1.
The Social Media
ROI Playbook
Driving Growth with Social

2.
Table of Contents
The Holy Grail: Optimise your Digital
Customer Experience
1.1 Visualise your Customer Journey Touchpoints
1.2 Manage Customer Service
1.3 Community Building
01
Race to 1st Place with Competitive
Intelligence
5.1 Competitive Benchmarking
5.2 Understand your Competitive Landscape
5.3 Communicating Insights
05
Summary
02
Growth with Influencer Marketing
2.1 Identifying Relevant Influencers
2.2 Managing Influencer Campaigns at Scale
2.3 Driving Sales with Influencer Advocacy Programmes
2.4 Case Study: Smarts Agency
04
Increase your Social ROI with
Consumer Insights
4. 1 Tribes Identification & Activation
4. 2 Brand Equity Tracking
4. 3 Trends Forecasting
4. 4 Case Study: Battenhall
03
Managing Your Brand On A Global Scale
3.1 Data Integration
3.2 Crisis Management
3.3 Collaboration & Alignment
Introduction

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3 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Introduction
It’s hard to believe that the internet was
once only a playground for businesses
with big budgets or those with techie skills
to create websites. Over time, the barriers
to entry to participate online have steadily
decreased with online participation
increasing. Now over half of the world’s
population are active internet users. That’s
4.66 billion people (statista) with 4.20 billion
of them social media users (datareportal). A
combination of mobile internet access and
social media has levelled the playing field
and given anyone with internet access a
voice, increasing the need for businesses to
understand digital audiences.
A consequence of this connectivity and
continuous interaction on digital devices
and platforms is access to unprecedented
amounts of social data that is generated
every second of every day. To put this into
context, every minute there are 350,000
tweets sent, 4,100 clicks on sponsored
Instagram posts, 21 million snaps created,
and 694,000 videos viewed on TikTok (What
happens online in 60 seconds in 2021?).
With all of this ‘noise’ it can be difficult
to grab attention and cut through on
social media, but if you look at all of this
interaction properly, people tell you what
they want to see and hear. People tell you
how to sell to them. The digital breadcrumbs
people create online leave hints about
who they are and what’s important to
them - which is extraordinarily powerful for
business.
What we see on the internet and social
media is shaped by each of our interactions
and what we choose to share. It is easy
to think that one person’s contribution
cannot make much of an impact, but we
shouldn’t look at it individually. The beauty
of data from social media is that we can
look at scale, and when we do, we see that
these conversations can have real-world
implications and should not be ignored.
From TikTok trends driving the music
charts, reviews dictating what products
and services are purchased, Reddit
conversations affecting stock market prices,
or conversations and advertising swaying
political elections. The conversations that
happen on social media influence attitudes,
opinions, and behaviour. The internet is a
melting pot of culture itself that knows no
geographical boundaries or age limits.
There is immense power and opportunity
in understanding what is happening with
online audiences.
Analysing digital conversations and internet
culture to extract meaning behind what
people are saying and doing can help
brands to make decisions and create
experiences that people love. Access to
digital conversations and internet data
holds unlimitless potential and can unlock
growth opportunities. It is said that, there
are no more secrets in the world, they’re all
hiding in the breadcrumbs that we leave
online, you just need to know how to look for

4.
4 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
them. Brands taking up this challenge have
found new ways to grow. From a brand who
tripled their communications and message
resonance that increased their market
share and another who created a chocolate
bar that has generated over $100 million
in revenue. There have been music artists
that were living in obscurity only to identify
strategies that made them the mainstream
megastars they are today, and seemingly
unknown people becoming brands in their
own right.
All of these successes come down to one
thing, knowing your audience and what
they are hungry for. Since the early days
of Facebook, businesses have been driven
to tap into the power of social media to
build audiences and have an always-on
connection to them. The power of social
media isn’t just in building an audience
but exploring others to look for growth
opportunities. There are two ways to use
social data to grow and increase your return
on investment. The first, is to focus on your
current audience to find out how to serve
them better. However, the bigger opportunity
is with the second approach, to go beyond
your brand and analyse audiences outside
your current network. Simply, if you want to
grow exponentially then you need to look
outside what you’re currently doing.
The analysis of social media data is often
synonymous with social media marketing.
Measuring the impact of your strategy
is a great place to start with social data,
but there are other ways to use the data
to make your social media initiatives even
more powerful. This e-Book is designed to
help you increase your social media return
on investment by using the data generated
from social media engagement. You’ll find
guidance on how to grow by knowing your
audience better and importantly finding
new opportunities for growth from wider
audiences.
There are five distinct areas covered:
1. Customer experience
2. Influencer identification
3. Managing your brand globally
4. Consumer insights
5. Competitor intelligence
One of the best ways to understand your
current audience, how they feel about your
brand, which also allows you to identify
opportunities for improvement by analysing
your customer experience. You’ll find some
basic steps to get started and how to use
content marketing to attract audiences
searching for what you have to offer. To
grow your audience, you’ll find out how to
use social data to identify influencers who
have similar values and audiences that are
relevant to your brand. You will also find
ideas on how social media data can help
you manage your global brand reputation
and understand the nuances of consumers
in different countries across the world.
Finally, you’ll get ideas on how to use social
media data to understand people better
and how to benchmark your brand against
your competitors.
- Dr. Jillian Ney
Founder, The Social
Intelligence Lab

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5 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
01
The Holy Grail:
Optimise your Digital
Customer Experience
Since the introduction of the internet and rise of social media,
enhancing the digital customer experience has become a
differentiating factor and source of competitive advantage
for organisations. Customer experience plays a critical role
in improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, and due to
its positive influence on customer retention rates, CX is also
credited for increasing profits by 25-95%.
Despite its importance, some organisations fail to remember
that customer experience doesn’t end with the purchase. As you
can see from the customer journey diagram below, loyalty and
advocacy should follow when positive customer experiences
are present. This then leads to new recommendations and
additional purchases, making CX a worthy investment.

