How Firms Can Measure Social Program Efficacy And Build Strong Sellers

At Yext, we're lucky to have a team of subject matter experts who share practical techniques and strategies for building effective digital marketing programs with our customers.

Today, we're featuring Amanda Peitz, our Head of Digital Transformation. She helps financial services organizations enhance their social initiatives by analyzing agents' and advisors' social activities and spotlighting behaviors that improve field effectiveness, increase social user maturity, and boost ROI.

The goal? Build a team of strong social sellers by giving agents and advisors the tools and training they need to use social media marketing as a pipeline generator and relationship builder.

Here's a look inside her process and best practices that will help you develop confident, effective social sellers.

A: The User Maturity Model (UMM) is a proprietary tool our team developed to measure an individual's social media marketing skill level.

UMM allows us to analyze and score specific user behaviors, including things like:

• Profile completeness

• Publishing frequency

• How often the user adds new connections

• How the user engages with their network

Each behavior is scored separately, and we calculate a total. Then, each user is assigned to one of six tiers—Tier 1 being the most social-savvy, Tier 6 being the least.

A: ‍Increasing adoption and usage is critical to social selling success, and UMM scoring allows firms to measure progress over time by establishing a benchmark.

Understanding the behaviors associated with each tier also empowers organizations to teach new social selling skills by coaching individuals who fall into lower tiers, assigned based on their current skill level.

A: Definitely. There are three key things I see regularly:

1. You likely have individuals who fall into the least active tiers (4, 5, and 6). Getting these users to incorporate a consistent social strategy requires a different approach than users who fall into tiers 2 and 3.

2. Users may think they're "doing all the right things," but UMM data reveals proficiency gaps. Offering specific, actionable insight to individual users makes them more aware of what they're not doing.

3. UMM analysis of mature programs revealed a shared characteristic: ~50% of advisors and agents are in tiers 1 and 2. Positive social selling behaviors of highly effective users generate increased earned media value (EMV) — a quantified value of interactions associated with published posts.

Put simply, when users publish more frequently, and their content is seen by larger networks, brand awareness goes up.**

A: Firms with high-performing programs often share three traits:

1. Executive, administrators, and user buy-in. To be most effective, program advocacy should start at the top. To drive strong adoption, program benefits should be communicated to your field early and often.

Taking the time to establish strong buy-in and prep your field reduces roadblocks a team may encounter at launch.

2. Willing to use tailored training. Training teaches social sellers in less active tiers how to implement positive social behaviors and graduate to higher tiers.

Incorporating an element of gamification that highlights—and rewards—impactful social behaviors is a great way to introduce friendly competition. This often proves to be a powerful performance-enhancing tool.

3. Clear connection between social behaviors and business outcomes. Tying metrics for key behaviors to business outcomes helps leaders build a repeatable, scalable program.

A: Yes! Here's a recent one that comes to mind.

We presented UMM to executives at a top-tier insurance firm, and the team adopted the model. Using an automated monthly UMM report, the firm developed its own internal report that correlates each agent's tier to new premiums underwritten that month. With both reports in place, the team was able to definitively correlate tier 1 and 2 social behavior with writing more new premiums.

The team implemented tiered training to uplevel tier 3-6 agents and advisors in an effort to continually improve over time. UMM is a powerful way to track and measure social progress.

Want to learn more about how field social programs can help you succeed? Check out this post to learn about the connection between social media activity and AI search visibility.

Amanda is a part of Yext's in-house Value Consulting team, a group of subject matter experts who help customers analyze program success, measure ROI, and provide strategic guidance on ways to optimize performance. Our team is focused on key areas that impact financial services organization success, including compliance, content strategy, and digital transformation.

If you're a Yext customer and you'd like to learn more about value consulting, talk to your customer support manager.