Organization Name: JetBlue Airways
Industry: Travel
Name of Contact: Marty St. George, VP of Marketing and Commercial
Web References: Social Fresh
Description of how social media is being used for business performance
How is social media being measured by organizations today?
Organizations today are using social media metrics and active monitoring to measure their impact and Return On Investment (ROI) on Social Media. The use of enterprise social media tools to measure the results of their social media efforts is crucial. They may use programs like Google Analytics or the reports generated by monitoring platforms such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck or Sprout.
With the use of various methods available, it’s about finding a way to show ROI to your executive team. Good methodologies take into consideration two factors: the type of engagement being tracked and how these engagements impact corresponding business metrics.
How can these tools be used to benefit your organization?
Social media metric tools can be used to increase profits, create more attractive and applicable programs for constituents and communicate more effectively.
It’s important to understand what information is valuable to your business and where you should be focusing your social media efforts. Top priority should be on ensuring you’re using the right social media channels for your business and understanding which channels are most profitable for you.
Taking this information and applying it to sales or new customers, requires applying the information collected via social media to your contact base. Perhaps a better approach is ensuring that marketing efforts are benefiting your company by creating a line of sight with your sales department. This will allow the two departments to work hand in hand to move people from social media to being customers.
That being said customer service and marketing metrics via social should be completely separate. Customer service is based on customer engagement and creating advocates that can increase the effectiveness of your marketing/sales.
Quote from Hubspot:
More and more customers are taking to social channels to raise questions, express frustrations, or otherwise engage with the companies they buy from. A 2013 Study from NM Insight accurately highlights this sea change. It found that 1 in 3 social media users prefer contacting a company over social media than by phone.
Looking for a quick start for your social media metrics? Give this a listen:
How do you apply social media measurement within your organization?
You can positively affect your brand or product by using targeted metrics in combination with the right implementation strategy. The basic idea is that you need data that improves your ability to make decisions and performance.
Another important fact is that social media is not only being used in your employees personal lives but it is being used by many companies on a professional level to build rapport and make sales. This is just additional proof that sales and social media marketing can be tied and lead to profits for your company. Understanding the value in this method means knowing how many interactions and mentions you have with potential customers and how many of these convert to sales or new customers.
Quote from Hubspot:
In a recent survey of 511 predominantly B2B sales reps and executives, A Sales Guy Consulting found that 72.6% of salespeople using social media outperformed their colleagues who were not using social media. What’s more, 54% of salespeople can track at least one closed deal back to social media engagement.
What really matters in social metrics?
An example of an organization that is successful at Social Media Strategy is JetBlue. They understand the importance of ROI on their Social Media Strategy and use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to help. It allows JetBlue to understand the impact of their efforts across all channels used for Social Media.
They’re also able to customize their campaign efforts and service provided to Clients. It’s about engaging their customers on their chosen Social Media platforms and excelling at that. They’ve created a way for their Clients and potential Clients to understand them and humanize JetBlue which builds their support and brand ambassadors.
As mentioned before, it’s important to know what you’re looking for in measuring yourself on Social Media and why. While JetBlue measures all the typical criteria such as response time, what they want from their interactions is value added in terms of engagement via an organic conversation. This all starts with the team they’ve built to deal with their chosen Social Media channels. They have people with various backgrounds such as corporate, customer service and marketing however they all need to have an understanding of public relations. The result is collaborative teams that speak to Clients and engage with them. Person to person.
While JetBlue doesn’t release information specifically on the revenue generated from social media activities, there are a number of metrics they watch regularly to measure success. One metric that they spend a great deal of time on is the engagement and sentiment of their customer base. NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a core metric at JetBlue and “the ability to refine what we know about our service through surveys, emails, and social media monitoring is incredible. Particular to social, our ability to track how online sentiment and knowledge is changed depending on our ability to communicate with the online audience is incredibly useful.”
Quote from Sales Force:
A new Nucleus Research report shows how JetBlue reduced routine creative services and production fees while improving their marketing productivity and campaign reporting with the use of Saleforce Buddy Media.
Quote from Marty St. George, VP of Marketing and Commercial at JetBlue:
“Social media is sort of beyond a natural for us. … If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it because we have this goal of having this human connection with our customers,” St. George says. “What’s so fantastic about social media is, it actually facilitates that one-to-one brand connection that marketers have wanted for so long.”
For more on St. George, check out this video: Jet Blue’s Top 5 Social Media Success Strategies
Lessons Learned
There’s a lot more to Social Media Metrics than meets the eye. It may not be all about the numbers but understanding them definitely helps with understanding how to direct resources and to create effective campaigns. A large part of using Social Media Metrics is knowing how to become and stay effective. There’s a real human part to this process which is demonstrated in JetBlue’s concentration on creating organic conversations over Social Media with a team that’s also “human”. The group of people you have facing individuals over Social Media is equally as important as determining the best way to engage and captivate your audience.
Great news – I’ve created a summary of this blog post! To view it, click on this link: Social Media Metrics or hit the play button below.
Resources: Dummies, Sales Force, Biz Journals, JetBlue Facebook Page, Social Fresh, Simplifying, Sales Force, Hubspot
Submitted by: Amanda Ganie, SMBP Student, University of Waterloo
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.