6.
Proactively making the digital customer journey
more convenient and simpler for consumers
to perform desired actions on your site or
application is the holy grail of optimising
customer experience (CX). This can be achieved
through three steps:
1. Listen
How can we gauge how our customers feel if we
don’t listen to what they’re saying? With more and
more people turning to social media when they
have a query or complaint, it’s essential that we’re
monitoring our social media channels for reviews,
complaints and queries. Such conversations
provide brands with the information needed to
optimise customer experiences and meet growing
consumer demands. In turn, consumers feel heard
and businesses can also better minimise the
risk of complaints escalating and reputational
damage.
2. Analyse
Analysing data from client surveys and social
media is a great way to keep your finger on
customer satisfaction. Organisations often turn
to metrics including Net Promoter Score (NPS) as
a way of understanding how satisfied customers
are. In addition to this, companies rely on media
monitoring to understand:
1. The sentiment towards their brand (and
whether it has changed)
2. The most common negative talking points
3. How competitors are doing from a
customer experience perspective
2. Personalise
According to a McKinsey survey
personalisation can increase company
revenue by 5-15%, something that should
motivate even the most cynical marketer. By
prioritising personalisation, we’re bridging the
gap between data, technological experiences
and consumer delight. Nike, for example, is an
industry model when it comes to offering a
personalised service. They ensure customers
feel like the individuals they are, which builds
brand loyalty, trust and ultimately leads to
repeat sales and lifelong customers.
Armed with insights found via the three steps
(listening, analysing and personalising),
brands can begin to visualise customer
journey touchpoints. Let’s look at that in more
detail.
Advocacy
Loyalty
Purchase
Preference
Considerations
Awareness
06
01
02
03
04
05
Prospects become aware
of our product/service
Prospects are actively looking
for solutions to problems and/or
ways to achieve his/her goal
Prospects is in process of deciding
whether to use our service. They’ll be
looking at what we offer, price and more
Customer forms an opinion on product. Have they had a
positive or negative experience? Will they continue to use
or choose a competitor in future?
If the customer loves our product, customers may become brand
advocates. This means they will tell others how great we are and
defend our brand during a crisis
Prospect becomes a customer
6 | The Social Media ROI Playbook

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7 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
1.1
Visualise your Customer Journey Touchpoints
The customer journey can be defined as the consumer’s path through all brand touchpoints that lead to a decision, such as making a purchase.
The model enables businesses to better understand how consumers view their products and services, what their intentions and values are, and
how a consumer interacts with the brand at different touchpoints.
There are numerous benefits to measuring and visually mapping your customer’s journey, including pinpointing crucial moments in the decision-
making process, reducing friction, increasing lifetime value, and making your budget stretch further. Despite the benefits, many companies
haven’t yet visualised their customer journey. Truth be told, executives tend to struggle with this as they make customer journey mapping more
complex than it needs to be. In reality, it involves a series of logical steps based on collecting and visualising relevant data.
Customer
Experience Loyalty
Consideration/
Evaluation Purchase
Awareness
PR
Events Expos
PPC, SEA, SEO
Linkedin Advertisement
Webinars
Social Media
Case studies Website Chat
Website
Social
Blog,
Ebook,
White Paper,
Webinar
Executive Dinner,
Executive Lunches
Workshops
Review sites,
Customer Testimonials,
Video Tutorials
Master Classes,
Webinars,
Events
Email Campaign,
Newsletter
Customer Loyalty Programmes
Referrals,
Word of Mouth

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8 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
To get you started, we’ve outlined the
key customer journey tools and data
points in the grid below.
Keep user intent
in mind
In order to create and
maximise digital touchpoints
along the journey, the
effectiveness of each
channel consumers come
in contact with needs to be
considered individually. This
is because motivating factors
that influence decision
making, behaviour and
intent change throughout
the customer journey, thus
companies must position
themselves within the realm
of the user’s browsing mode
by providing thoughtful
content that matches the
user’s expectations.
For example, users don’t
tend to look for transactional
content on social media.
Instead, you’ll find social
media users typically in
browsing mode or looking
for new topics that entertain
rather than hard-hitting
content that covers difficult
topics.
8 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Awareness
Consideration &
Evaluation
Purchase
Customer
Experience
Loyalty
The user is becoming aware
of your company, product
or solution
The user is actively looking for
information, reviews and is likely
comparing products, services
and companies
The user is ready to buy
The user has experience with
the product, solution, service
or company
The user becomes a loyal
brand advocate
Customer journey data points
Reach
Impressions
Media volume
Engagement
Marketing Campaigns
Raw leads
Engagement
Sentiment
Reviews
MQLs
Social Echo
Conversion rate
Marketing pipeline value
ROMI
Lead-to-deal time
Media sentiment
Engagement
NPS
CES
Customer retention
Sentiment
Lifetime value
Willingness to
recommend
Referrals
Brand Reputation
You’ll want to track how well your
website is performing using a tool
like Google Analytics.
You’ll also want keep track of the
volume of online brand searches
using Google Ads Keyword Planner
tool, or by tracking campaign
analytics. You can use Meltwater’s
Media Monitoring platform to track
mentions of your brand and
analyse the results.
You’ll need the support of a
media intelligence tool, but this
time to understand what people are
saying about your brand or
products and being able to engage
with them to influence their
purchase decision.
Other tools like Marketo are useful
in measuring the marketing funnel
and capturing audience
information.
Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) tools like HubSpot and Oracle
become more important than ever
a number of metrics, from conversion
rate to lead-to-deal timing.
You’ll need customer feedback and survey tools like Intercom and Survey-
Monkey. Such tools allow you to analyse key metrics like your Net Promoter
Score (how likely customers are to recommend your brand) and how much
effort a customer has to exert to get an issue resolved – i.e. the Customer
Experience Survey (CES) score.
Meltwater’s Social Listening platform is also a great way to alert you to
brand advocates, as well as being able to engage with disgruntled
customers and solve problems quickly.

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9 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
1.2
Manage Customer Service
There is nothing more damaging to a brand
than poor customer service. Optimising
interactions with customers, especially when
faced with a challenge or crisis, means making
sure there are multiple ways consumers can
contact you if needed. Due to the real-time
nature of social media, this digital channel has
proved one of the most convenient ways for
your consumers to reach out. In light of this,
make sure that your customer service teams
managing social channels are thoroughly
briefed on any campaigns or initiatives,
so if they do receive an influx of queries
or complaints they know exactly what the
customer is referencing and can help them
efficiently
Good Customer Service Means Being
Proactive Instead of Reactive
Publicly complaining on social media is a
common practice for dissatisfied customers
and these complaints sometimes go viral
and can be damaging beyond initial views.
Responding quickly can help improve
customer satisfaction, but wouldn’t it be better
to spot a problem before it spirals? This is quite
straightforward when a brand is tagged in a
post, but let’s face it, this isn’t always the case.
To help overcome this, Meltwater’s social media
engagement tool makes it easier to search
through keywords related to our industry,
products and brand and enables you to find
and monitor mentions even when customers
haven’t directly mentioned you. If there is a
specific complaint, Meltwater’s Engagement
tools allow users to assign particular cases
to relevant members of the team, ensuring
they don’t get lost among dozens of other
communications. This also allows for a more
personal and efficient experience, not to
mention aligned external communications. The
platform also lets users filter conversations via
the geolocations metric so customer service
teams can see who has complained within
specific geo-fenced locations and respond
within the right context. For example, if fans at
a local football stadium complain that the hot
dog queue is too long, the club will now be able
to understand this negative feedback without
fans even mentioning their venue since they
have the ability to set their sites on specific
locations and filter mentions and alerts.
9 | The Social Media ROI Playbook

