Meaningful measurement of social media ROI

As marketers, how do we determine the effectiveness of our social media campaigns? We asked Alex Brown, senior social media and employment branding specialist at Waste Management, how they determine the results of their efforts.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, Vice President of Strategy at Savage Brands, and my guest again is Alex Brown, Senior Social Media and Employment Branding Specialist at Waste Management. Alex, welcome back to Brandonomics.

Alex: Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Robin: I loved our talks about social media, Alex, but we have to talk some about ROI. So I really want to know, at Waste Management what results are you seeing from your social media efforts?

Alex: Well, we know that social media is becoming an integral part in the daily lives of our target audience. We have actively attempted to incorporate recruitment marketing messaging across those various channels and we have seen a huge increase in the amount of consumption of the messaging that we’re producing. Since we have implemented source code tracking in our applicant tracking system we have seen over a 300-percent increase in the number of qualified candidates entering our talent funnel coming from social media channels. We’ve produced several videos that focus on different career paths at Waste Management, and since we’ve published those videos to our careers playlist on the Waste Management YouTube channel, we’ve seen over a 400-percent increase in the number of views on those videos. So we realize that people are consuming that content and we’re actively trying to produce more of it, since we know it’s something they enjoy.

Robin: So behind the scenes, this source code tracking sounds like it’s been really integral for you tracking those metrics. So how are you doing that? And really in the end what are you looking for with all that data?

Alex: Well, to track what’s going on, we use the data that comes out of our applicant tracking system combined with enterprise social media listening sentiment analysis. Those two things put together allow us to come up with a complete picture of how our audience views our messaging so that we’re able to make adjustments to our strategy and maximize our efforts and investments.

Robin: That’s very cool: really closing that feedback loop between analysis and content strategy.

Alex: Absolutely.

Robin: Sounds perfect. Well thank you for sharing that, Alex.

Alex: Thank you so much.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.

 

Waste Management, Inc. is North America’s leading provider of integrated environmental solutions. It partners with customers and communities to manage and reduce waste from collection to disposal while recovering valuable resources and creating clean, renewable energy. https://www.wm.com/