It’s no secret that majority of CMO’s believe that social media is merely an obligatory marketing task that rarely reaps a return (unless you’re John Legere, of course). Beyond the vanity metrics of likes, comments, and shares, social media is now some brands primary means of communication with their customers, making it a pretty big deal. With social media management tools such as Hootsuite, it’s not only easier to communicate with customers, but it manages social media posts across multiple platforms and monitors the overall landscape in one place. In no way is it as powerful of a social listening tool as other programs such as Brandwatch, but it definitely can provide a company the foundation necessary to monitor keywords, hashtags, and conversations about the brand from anywhere.
When I used to work at T-Mobile, they had just started an in-store social media ambassador initiative and as the resident marketing major, I was selected. Opposed to just simply tweeting about promotions in the store, I used Hootsuite to monitor the areas near the stores I worked in. I would not only monitor T-Mobile related content but actually spent more time monitoring individuals who were talking about our competitors. Opting for this tactic was actually useful because I was able to take unhappy customers from the competition who lived within a 10-15 radius of my store and get them to come in the store. This methodology helped me to increase in-store traffic by at least 12% month-over-month.
It’s interesting to see how much Hootsuite has grown as a platform since I’ve started to use it back in 2015. It’s grown to work with more platforms and increased functionality in terms of reporting and even optimizing social media ad campaigns.