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10 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
1.3
Community Building
Another key to growth for brands today is
ensuring that they are continually engaging
and nurturing online communities. Social
communities refer to groups of people who
have common interests across social media
platforms. Naturally, online communities are
highly engaging and beneficial to the members
of that community, however, they can be just as
valuable for brands.
Online communities are some of the best places
to build brand loyalty. This is important to note
since only 1 in 3 consumers believe that they
can trust the brands that they buy from. When
your brand offers valuable products, customers
will want to buy from you continuously and tell
those within their circle to do the same. And these
recommendations from your brand advocates
aren’t something to be taken lightly. A study from
HubSpot found that 81% of customers say that
they are more likely to trust advice from peers
over advice from brands and businesses.
Engaging with your community on social media
can be a challenge if you don’t know how to go
about it. Thankfully, these days there are plenty
of tools out there, such as Meltwater, that can
help simplify community management for us. For
example, Meltwater’s social media engagement
tool can help social media managers:
• Quickly check all new submissions and
delete those which don’t meet your
standards
• Easily block repeat offenders where
necessary
• Organise posts and comments by types,
so they can be prioritised based on how
urgently they need to be dealt with
• Use customisable workflows to create
tailored processes within the app for
handling different types of engagement,
routing them to the appropriate team
members to make sure they are handled
quickly and correctly.
10 | The Social Media ROI Playbook

11.
11 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
02
Growth with
Influencer Marketing
The rise of the influencer
marketing space – today a $10bn
industry, growing 50% per year –
is one of the clearest examples of
how social media is transforming
traditional marketing. These
days having a business website,
presence on social, PR coverage,
and your own content isn’t
enough to compete. There is so
much content available online,
that unfortunately, the content
that brands work hard to create
is often buried by it.
Social media influencers help
branded messages get seen
by a relevant audience while
adding a level of relatability
and authenticity that can only
come from the endorsement of
a trusted third party. Respected
influencers spend years building
up organic audiences who
trust their recommendations,
and brands can piggyback
onto this through well-planned
partnerships.
But for all its advantages,
influencer marketing is hard to
get right. First, the explosion of
social media influencers means
it can be difficult to find the right
creators to work with. And then
there are hurdles surrounding
managing those relationships
at scale, plus the difficulty of
measuring ROI.

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12 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Let’s be honest, good influencer marketing involves
resources, so taking the guesswork out of finding the
right influencers that resonate with your audience
is vital. The challenge is that pinpointing the most
influential voices for your brand can be extremely
manual and time-consuming.
When it comes to selecting your social media influencer,
there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach – fit often depends
on your campaign’s objectives and brand personality.
That being said, this diagram suggests the type of
influencers best suited to certain goals.
Once you’ve decided on the most
applicable type of influencer based
on your campaign objectives,
you then need to search for those
that don’t just reach your target
audience but embody your brand
values and personality.
2.1
Identifying Relevant Influencers

13.
13 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Native search functions within social networks are limited, so marketers
often turn to influencer marketing platforms to streamline the discovery
process. Investing in software that provides granular data on your
audience will ensure analytical accuracy. For example, Meltwater’s
Social Media Influencer Discovery platform offers a robust influencer
search engine allowing users to discover influencers based on:
• Influencers engaged with your brand, competitors, or campaign
hashtags
• Topic/area of knowledge or expertise, such as Yoga, Art, or Travel
• Audience demographics
• An influencer’s network to find other relevant profiles
If you’ve run a search using any of these four methods and received too many results, you can narrow it down using
filters such as audience region, channel, and number of followers.

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14 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
If you don’t have access to an influencer tool, you can always
lean on social listening to get to know potential influencers that
talk about related topics. To spot them, simply analyse relevant
communities on social channels that centre around topics that
relate to your brand, then identify their most active members. In
addition to this, some social listening and audience tools allow
you to categorise influencers by personality traits of audience
segments that you’re looking to target.
The most common pitfall
to avoid when selecting
influencers
Quite shockingly, influencer
marketing fraud cost brands $1.3
billion in 2019. Fake bots, spam
accounts, inactive accounts, and
influencer pods drive up follower and
engagement numbers, causing many
brands that solely rely on these
metrics when selecting influencers to
waste their resources on those with
little influence.
One of the ways brands are
vetting influencers and preventing
themselves from falling victim to this
is through Meltwater’s Social Media
Influencer tool.
The platform calculates True Reach
of every Instagram account by
removing fake bots and spam
accounts from the equation, thus
reflecting a more accurate depiction
of a user’s influence. In addition
to this, the Discovery platform
also considers; (1) the frequency
that active users interact with the
content and (2) how influential these
active users are. If an influencer is
an expert in their field (i.e fashion),
their influence score will increase.
The score is a great indicator of
how much action and impact that
influencer will actually drive for your
brand.
14 | The Social Media ROI Playbook

15.
15 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
No longer should influencers be perceived as
a mouthpiece to amplify your brand’s latest
promotions. If you’re looking for more than
a one-and-done endorsement, the ability to
streamline communication and see where
you stand in terms of moving influencers
down the funnel from “Fresh” to “Advocates”
is paramount. Once an influencer is an avid
fan, they will continue to give your brand
exposure, even after their work commitment is
over. This is when you know your influencer has
transformed into a powerful brand advocate.
But for lasting relationships to be built,
seamless collaboration and a well-thought-out
project management plan for before, during
and after the campaign takes place must first
be present. That’s why most leading influencer
management tools also act as miniature
CRMs.
By centralising communication, you can
say goodbye to messy email threads,
DMs, and communication roadblocks and
hello to better collaboration! For example,
from Meltwater’s influencer tool you can:
• Invite influencers to join a campaign
• Share campaign briefs
• Build and send contracts
• Send direct messages
• Monitor and manage campaign
assets, such as verifying content
before it goes live
• View outstanding tasks
• Pay influencers
2.2
Managing Influencer Campaigns at Scale
15 | The Social Media ROI Playbook

16.
16 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Communication is automatically saved
within one interface for complete
transparency between you and your
influencers. This way, you can simply open
a campaign and see where each influencer
stands at a glance, or identify which tasks
have been completed, or which require more
focus.
We get it. With so many numbers to stay on
top of, creating timely and insightful reports
can be tricky. As a result, it is much easier to
fall back on simple metrics such as followers
and likes but doing so means you run the
risk of seriously downplaying ROI.
While engagement is currently the primary
goal for most influencer campaigns, some
marketers are pushing to see web results
from other metrics including:
• True reach
• Change in share-of-voice
• Amount of referral traffic from the
influencer’s brand/content mentions
• Number of MQLs, SQLs, and closed
business attributed to the influencer’s
content/activities
• Earned media coverage
By using a listening platform such as
Meltwater, you can readily see the impact
of your influencer activities on your brand.
For instance, you can track changes in
conversations over time using a word cloud.
This will help you answer questions such as
are we being associated with the influencer?
And did the topics being explored by them
show up? These are both good indicators
that your work with an influencer is steering
the conversation around your brand.
Being drowned in multiple spreadsheets is
never fun, which is why brand managers
lean on automated reports, saving many
hours that can then be channelled into
more strategic activities that will drive
greater ROI.
The market is saturated with brands, who at
the bottom line are offering relatively similar
products. The way to distinguish your brand
from the competition is by connecting with
your audience on a personal or emotional
level. That’s true brand relevance. If you’re
looking to connect with an audience in an
authentic and meaningful way, influencers
are the best way to credibly promote your
brand and show a wider network who you
are and what you stand for. Save man
hours by investing in an influencer tool
that identifies, analyses and measures
collaborator programmes for you.

