Demystifying Social Media

In a recent McKinsey & Co. article “Demystifying Social Media,” Roxane Divol, David Edelman, and Hugo Sarrazin explain how senior leaders can break down social media into its four primary functions when developing social media campaigns and assessing the financial impact of their social media presence. 

1. Monitor

 Such brand monitoring—simply knowing what’s said online about your products and services—should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly.

2. Respond

Valuable though it is to learn how you are doing and what to improve, broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations for responding at a personal level is another form of social-media engagement. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often, though, responding is a part of crisis management.

3. Amplify

“Amplification” involves designing your marketing activities to have an inherently social motivator that spurs broader engagement and sharing.

4. Lead

Social media can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services.

To read the full article at McKinseyQuarterly.com, click here.