Reaching out and engaging with an audience is the difference between companies who use social media effectively to help achieve their business goals, and those who do not. In fact, the IT research company, Gartner Inc., predicted that over time, refusing to communicate via social media channels will be as harmful to companies as ignoring a phone call or email is today. Dissatisfaction over this, the company goes on to say, can lead to a 15% rise in churn rate for existing customers.
In a competitive world where 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form (Aberdeen), no one can afford such a loss to their client base, and yet 75% of B2B companies do not measure or quantify their social media engagement (SatMetrix). This is not to say, however, that companies are not concerned about this. The savvier of these companies aptly recognize the key to success here revolves around engagement which is why, according to Forrester, 37% of brands would like to use social media in a way that allows them to reach audiences through custom-tailored marketing campaigns.
But there’s a fundamental problem: How to gain useful insights from social media efforts on a macro level that can translate into meaningful interaction with those in the social space on a micro level. The current options for determining this, it would seem, are thin based on a the results of a recent SEOmoz survey which found that 60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis and other analytics options in their social media management tools.
Enter HubSpot’s new social media tools within the company’s revamped online marketing suite known as HubSpot 3. With the platform’s soon-to-be released features, marketers will not only have the ability to view the performance of the content they are publishing through social media channels, but they will also be able to see details on who specifically interacted with that piece of content too.
Because this new functionality allows for integration directly into the software’s Contact Database, HubSpot 3 now enables marketers to view a lead's social activity and then create dynamic segments based on their most engaged follower’s activity. The feature, known as Social Contacts, offers a full suite of tools to include a streamlined view of the social media interactions between a company and their leads as well as follow and engage with leads on Facebook and Twitter.
With this, companies can better engage with their followers, discover more useful information about a lead, find influencers that can help increase reach, and produce more effective content that’s more likely to be shared.
Even more exciting is the ability to build social lead nurturing campaigns. Using someone’s social data and activity marketers can, for example, create tailored workflows to share specific information to a targeted group rather than bombarding them with generalized and less meaningful content.
The Social Media feature also works in conjunction with other HubSpot tools such as the lead scoring application and Smart Content functions like CTA’s and forms that adapt to an individual lead’s behavior.
Bottom line is that HubSpot 3’s increased functionality gives marketers a distinct edge in their ability to determine how their company’s message is not just reaching an audience but also if the message is having the intended impact as well. What’s even more remarkable, though, is the capability to use hard data in sharing that message in a precise manner with those who will find it the most valuable.