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17 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Regardless of whether your organisation is
B2B, B2C or an NGO, you can benefit from
Influencer Advocacy programs. Not only are
they useful in building lasting relationships
with existing clients, they can also be
used to connect with new clients in a more
authentic and organic nature. Additionally,
as Ambassador programs are intended to
promote sales, measuring ROI is relatively
easy.
Benefits of a Loyalty Program:
• Run a cost-effective campaign that
boosts sales and brand awareness
• Establish meaningful relationships with
clients
• Reach new, untapped markets
• Learn about new demographics that are
interested in your product or services
• Generate sales with highly engaged
customers and receive beautiful
user-generated content that can be
repurposed in other channels
2.3
Driving Sales with Influencer
Advocacy Programmes
Here are the steps needed to running a
successful Ambassador Programmes.
Step 1:
Determine Incentive - What will motivate clients
to become ambassadors? Perhaps you can
offer discounts, free products, or monetary
compensation.
Step 2:
Invite & Collect Details - Create an integrated
page where you can collect client’s social details
and easily identify those with social influence!
Step 3:
Identify Influential Customers - Using data-driven
influencer insights, vet your applicants and select
those that best support brand goals and values.
Step 4:
Collaborate - Begin collaborating with your
ambassador. Tell them why you love them, and
build a meaningful relationship with transparent
communication.
Step 5:
Monitor Results - Analyse the impact of all
campaign content. Identify areas of success.

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18 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Recruiting ambassadors should be a seamless process that
clearly defines how and why to join. The recruitment page
should be integrated within the customer journey.
Where to put the recruit page:
• Webpage
• Landing page
• Purchase Complete page
When considering the design of an Influencer Ambassador
Page, here are some valuable points to include:
• An informative #hashtag so clients can search existing
content
• Reasons to become an ambassador; what does
your brand stand for, what is unique about your
ambassadors, what is the reward of joining?
• Examples of current ambassadors to get them inspired
• An easy to fill out recruitment form, collecting social
credentials and necessary details

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19 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Incentivising customers to make a purchase is one of the main goals
of an influencer campaign. Determining the CTA for a campaign is a
holistic decision, as it should fit the tone of the campaign and connect
with your audience.
Influencer marketing is successful due to its authenticity. Including a
sales incentive into a campaign should have the same authenticity.
Popular Incentives:
1. Coupon Code
2. Discount
3. Giveaway
4. Donation
Successful campaign measurement is dependent on the ability to track
conversions and identify the ambassadors that are most beneficial
for your brand. By tracking conversions you learn what methods and
which influencers are most successful for your brand. Test multiple CTA
methods and review conversion data to see which works best.
One of the main KPIs for a successful eCommerce campaign is
conversions. There are several methods for accurately measuring
conversions:
1) Coupon Codes: Using sophisticated influencer technology,
generate customisable coupon codes for ambassadors that can
be automatically tracked. By tracking coupon codes you can
learn which influencers generated the most sales.
2) Tracking Pixel: Integrate a pixel on various pages of the website
you want to track, as well as the purchase completion page. This
is a link that your ambassadors will share with their network. A
pixel will help you learn who generated the most intent (clicks) and
conversions.

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20 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Meet Smarts Agency
Smarts is a multi-award-winning
marketing consultancy that works on
behalf of some of the biggest brands in
the world. Through intelligent thinking
and creative solutions, they deliver
powerful ideas that change behaviours
and get results.
The Challenge
In recent years the role of influencer
marketing has changed drastically,
Richard Nelson, Global Executive Director
at Smarts explains, “Influencer marketing
has very much moved from getting a
celebrity to pitch up at an event with
the goal of driving press coverage, to
creating meaningful partnerships with
the right influencers who share a brand’s
goals, objectives, values, purpose and
ambitions”. While this shift is positive
in terms of producing better results for
organisations, the challenge is, with so
many people claiming to be influencers,
understanding who is the best fit for a
campaign can be difficult.
Richard further comments, “We have
to be able to prove at each stage of
the identification process that the
demographic is right. This means
avoiding a subjective approach in
favour of a data-led call on whether
an influencer is right or wrong for a
campaign. The problem is gathering data
to vet influencers is very difficult to do via
native analytics.”
Furthermore, when it comes to reporting
ROI of campaigns, Smarts didn’t want to
have to rely on third parties to provide
them with this data, “the influencer
might not actually know the technical
backend of their Instagram analytics,
or an agency that runs that influencer’s
channel may inflate their numbers.”
Smarts needed a tool to support end-to
-end influencer management.
We have to be able to prove at
each stage of the identification
process that the demographic
is right. This means avoiding a
subjective approach in favour
of a data-led call on whether
an influencer is right or wrong
for a campaign. The problem
is gathering data to vet
influencers is very difficult to
do via native analytics.
- Richard Nelson,
Global Executive
Director at Smarts
“
2.4
Case Study: Smarts Agency

21.
Smarts uses Meltwater to enhance
influencer marketing due diligence
by following the breadcrumbs from
either influencer first or topic matter
first. Nelson comments, “Meltwater
is a great starting point when trying
to surface who the right influencers
are. If we quite like the look of an
influencer, we start tracking them to
see what sort of topics they talk about
and how audiences respond to them.
Equally, sometimes our clients come to
us with suggestions and we then put
those influencers into Meltwater’s tool
to see what interests they have and
ensure brand alignment.”
The tool also helps Smarts properly
benchmark influencers against one
another as they know the data is
analysed in the same way. Without
this standardisation, it’s nearly
impossible to compare apples with
apples. “With Meltwater, everything
we do is measured in the same
way whereas in the past, where
you might’ve been relying on the
influencer themselves telling you
the results, there’s a possibility for
a lot of variation in measurement.
Meltwater helps us drive alignment
across markets as we can compare
influencers like for like.”
Outside of influencer marketing,
Richard explains, “If you’re an agency,
it’s really helpful to be able to manage
a brand from one place. For us, there
are four or five different areas we’re
interested in: social listening, media
monitoring, brand valuation, brand
tracking and influencer tracking.
We want to avoid pulling this data
from different tools so we can
ensure insights are comparable and
reduce the amount of time it takes to
consolidate and interpret the data.”
Fortunately, Smarts sees Meltwater
as a swiss army knife - a one-stop
shop for all their data analytics needs.
“Not only does it do everything, but it
does everything really well across the
board. It saves us a large amount of
agency time by bringing all of those
bits and pieces together into one
report for our clients.”
21 | Digital Transformation in Communications and Marketing
The Solution

