Ashton Media
Marketing & Customer Experience Hub

Social Media Data is sexy again: From disillusionment to productivity

Mia Dand

Data Strategy Symposium 2014

The Data Strategy Symposium 2014 run by Ashton Media will be held in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia, on the 17-19 November, where the leading minds in online and offline marketing and advertising will converge to share best practices and insights.

International keynote speaker

Mia Dand, CEO, Lighthouse3 (US), is one of the keynote speakers at the Data Strategy Symposium and will present ‘Social Media Data is Sexy Again: Journey from the Trough of Disillusionment to the Era of Productivity‘.

Mia Dand

Mia Dand is a Digital & Social Media leader with an outstanding track record of building user-focused marketing programs at global brands like Google, HP, Symantec and eBay. Mia pioneered the first Social Media Centre of Excellence at HP as well as their first Social Listening & Analytics program. She built and led the Global Social Media strategy for Symantec’s Consumer Business.

About the presentation

In this presentation, Mia will draw on her decade of experience with some of the world’s most well-known brands to help you leverage the right social technology to jumpstart your social media programs and effectively tie social customer insights to real business metrics.

In today’s post, Mark Abay of Ashton Media asks Mia Dand 4 questions about successfully leveraging social media data for competitive advantage, considerations when using social media data, and what brands need to succeed in their social data strategy. Mia also outlines three key learnings attendees to her presentation will walk away with.

Mark:

How are forward thinking organisations successfully leveraging social media data for competitive advantage?

Mia:

In today’s Facebook-era, marketers are drowning in social data. Without a clear strategy and the right technology to analyse it, all this data is worthless. Forward-thinking brands know that it’s the smart use of social data to deliver customer value that creates differentiation and competitive advantages.

To get the maximum value out of their social data investments, leading brands optimise their internal organisation structure, processes and technologies so they can seamlessly analyse data from all user touch points. Looking at user behaviour holistically gives brands deeper insights that can be translated into high-impact messages, experiences and products that lead to revenue growth.

Mark:

What are the key things to consider when utilising social media data to ensure that your brand doesn’t appear to be ‘creepy’ or ‘big brother’?

Mia:

Here are 2 key questions all brands should ask themselves before gathering and using social data,

1. What data is most meaningful to gather?

2. How will we use this data to deliver value to our users?

To avoid being “creepy” or “big brother”, brands should be transparent with users regarding what data is being collected and proactively communicate how it will be used.

Research has shown that users are willing to give up some of their privacy and social data in return for value in the form of better products, customised experience and personalised offers. However, it is disappointing that many brands gather vast amounts of user data without delivering clear value to their users.

For example: When a brand asks for a user’s birthdate, the presumption is they will use this information to create a special offer or personalised experience for that user on their special day.

However, many brands use this data to either spam the user with irrelevant offers or for their internal segmentation efforts. Neither of these activities delivers any tangible benefit to the user, which results in lower sharing by the user and thereby less rich data for the company.

Brands that optimise their internal operations to deliver the right offering or experience at the right time will earn their user’s trust. And ultimately, the brands who earn their users’ trust are the ones who will be most successful in using social data to drive business growth.

Mark:

What do brands need to succeed in their social data strategy?

Mia:

According to research conducted by the consulting group, Altimeter, companies still operate as silos with budgets and social data scattered all over the organisation.

Brands need to break down internal silos by developing a cohesive pan-organisation social data strategy, optimising their organisation structure, establishing strong collaborative processes, and enabling a robust technology solution to leverage social data.

Without internal alignment and optimisation, brands have to deal with fragmented and incomplete data sets, which hinder their ability to realise the full potential of social data to drive business growth.

Mark:

What key learnings will attendees to your presentation at the Data Strategy Symposium walk away with?

Mia:

In my session, attendees will walk away with 3 key learnings:

1. How to develop and implement a strategy to make social data actionable and use it to drive business results.

2. How to select and deploy the right social technology solution to support the social data strategy.

3. How to get strong internal buy-in, management support and funding for your social data strategy.

Don’t miss Digital and Social Media leader, Mia Dand at the Data Strategy Symposium 2014 on the 17th-19th November at Cypress Lakes Resort, Hunter Valley. Her presentation titled Social Media Data is Sexy Again: Journey from the Trough of Disillusionment to the Era of Productivity will take place at 08:50hrs on Wednesday 19th November, 2014.

Mark Abay - Content Director, Ashton Media About Mark Abay - Content Director, Ashton Media
Mark is Content Director at Ashton Media. It's his job to create interesting and engaging conference programs that stretch the thinking of our attendees. Mark works closely with our industry advisors to ensure the conference content is aligned with the needs and interests of our audiences.