When mission-driven businesses in the Midwest need help on social media, Emily Evans is there to answer the call.
The former South Bend, Indiana news anchor is now the director of content and social media for The Harbinger Group, a Chicago-based marketing and integrated communications firm. Over the course of her three-and-a-half years at the firm, Evans has helped multiple big-name clients communicate their organizational values through effective, eye-catching social media campaigns.
Evans spoke to Big Shoes Network about her career arc, how agencies can better work with clients to achieve their social media goals and how one-person communications departments can play bigger than they are.
How did your career as a TV journalist set you up for what you’re doing now?
I feel like learning how to tell a great story is so important to creating great content that resonates with people. You also had such limited moments to capture people’s attention. In TV, you have these short, 15-second teases to tell a story in a concise way; clearly and accurately. Constantly being challenged to do that has helped me because we’re always fighting to grab people’s attention online when there’s so much distracting us.
You were a new media director and brand steward for Notre Dame’s enrollment department, which has such an internal microscope on it along with all of the external pressure of managing such a recognizable brand. What did that teach you about your work?
We really focused on creating high-quality content, not just cranking out content all the time. It can be so tempting to go the other way because you do want to have a consistent presence on social media and fill that pipeline on your editorial calendar. We obviously created a great deal of content, but our first priority was to make it high-quality and on message. It’s more important that everything we do be great than to operate at maximum volume.
With businesses trying to cut costs, it would be tempting for them to say “well, I can post to social media for free; why do I need to pay someone to do it for me?” What is an agency’s value add when it comes to social?
The secret sauce is the strategy, because that’s what’s going to optimize your communications across channels. And then we’re working with you to create a marketing strategy where all the pieces fit together. If your PR team is earning media coverage, how do we make sure we’re not operating in silos, but instead sharing that coverage across your email newsletters, your blogs, and your social channels? It’s all connected and it all feeds off each other. An agency gives you that wide-angle perspective that you might not get on your own.
People who don’t do social media for a living can have a tough time distinguishing between content that fills a social media feed and content that really serves a purpose. What, for you, is that difference?
You can create a bunch of social posts that just say “Happy Valentine’s Day” or “Happy July Fourth” with your company’s logo and a link to your website. But someone who knows what they’re doing is always going to ask about how the content aligns with your organization’s mission. They should also be pushing themselves to learn the latest in the industry and learn the latest about the platforms they post to. Someone who really wants to serve a purpose with their posts should know, for instance, when the LinkedIn algorithm changes and how that impacts what you’re doing.
You also have to look at where your target audience is. Instead of creating all this new content across a bunch of platforms, maybe we come in and say “well, actually, your target audience is over here; let’s focus our time and money where they are.” So now you’re spending your resources more wisely.
There’s sometimes this tension with clients where they want a lot of exposure on social media but are unwilling to deviate from their exact preferred messaging or style. How do you deal with that tension, particularly with a new client?
The client is the customer, right? So if they have a minor change and it’s not a huge, glaring issue, we just go with what they say, but if it’s something that’s going to impact their bottom line, we will have a real conversation with them about this impacting the strategic goals we set out for the year. We have to make the case for why we think our course of action is going to set them up for success.
It’s also important for the social media people on the agency side to get an introduction to the social folks in-house so we can work more closely with them. Being on the same team and being clear about what we are going to do for them is typically the best way forward.
What kinds of social media metrics and analytics do clients actually care about these days?
It really depends on the client. We had one client a few years ago where it was really important for them to enhance their brand visibility. They really cared about impressions because they wanted to be seen everywhere and anywhere.
Now that they’ve elevated their brand visibility, they’re now more conscious about the volume of new jobs that their contractors are getting. They want clicks on their website and to know that people are using the tools and resources on their website. They want to know how many people download those tools and, if possible, they want a name and email to add to their email contact database. They don’t so much care about impressions anymore.
It’s kind of an art form rather than a science to give clients data that’s relevant to them. But it’s so important to be able to say “look at what your money is getting you.”
What is the most frequent misconception that you see clients have about social media?
Treating it as siloed. It’s not just its own thing; it connects to everything else, whether it’s eBooks on your website, blogs or fact sheets to download. You want all this stuff to be aligned and social media is a great tool to amplify everything. What you do on social media is connected to your resources and your mission. That’s so important.
There are probably some people reading this who are one-person communications departments without a whole lot of bandwidth. Is there anything you can share with them to help them be more efficient, work smarter with social media, etc?
To the degree you can, create your content in large batches. Not everyone can just create six months of social media content because things change so frequently. However, if there is more specific content that you can look ahead and generate, maybe around a holiday or something, that’s a great way to work smarter and more efficiently. You proofread as a batch, schedule it as a batch and then you have more brain space and more time for trends or newsworthy items. Use those quiet times to get ahead.