22.
22 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
1. Standardise the influencer vetting process
and create alignment across markets
“With Meltwater, everything we do is
measured in the same way, whereas in the
past, where you might’ve been relying on the
influencer themselves telling you the results,
there’s a possibility for a lot of variation in
measurement. For example, the influencer
might not actually know the technical
backend of their Instagram, or an agency
that runs that influencers channel may
inflate their numbers. Meltwater helps us drive
alignment across markets as we can compare
influencers like for like.”
2. Track campaign success and optimise in
real-time
“Once we’ve identified and onboarded an
influencer, we then use Meltwater again to
track their comments, make sure that they’re
compliant, understand what the response to
them is like, measure engagement rates, and
track CPA and reach of partnership posts to
see if the collaboration was worthwhile.
There are very few platforms that enable
social listening and influencer tracking
like Meltwater does, you can see what is
happening in real time, which means you
can change things in real time too; you’re not
reliant on somebody having to go in every
couple of hours and check on their feeds.”
3. Manage clients from one platform
“If you’re an agency, it’s really helpful to be
able to manage a brand from one place.
For us, there are four or five different areas
we’re interested in: social listening, media
monitoring, brand valuation, brand tracking
and influencer tracking.
We want to avoid pulling this data from
different tools so we can ensure insights are
comparable and reduce the amount of time
it takes to consolidate and interpret the data.
The problem is, a lot of tools might be good in
local regions but not good globally, or some
might be really good with online news, but
they don’t track broadcast. Meltwater is like a
swiss army knife - a one stop shop for all our
data analytics needs.
Meltwater helps Smarts Agency to:

23.
23 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
03
Managing Your Brand
On A Global Scale
Global brand management is
built around the idea of creating
a single global strategy that
can be replicated across local
markets. Companies with an
international presence have
long discussed whether to
localise or adapt strategies,
but global brand management
stretches far beyond the
“glocalisation” debate. Global
brand managers are responsible
for concept and execution of
strategy, coordinating processes
by ensuring alignment and
integration of countries, vendors
and partners, and creating
organisational structures that
support collaboration.
Unsurprisingly, due to the
monetary importance of brand
management, executives
are becoming increasingly
concerned with this practice.
The challenge is, managing
the complexities of a brand,
particularly on a global scale,
isn’t an easy task.

24.
24 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
3.1
Data Integration
For example, Meltwater’s API helps brands
extract, contextualise, organise and integrate
information from across social media and
blend this with their internal data (sales,
customer insights, etc.). The result? A
360-degree overview of their business and
ecosystem, the ability to map out customer
journeys, and the insights needed to enhance
customer experience and brand perception at
their fingertips.
Data integration can be a headache for
global teams using multiple vendors across
geographically dispersed environments.
Brands often pay the ultimate price for lack
of integration: siloed data.
Data silos have a negative knock-on effect on
alignment, collaboration, productivity, and
the ability to gain a single and holistic view
of campaigns and the customer experience.
In fact, Forrester found that the number one
factor preventing marketers from capturing a
single source of truth for their marketing and
media campaign performance was the lack
of integration of global marketing analytics
tools. The same Forrester study found that
twice as many marketers outperformed
revenue goals by more than 10% when their
marketing analytics tools were said to be
well-integrated.
To help drive data integration, many
organisations lean on APIs. An API is used
to transfer data from one application to
another. In short, it helps tools to talk to each
other without the end-user having to code
anything extra.

25.
25 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
3.2
Crisis Management
The combination of 24/7 news cycles and always-on social
media channels has created a noisy and volatile landscape.
We now live in a world where brand reputation can be made or
slayed in a tweet, causing reputational events to become twice
as costly for companies. Today, even the smallest friction can
spark and grow into a crisis as millions can view, comment, and
share conversations brands and customers are having.

26.
26 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
It’s worth keeping in mind that while things
may look bad at face value, they might not
be as rough as you think. For example, not
every customer complaint made on Twitter
or every rumor speculated on constitutes
a crisis.
Let the data guide you before choosing if
and what you respond. Thankfully we have
plenty of tools at our fingertips that can
be used to keep up with what’s going on
and tell us when it’s time to shift into crisis
mode. The Meltwater platform is one tool
that can be used to help us identify crises,
providing insight into key metrics such as:
Influencer Participation: Sometimes, the
difference between a crisis and business-
as-usual is who is doing the talking. Use
media intelligence tools to track key
influencers, both on social media and
in the press, to assess what stories are
picking up traction.
Trending Keywords: Word clouds can
point us to the right answers for questions
such as: Is negative chatter originating
from a small but vocal minority? Is it being
picked up by traditional media, or vice
versa? Is a story in the press trending on
social media?
Sentiment: As you assess negative
sentiment, think about it from the point of
view of key stakeholders. Who is most likely
to be affected by a negative story? How
influential are they? What are the paths
for the story to grow? Track sentiment
analysis in real-time to know when you
should jump in.
Duration: We typically think of a crisis
as an explosion (or implosion), at which
time we encounter aftershocks of negative
sentiment. But a crisis can also take a
slower trajectory, permeating associations
to your brand over time and building
gradually. Test the impact of your ongoing
responses and monitor the trajectory of
negative sentiment to determine if further
action is needed.
Engagement: Using Meltwater’s social
analytics reporting, you can consolidate
the ‘digital breadcrumbs’ your audience
members leave behind online to
measure the rate of their engagement
and understand how they feel about
your brand during a crisis, then adjust
your messaging and response plan
appropriately. You can also use Meltwater
Engage to publish and schedule content
from one platform and leave notes,
content, and images for other teammates
to use — ensuring consistent messaging.
Crisis Identification

27.
Crisis Communication Response
Being able to respond to a crisis effectively is crucial for companies to maintain a positive brand image, reputation, and of course, to not lose
their customer base. Remember, the speed at which you respond to an unfolding crisis situation will shape how the media and consumers
perceive your brand. Different people care about different things, so when devising your response, remember to customise messages and
consider the channels that are best used to serve the message.
Customers
Investors
Employees
Influencers
Media
Customers are usually most directly affected by a crisis. You need to understand to what extent the crisis
has negatively impacted them and how many customers are unhappy.
A crisis can have a negative impact on your company’s stock price. Find out how the financial community is
reacting, taking this into consideration when you communicate with investors.
Employees act as representatives, or brand ambassadors, for your company. It’s important to provide them
with corporate-approved messaging and monitor their public-facing communication regarding the crisis.
“Influencer” has come to represent bloggers, social celebrities, analysts, and other tastemakers. Among the
first two, some might be established advocates for your company, and some detractors.
Those media relationships you’ve been building over time come in handy during a crisis. Reach out to
friendly journalists and proactively give them your side of an issue. Then use a media intelligence tool
to uncover which other journalists are likely to pick up the issue as a story, based on their coverage of
competitors or similar issues, and reach out to them as well.
STAKEHOLDER WHAT TO LOOK FOR

