Over the past several weeks, LiftMetrix has sat down with notable social media marketers from brands across various industries to learn their best practices for social media, brand development, and marketing to drive ROI. Throughout this series of interviews, we have identified several key challenges facing social media marketers and how they are approaching them. These pain points are listed below, along with excerpts from those interviewed.
Content that Excites and Motivates
“The hardest thing is always creating new content and keeping it really interesting but also cohesive,” said Malikah Kelly, Digital Content Manager at Steve Madden. “You want to make sure you’re telling a story that makes sense for your brand and you’re being true to your brand’s values – but at the same time you don’t want to make it look boring or stale. You have to think of way to make it look fresh, cool, and exciting without making it too different that you start alienating your customers or they don’t recognize who you are [as a brand].”
Analytics and Measurement
“Time goes into pulling data, so having more time for Analytics is always a challenge,” said Natasha Kazi Khan, Director of Social Media for JustFab and ShoeDazzle. “Also, accuracy because the data in Google Analytics is completely different than it is in WordPress – so, if we can’t trust our Analytical tool that definitely is a challenge.”
H&R Block’s Director of Social Influence Marketing Lauren Gerstner also sees one of their biggest challenges coming from the measurement space: “We’re always working to ensure that we’re tracking the right metrics, that our reporting is equipping us with actionable insights. Because the tax season is only 4 short months, there’s only so much time we have to really make a maximum impact, so being able to extract the insights from our reporting and take action on that quickly is critical to our social strategy.”
Facebook’s Algorithm Changes
“I think if you ask any media organization they’ll have a long list that will probably always starts off with Facebook’s algorithms,” said Jodi Gersh, USA Today’s DIrector of Social Media for Strategic Brand Marketing. “I understand that Facebook is a business and that they’re also in it to make money, so the years of getting free publicity from Facebook are over. However, you worked very hard to grow your audience over the years and now you can’t even reach the people that are following you, let alone reach new people. So one of the biggest challenges I would say is trying to engage with our existing fans and followers when the technology sometimes gets in the way. So you kind of have to do the pay to play model where you are putting money behind some of your posts and growth campaigns, and I think if large businesses, especially media, are really hoping to reap the benefits of social platforms, they’re going to have to start to increase their social budgets for those networks.”
Keeping up with Social Media Trends
Moving beyond just the Facebook algorithm changes CEO of Wylie and Co. Nailah Blades identified keeping up with all of the new social media trends as being among her top challenge: “I think it can be challenging to keep up on the trends and I think that with the bigger challenge is making sure that you’re only assessing the trends that work best for your client. Even though it may seem like a good idea to jump into everything, not everything is going to work for your client based on their brand, who they’re speaking with and their product. So, I think making sure that maintaining the balance and not jumping on every bandwagon.”
You can view the full interviews with these stellar social media marketers by clicking here. Stay tuned for the next Q&A post as well as our next recap post on what’s exciting social media marketers!
