Krista Mollion

Having superfans is important to any brand. The best way to do this is to monitor engagement carefully and frequently to determine who regularly engages and try to deepen the relationship with them via various outreach tactics. The same goes for new engagement. Simply thanking them for their comment, follow, like, or share goes a long way. Appreciation is one of my most successful tactics to building brand loyalty. And yes, then looking for patterns among them is important to better understand who your brand is attracting.

I'm going to say something surprising to many: I think ranking engagement is a waste of time. I'd rather spend my time engaging with anyone who showed interest as soon as possible while they still remember our brand and see how they react. So it is their reaction to our outreach that I will rank as warm, hot, or cold. The window of opportunity is short to keep their attention so social engagement is where I think a brand should focus and only rank later.

The biggest mistake I believe brands make with their engagement tracking is to wait until the end of the month to review. In marketing, we say it is important to engage when someone shows buyer intent in real-time. That is why engagement should be monitored weekly and an appropriate course of action taken, such as targeting the people with ads or sending them an InMail. The more frequently engagement is monitored and action is taken, the more likely the users will respond positively since your brand will still be fresh in their memory.

Most people limit the definition of social engagement to likes, comments, and shares but in B2B, I find the biggest prospects are often the passive ones. We call them "lurkers" but this isn't meant negatively. It is simply a way to identify people who are checking you out in a more discreet manner. The only way to know about these not-so-obvious engages is by using LinkedIn Premium's Who Viewed Your Profile feature. When defining engagement, don't forget to include those profile views. The same applies to new followers. You can see this data for both your personal and company page.

Make innovation part of the company core values and then it will become the DNA of the culture. Encourage employees to pitch new ideas. Give them an allocated number of hours and budget per month for experimentation or learning about new strategies or tools. Host "pitch days" where team members can share new things they learned with the whole team. Creativity should be rewarded, never discouraged. Make the work environment feel like an innovative space. Hire diverse people with atypical backgrounds because that is where the best innovation happens. Demonstrate yourself as a leader how you innovate. Invite outside speaker from creative fields to talk to the team.

There are four types of meetings I use to analyze and optimize: -Annual Business Planning -Quarterly Planning -Monthly Report -Weekly Check-in Some of the things that I typically measure in Marketing are: • Social growth • Email growth • YouTube growth • Podcast growth • Website analytics Another element that is essential to have in-place are great tracking tools. I carefully select and set up the best analytics tools my customers need based on their individual needs. For example, this would look very different for a coach or an e-commerce brand. It is super important to instill ownership without the marketing team for tracking and improving metrics. Ideally, there should be one person in charge per item. Follow these tips to thrive!