28.
28 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
3.3
Collaboration & Alignment
Cross-team collaboration is a key component
to growing and scaling businesses. Ensuring
that you and your team have visibility into
what others are doing globally can have a
positive impact on resources from both a time
and monetary standpoint. A study by Deloitte
and Upchain found that organisations leave
over $125,000 on the table per year when they
fail to collaborate while productivity gains
made from collaboration save companies
$1,660 per employee annually.
Set shared objectives
One of the simplest ways to create an
organisational culture and structure that
supports collaboration and alignment is to
develop shared objectives. When teams are
aligned on what success looks like and have
a greater shared accountability with regards
to projects, initiatives, and critical metrics
collaboration becomes a natural by-product of
alignment. Since social media blurred the lines
between the roles of Paid, Earned and Owned
media, the walls between PR and marketing
also began to break down, thus setting shared
objectives amongst PR and marketing teams
has never been easier.
Invest in end-to-end management tools
Asides from shared objectives, communication
is often touted as key to driving collaboration
and alignment. Specifically, collaboration and
alignment is more effectively managed when
remote teams have access to centralised, fast,
and versatile communication channels.
In terms of managing collaboration and
alignment across social media specifically,
Meltwater Engage allows users to manage
incoming messages, schedule and publish
content and measure social channel
performance all from one platform. Similarly,
as we discussed earlier, our influencer tool also
drives centralisation of influencer marketing,
supporting collaboration and alignment
through transparency and end-to-end
campaign management.
Here’s an example of a search that the folks at Apple could
create using Meltwater to pinpoint relevant chatter about
the problems that iOS 14 may have.
In doing so, they could identify recurrent roadblocks
and reinforce the existing content in their Help Center.

29.
29 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
04
Increase your
Social ROI with
Consumer Insights
The way consumers research, discover, and purchase
products has changed dramatically over the past two
decades. First, widespread adoption of the internet
changed the way we buy, and then the advent of
smartphones accelerated this disruption further. While
marketers were still trying to make sense of this changing
world, the global pandemic of 2020 turned everything on
its head once more.
Marketers around the world all face the same question
now; what do consumers want?
The world seems to change too fast for any of us to keep
up, and trying to figure out how to capture the attention
of customers in a noisy world can feel impossible.

30.
30 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
This is the problem that Consumer Insights
aims to solve, answering fundamental
questions such as:
• Who is our target audience?
• What motivates and interests them?
• Do different communities or segments
exist within my target audience?
• How are consumer trends changing?
Consumer Insights goes a step further than
social listening and adds qualitative analysis
into the mix, trying to understand what
exactly the results mean and what they can
tell us about consumers.
Social Listening vs Consumer
Insights: The Difference:
• Social Listening tells you that from
October to February people talk more
about Scotch whisky on social media.
• Consumer Insights tell you that people
enjoy whisky for its warming quality
during the cold winter months, and that
they’re also interested in finding new
whisky cocktail recipes. Furthermore, in
the run-up to Christmas, people need
help choosing the best brand as a gift for
the Scotch aficionado in their life.
This is a much more complex problem to
solve. The raw, unstructured social data
must first be structured in a way that
makes it easier to analyse, and this is
achieved through a process called content
classification. This means that each piece
of social content, whether it’s a Tweet,
an image, or a podcast clip, needs to
be analysed by an algorithm and then
categorised based on its topic matter. This
content classification could be as broad as
“sports” or as narrow as “Manchester United
Football Club” and requires a sophisticated
taxonomy covering hundreds of topics.
So, rather than giving the user raw social
data and leaving them to make sense of it, a
Consumer Insights platform like Linkfluence
(recently acquired by Meltwater) provides
intelligently structured data that is easier
to extract meaning from. In addition to this,
an element of human intelligence is built
into the process, so analysts with skills in
market research and data science, as well
as expertise in various vertical industries,
will work with the customer to build tailored
dashboards and reports for their specific
requirements.
While this process is more complex and time
consuming, the end result is that instead of
simple metrics, a Consumer Insights platform
gives you meaningful intelligence about your
target audience that will help you to make
better informed decisions.
Consumer Insights complement more
conventional commissioned market research
practices, such as surveys and focus groups,
with the added benefit of being real-time,
always-on and cost-effective. While a major
market research survey can take months
to complete, a Consumer Insights platform
can give you an immediate view into current
attitudes and behaviours.

31.
31 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
4.1
Tribes Identification &
Activation
No brand sells to just one homogenous group of
consumers, they usually need to communicate
to multiple audiences with different needs and
drivers. Businesses used to differentiate these
audiences using simple demographics, age
groups, gender, location, income level, and so forth,
but the modern online world is more complex.
Consumer Insights platforms enable marketers to
identify new Tribes, communities of like-minded
individuals within your broader audience, who
have more in common than demographics. They
could have similarities in a number of different
ways, the media they consume, influencers they
follow, brands they purchase, online conversations
they participate in, content they share, social
channels they use, and more.
Understanding all of this can help you to target
campaigns at your tribes more effectively. You no
longer need to guess which media to advertise
in, which influencers to work with, or what kind
of messaging you should use, because tools like
Linkfluence Tribes can help you get the answers
with a high degree of precision.

32.
32 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
4.2
Brand Equity Tracking
One of the age-old problems with
conventional market research techniques
is that when people know they are
participating in any kind of research, that
inevitably changes how they respond. This
means it’s hard to get accurate information
on how people really feel about your brand
and products.
Consumer Insights solves this problem by
analysing social data to gain an accurate
picture of how people talk about your
brand when they are being more open
and honest in conversations in places like
social channels, discussion forums, and
consumer reviews sites. Because of the
additional levels of intelligence applied to
social data in a platform like Linkfluence,
it’s possible to identify conversations about
your company even when the brand isn’t
specifically mentioned.
There are other advantages to using
Consumer Insights for Brand Equity
Tracking, beyond the fact that you are
working with unprompted, spontaneous
discussions. Conventional market research
surveys take time to develop and execute,
and they can be expensive because they
are labour intensive.
Consumer Insights platforms give you
instant access to a current snapshot of
your Brand Equity. They use real-time
social data, so you’re always getting the
most recent picture of consumer opinion,
and it’s an always-on service, so you can
get an update as frequently as you like
without having to wait for research to
be carried out. It’s also a lot more cost
effective.

33.
33 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
4.3
Trends Forecasting
Wouldn’t your job be easier if you could
predict the future? With Consumer Insights
you can, kind of. It’s always good to know
how consumer trends are changing, and it’s
even better if you can get that information
early enough to make decisions which will
have a positive impact on your business.
By using AI and human research expertise
to analyse social data, Consumer Insights
platforms can identify the signals that
indicate potential changes in consumer
behaviour. Perhaps a certain brand or
style is falling out of fashion, maybe a new
technology is gaining momentum, or some
social movement is encouraging people
to change what they buy. These are the
kind of trends that Consumer Insights is
particularly good at forecasting.
Nothing can give you a completely accurate
prediction of the future, but smart use of
Consumer Insights trends forecasting can
help tip the odds in your favour so your
business can stay ahead of the curve more
often than not.
As with all other applications of Consumer
Insights it’s important to understand that
this requires more up-front work than typical
social listening. Raw social data needs to
be classified and structured so that it can
be interrogated in a more useful way, and
the skills of research and data experts
are needed to interpret the results so that
genuine insights are produced, and to avoid
misreading the data or jumping to incorrect
conclusions.
But the good news is that Meltwater’s
Linkfluence team can do all of this for you.
Working closely with our customers, we
take time to understand their needs and
then build customised Consumer Insights
solutions that have a lasting impact on their
business.

