording Academy (better known for The Grammys.) Yet when you drill down a bit, especially in the social media arena, you’ll find that smart marketers share a common commitment to understanding their target, engaging at all the right touch points and establishing metrics for success. Both Braun and Greene were kind enough to answer some of my last minutes questions related to the Social Media Fitness Study. I think you’ll find what they have to say quite interesting.
DN: Can you speak to the benefits of having a cross-disciplined social media team?
Braun: At AXA Equitable, we see the benefits of having a cross-disciplined team in driving the social media strategy and execution for our organization. Because social touches so many areas of our business, it is important to have a coordinated effort that engages all key players in our decisions around this evolving platform. This ensures we are thinking through all of the nuances that can impact our brand image, our PR strategy and how our employees, advisors and customers are engaging with our brand. While a cross-disciplined team may require more check-points along the way, the result of having collaboration and insights from all key areas of the firm ensures that we “own” the experience together.
Greene: It depends on your goal. Rather than simply using social as a tactic, the most effective brands use social as an organic part of everything they do. Therefore, a cross-discipline team, that touches many areas of the company is an effective, collaborative approach.
DN: Can you talk about the benefits of doing a social media audit?
Braun: We conducted a social media audit about a year ago and it proved extremely helpful in understanding the opportunities available to us. By looking at competitors in our industry, as well as companies in other categories, we recognized the potential of social media, which helped us set our priorities for the year ahead. It also helped us refine our social media guidelines for employees, and identify new ways to use social to proactively enhance our brand image.”
DN: What compelled you all to set up a social media training program?
Greene: With social media still being relatively new, and touching everyone either in their personal lives, or at work (and often in both places), there are no standardized rules. In fact, the rules continue to evolve almost daily. Therefore, with so much at stake with brand image and reputation in today’s fracturing marketplace, companies are well served to establish clear parameters that can be consistently applied and followed across their organizations. Otherwise, simple, sometimes innocent mistakes can happen and be disastrous to a company’s brand and reputation. When this happens, it can be very difficult to recover.
DN: What are the advantages of having a real-time dashboard?
Greene: Metrics are crucial. Listening and monitoring are really becoming the new frontier. After all, the better you become at interpreting the data, the more effective conversations you will be able to build with your social ecosystem, and the deeper the engagement you can create.