As a CEO you rely on metrics like stock price, profit margins and revenue growth to monitor the health of your business. But if you aren’t factoring in meaningful social media data, you will miss crucial insights.
There is a massive amount of social media data available today, and businesses are eager to tap into it. Almost nine in 10 business leaders expect to use social data more to inform their decision making in the next three years, and 95% agree they must rely more heavily on social data to inform business decisions outside marketing.
Yet, raw data points or lengthy, stat-stuffed reports alone don’t tell a compelling story, which leads to data being underutilized. Executives need contextualized social media metrics like sentiment analysis, customer satisfaction and competitor benchmarks to make informed decisions.
With this impactful data on-hand, businesses can improve brand reputation, predict trends, differentiate from competitors and carve out a market niche. For these aspirations to come true, it starts with CEOs proactively asking for a social media scorecard to review on a regular basis.
Why a social media scorecard is crucial for leadership
Most CEOs are already a part of their brand’s external social strategy. Building an effective executive communications strategy is a solid step toward boosting brand awareness and PR efforts. Yet, to maximize the value of social, CEO engagement must go beyond being a spokesperson. If executives want to make the most of social media investments, they need to reevaluate how social data is internally shared and acted on across their teams.
By regularly drawing on social media intelligence, those in the C-suite are empowered to:
Gauge brand perception
Insights from social go far beyond likes, comments and engagements. Social is a 24/7 focus group where you can find unfiltered feedback about how your brand and products are perceived. Social listening enables you to analyze these customer conversations at scale, uncovering emerging trends in time to change or capitalize on them.
For example, you can get ahead of negative sentiment before it snowballs into something more serious like decreasing stock value or plummeting sales. You can also surface positive sentiment and consumer-generated trends and amplify them, like how McDonald’s translated the viral Grimace Shake trend into a nearly 12% increase in global same-store quarterly earnings.
Identify opportunities for growth
Voice of the customer insights from social equip companies with the feedback needed to grow in the right direction—from developing new products to charting expansions to building brand partnerships. With social insights, you can discover consumer pain points, where your target audience is located, how they use social and other brands they love. These learnings help your team create more effective campaigns, focus product development efforts and drive sales.
Take Airbnb. The homestay experience brand forged a partnership with Barbie™ the Movie via their Barbie DreamHouse, which generated mega buzz on social media and helped bolster their profitable brand awareness strategy.
@airbnbthe @barbie dreamhouse is back on airbnb. but this time—ken’s hosting. the pink palace has been revamped with maximum kenergy and is ready for guests. booking opens on july 17 at 10am PT. 🛼 barbie airbnb kendreamhouse don’t miss BarbieTheMovie only in theaters july 21.
♬ original sound ' airbnb ' airbnb
Ignoring the value of a social media scorecard for CEOs is akin to ignoring key performance indicators in any other department; it's an oversight that places strategic and financial success at risk.
If corporate leaders fail to demand a social media scorecard that measures engagement, influence and reputation management impacts on their brands' digital footprints—they are neglecting critical insights into modern business success.