34.
34 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Meet Battenhall
With social media fundamentally
disrupting the way brands operate and
communicate, there was a clear need for
a new kind of agency, with a new way of
working that’s suited to the ever-evolving
technology and media environment. An
early adopter of social media, Battenhall’s
founder, Drew Benvie knew that it was
time to build an agency that put social
media at the heart of everything they do.
Founded in 2013, Battenhall is a multi-
award-winning communications agency
headquartered in London, with offices
in Los Angeles and New York. Battenhall
works with brands across all sectors and
helps organisations create strategies
and implement campaigns that engage
through PR, digital and social media.
The Challenge
Like most agency leaders, Jonny Atter,
Associate Director at Battenhall wears
many hats. “My role is varied, juggling
everything from delivering social media
audits, developing strategies, building
crisis comms plans, pitching for new
business, optimising processes, leading
my team of skilled communication
professionals, and everything in between.”
Time is a valuable resource when there
are many demands for your time, so to
help drive efficiency and win back working
hours, Jonny needed a partner that not
only understood his goals but helped him
achieve them.
When devising strategies, leaders will
often mention the importance of using
your instincts, but spending budget purely
based on hunches can get very costly,
this isn’t always feasible for organisations
with limited resources. A lot of brands
think they know who their audience is, or
how well their brand is engaging them,
but being truly confident in the decisions
you make means backing up what you
think with data. Without support from
a media and audience intelligence
tool, Battenhall wouldn’t be able to so
easily and confidently make data-driven
decisions.
Meltwater is very
intuitive; I’ve not had
to spend time running
bespoke training
or answer many
questions for my
team, which I quite
often had to do with
past tools I’ve used.
“
- Jonny Atter,
Associate Director
at Battenhall
4.4
Case Study: Battenhall

35.
35 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
Making data-driven decisions is important to
Battenhall and Meltwater’s audience analysis tool
has proved invaluable here. “We use Meltwater’s
Audience tool from a qualitative research
perspective. It helps us to answer questions
such as are we talking to the right people? Are
we creating content that is going to land and
engage audiences?” Such data then influences
strategic client recommendations, “Audience
insights inform the content we create, the
channels we use to distribute messages, and the
strategies we devise. By backing up what we think
with data, we can say we know this message will
more likely attract this type of person through
social advertising, rather than we think it will.”
Audience insights also help the Battenhall
team get granular with research and spot new
opportunities at the same time, Jonny explains,
“We use the Audience tool to analyse relevant
influencer’s networks on Twitter to see how
their following overlaps with other accounts.
We might spot that 50% of one profile was
following another profile, for example, and
armed with these insights we can more easily
identify relevant and untapped collaboration
opportunities for our clients.”
Most brands attract multiple audience tribes
(and stakeholders) at any given time, making it
difficult to engage all of them without excluding
others. To overcome this, Jonny and his team
lean on audience data when crafting content
plans. “When we create content, we always
keep who our client wants to attract in mind, as
well as making sure we retain existing relevant
audiences. As a starting block, we recommend
crafting a content mix table featuring target
content themes for each audience segment and
deciding what percentage of content should talk
to each. For example, 10% of messaging might
focus on CSR issues, 30% of messaging might
surround trends etc. We then adapt the plans to
the communication channel and for organic or
paid. Message and channel recommendations
are informed by audience data, emerging
trends, and marrying them with the client’s
communication needs to create the optimal mix.’’
As Battenhall’s social media partner, Meltwater
plays a part in helping them achieve business
goals and objectives, as well as better
understanding the communities they serve.
Jonny comments, “Our objectives include
growth, maintaining our thought leader
status, and offering the best data, insights
and consultancy to clients.” One of the ways
Meltwater supports Battenhall to achieve growth
goals is by optimising pitches with social media
data, “We use Meltwater to win new business
by showcasing audience, conversation and
influencer insights that aren’t easily available
without the tool.”
Time is precious, so why waste it performing
tasks that can be made more efficient through
automation? “Meltwater gives us a view of critical
data and KPIs via automation, which we then
supplement with our added layer of analysis and
consultancy. It’s important that a tool provides
the numbers easily, is reliable and is one we can
trust. The ability to automate standard tasks,
and then add our recommendations and actions,
saves time and helps us deliver to the high
standards we hold ourselves to.”
Aside from assisting Battenhall with meeting
strategic goals and driving efficiency, Jonny
also mentioned that he enjoys partnering with
Meltwater due to the simplicity of the tool, the
value it brings vs the cost, and service level
support. “Meltwater is very intuitive; I’ve not
had to spend time running bespoke training or
answer many questions for my team, which I
quite often had to do with past tools I’ve used.”
Then there’s the fact that searches are easy to
set up, Jonny adds, “you don’t have to worry
about breaking anything! Not having a cap in
searches or mentions is also very useful. As you
can imagine, being locked out of the tool because
you’ve gone over your limit when you’re halfway
through a month and need to deliver reports isn’t
a great position to be in. I would say the cost for
Meltwater vs what the tool offers is very good.”
Finally, referring to support and account
management, Jonny said, “I’ve had some very
poor experiences with account management
when using other vendors in the past, but the
account management team at Meltwater are
always helpful and proactive. There’s a 24-hour
chat support function which is super useful and
I know that my suggestions for new additions to
the Meltwater suite of tools are heard when I put
them forward.”
The Solution

36.
36 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
1. Inform content marketing
“Audience insights inform the content we
create, the channels we use to distribute
messages, and the strategies we devise. By
backing up what we think with data, we can
say we know this message will more likely
attract this type of person through social
advertising, rather than we think it will.”
2. Identify new sponsorship and
collaboration opportunities
“We use the Audience tool to analyse
relevant influencer’s networks on Twitter to
see how their following overlaps with other
accounts. We might spot that 50% of one
profile was following another profile, for
example, and armed with these insights
we can more easily identify relevant and
untapped collaboration opportunities for our
clients.”
3. Enhance efficiency by automating
reports
“Meltwater gives us a view of critical data
and KPIs via automation, which we then
supplement with our added layer of analysis
and consultancy. It’s important that a tool
provides the numbers easily, is reliable
and is one we can trust. The ability to
automate standard tasks, and then add our
recommendations and actions, saves time
and helps us deliver to the high standards we
hold ourselves to.”
Meltwater’s Audience Analysis helps Battenhall to:

37.
37 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
05
Competitive
Intelligence
Knowing what your competitors do and say online,
as well as how audiences perceive them can
significantly inform your strategies. While competitive
intelligence is leveraged for a diverse number of use
cases, often marketing and PR professionals use
competitive insights for benchmarking, informing
content strategies, filling gaps in the market, and to
carve out a unique and differentiated positioning.

38.
38 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
A competitor’s opportunity or
threat can easily become yours
too, so it’s wise to keep an eye on
conversations surrounding their
brand or your industry. There are
two different ways you can do this.
The first is through real-time social
media alerts on topics important
to you. Typically, brands set up
real-time alerts for mentions of their
competitors alongside key signals
such as:
• New partnerships and sales
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Financial results
• Product launches
• Patent filings
• IPOs
• Product recalls
• Executive moves
• Online advertising spend
• Search trends + website traffic
• Customer/employee reviews
• Lawsuits
Another way Meltwater clients are
keeping on top of breaking news
or impending crises is through
Meltwater’s AI-powered Data
Platform, Fairhair.ai, which is set
up to notify teams of high-impact
events. Events derive from micro
and macro environments and
are either discovered via explicit
social media mentions or triggered
by an observation of meaningful
changes over time (e.g. website
page changes, social footprint,
competitors repeatedly associated
with certain signals, etc.). There are
over 20 different indicators that
the tool analyses to determine a
developing event.

39.
39 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
5.1
Competitive Benchmarking
Competitive benchmarking is
a great starting point for those
just starting to dabble with
competitive intelligence. This
involves analysing which part of
the pie (aka the total volume of
conversation) is related back to
your brand versus competitors.
By comparing your brand’s
share of voice for the topics
important to you, it’s easy to
measure how your reach and
awareness stacks up.
Marketing and PR teams
tend to look at how share of
voice develops over time so
they can identify peaks and
troughs in conversations for
their brand versus competitors
and understand what’s driving
this. Other metrics aside from
media volume that are often
benchmarked include:
• Impressions
• Share Voice by Source
Location
• Sentiment Breakdown
• Trending Themes
• Audience Growth
• Engagement Rate
• Top Performing Pages
• Top Performing Posts
• Message Type Breakdown
• Engagement Breakdown
If you work inhouse, your ability
to provide timely and accurate
competitive intelligence can
make you a valued source of
information for stakeholders
across your organisation. And
if you work in an agency, it
can help to make you and your
agency indispensable to your
client – potentially leading to
more business.
5.2
Understand your Competitive
Landscape
When it comes to carving out
unique positioning to differentiate
your brand, it’s best to take an
informed data-driven approach.
Here, an audience tool becomes
particularly useful in providing
analytics such as demographics,
interests, key influencers,
psychographic, etc. Meltwater
offers two ways of analysing
social media communities from a
competitive analysis standpoint.
Audiences can either be
analysed based on followers
of an account (e.g. one of your
competitors) or based on people
talking about a brand on social
media. By comparing your social
media followers with those of
your competitions, you can
understand where similarities and
differences between you and your
competitors lie.
Audience analysis can also
shed light on affinities between
audiences, i.e. who are those users
that your audience or competitor
audience are also following? This
is a helpful insight when deciding
on partnerships or sponsorship
opportunities. If you know your
competitor’s audiences have a
strong affinity or an interest in
a particular influencer or media
publication, you can use this to
inform whether to partner with
or leverage that influencer or
publication.
The volume of social mentions
over time, and Share of Voice by
mentions, for two competing car
brands.

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40 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
5.3
Communicating Insights
Keeping insights in silos is detrimental to
the health of an organisation. Despite this,
knowledge sharing is a common challenge
experienced by many companies. As the
saying goes, sharing is caring, especially
when it comes to competitive insights since
the same ones are typically useful to many
departments.
There are several ways you can distribute
competitive insights found via social listening
to relevant stakeholders:
1. Create quick and easy-to-share reports.
Meltwater allows users to share the
dashboards they create.
2. Set up alerts that are sent straight
to your inbox. We refer to these as
daily digest reports and they can be
configured to be sent at a time suited to
you or your stakeholders, whether that’s
as it happens, once a day, hourly, or
weekly.
3. Share a newsletter. Newsletters are
another common communication tool
used to distribute insights, especially
competitive information due to the wide
scale interest in this data.

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41 | The Social Media ROI Playbook
About the Authors
Jessica
Smith
Junior Marketing
Manager, Meltwater
Jess is a Junior Marketing Manager
for Meltwater’s UKI operations. She
has an Honours Degree in Marketing
from the University of Northampton
and has 7+ years’ industry experience
specialising in communications and
digital marketing, Jess has worked within
a variety of industries including financial
services, defence and technology.
Beyond her work as a marketer, Jess
is studying towards her Chartership
from the Chartered Institute of
Marketing(CIM).
Dr Jillian Ney is the UK’s first Dr.
of Social Media and a Digital
Behavioural Scientist. Her personal
research has focused on creating
methodologies to help businesses
understand what’s driving
customer behaviour by applying
behavioural science to social data
and other personal data sources.
She firmly believes that there is
more to digital data than what
the current tools and analytical
approaches provide. Dr. Jillian
has spent her career working to
overcome these limitations to add
a layer of behavioural science in
the analysis and interpretation of
digital data – this additional layer
of insight consistently provides
superior marketing intelligence for
her clients.
She has created a global network
of social intelligence professionals
through her The Social Intelligence
Lab brand, that continually work
to support each other, create
best practices and benchmarking
standards in the ever-changing
world of social listening.
She believes that the next
revolution is behavioural, not
technological and works with
businesses and business leaders
to navigate digital disruption by
understanding the primary source
of the disruption – behaviour.
Throughout her career, Dr. Jillian
has gathered accolades. Voted
one of the 10 most influential
women in digital marketing under
the age of 30 by The Drum in
2012, she was also voted as a data
influencer in the DataIQ 100 list
in 2020 and 2021 and HotTopics
Global Data Influencers in 2020.
As well as many research
publications and conference
presentations, Jillian delivered 2
TED Talks: Connectedness and
the Digital Self, and Social Media:
The Value Lies in the Data. She
has also presented her work
on social intelligence at Social
Media Week, NATO, 10 Downing
Street as well as global marketing
conferences and private events.
Her first co-authored book,
Advanced Marketing Management:
Principles, Skills and Tools was
published by Kogan Page in 2018.
Her work at The Social Intelligence
Lab reaches professionals who
are working with social media
data across 52 counties, and is
making an impact on the success
of enterprise social intelligence
programmes.
Dr.
Jillian Ney
Founder, The Social Intelligence Lab

42.
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Summary
Social media is a goldmine, full of relevant
conversations that can be turned into
intelligence to inform growth decision
making. It’s transforming the way
organisations operate, especially when
it comes to communication and how
they go about gathering consumer and
competitive insights.
Companies that invest in real-time
social data analytics have the ability to
better meet growing consumer demands
and let data inform how they optimise
the customer journey. Only then can
enterprises continue to meet growth
targets by offering highly personalised
and relevant experiences that turn
customers into advocates.