From Likes to Leads: Mastering Social Media to Drive Real Business Results

When it comes to developing and executing a branded social media strategy, the challenges you're facing as a business aren't exactly new, right?

You know you need to be on the platforms your audience uses. You’ve heard all about how social media drives engagement, builds brand awareness, and opens doors to new customers—and you know that requires a lot of focused and intentional energy. But here’s where things get sticky—social media can sometimes feel like a black hole of effort.

You’re constantly feeding it with posts, ads, and campaigns, but is it actually doing what you need it to? Is it helping you sell more, improve customer experiences, or strengthen your overall business strategy?

🍿 Watch our whole conversation! 🍿

That’s where my conversation with Channing Ferrer comes in. As the Chief Business Officer at Brandwatch and a seasoned leader in scaling global technology companies, Channing brings over two decades of insight into how businesses can leverage social media as more than just a content calendar.

This isn’t just about posting or building a following—it’s about using social data to drive actionable insights, aligning your social efforts with overarching business goals, and unlocking growth opportunities you didn’t even know existed.

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In our discussion, we dig into some seriously eye-opening strategies and practical steps that can help businesses at any stage of their social media journey. Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to Leverage Social Data for Actionable Insights: Discover how to go beyond surface-level engagement metrics and use social data to inform everything from product development to customer service improvements.

• The Social Media Maturity Model: Learn how to assess where your business is on the social curve and what steps you can take to evolve your strategy, no matter your starting point.

• Aligning Social Media Strategy with Business Goals: Understand how to break out of the siloed “social media as marketing” mindset and ensure your efforts are driving real business impact.

If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start building a social media strategy that works as hard as you do, buckle up. This is the conversation you’ve been waiting for.

Using Social Data to Drive Business Insights 

Social media isn’t just a marketing tool; it’s a real-time focus group at your fingertips. Every comment, like, and hashtag is a breadcrumb leading you to what your customers care about, what your competitors are up to, and where your industry is headed. The problem is, most businesses only scratch the surface. They get stuck tracking likes and shares—all of those (often) results-tanking vanity metrics—missing out on the deeper insights that can actually move the needle for their business.

Of course, the value of social media isn’t in the numbers alone—it’s in the stories those numbers tell:

• What are your customers excited about?

• What’s frustrating them?

• What are they asking for that you’re not delivering?

When you start treating social data as a compass for your business decisions, it stops being just another marketing task and starts becoming a strategic advantage.

Here's Your Opportunity

Social data is essentially the voice of your customers on a massive scale. Think about it—where else can you tap into unfiltered, real-time feedback about what people love, hate, or wish existed? Instead of relying solely on focus groups or surveys, you’ve got a continuous stream of authentic opinions at your fingertips.

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For example, let’s say there’s a surge of conversations around sustainability in your market. Social data can help you identify what matters most to your audience and shape your offerings accordingly, whether it’s launching an eco-friendly product or tweaking your messaging to reflect those values.

Smarter Ways to Use Your Social Media Data

• Move Beyond Vanity Metrics: Likes and shares are nice, but they don’t pay the bills. Focus on metrics that tie directly to business outcomes, like sentiment analysis, share of voice, or conversion rates from social-driven traffic.

• Use Tools That Give You the Big Picture: Platforms like Brandwatch (shoutout to Channing’s expertise!) can help you go beyond platform-specific dashboards. They aggregate data from multiple sources and provide insights that connect to your business goals.

• Tie Social Insights to Action: Data without action is just noise. Use the insights you gather to make tangible improvements—whether it’s adjusting your product roadmap, refining your customer service, or optimizing your ad spend.

• Listen Beyond Your Brand: Social media isn’t just about what people say about you. Pay attention to what they’re saying about your competitors, your industry, and the broader challenges or trends shaping your market.

Putting It Into Action

Now, let's give you some baby steps to get you moving in the right direction, because yes, this is a lot to take on all at once:

• Pick One Business Problem to Solve: Whether it’s improving customer satisfaction, identifying new product opportunities, or outpacing a competitor, focus your data efforts on a single, tangible goal.

• Use Sentiment Analysis as a Compass: Get a clear sense of how people feel about your brand, your competitors, or key topics in your industry. Are they frustrated, excited, or indifferent? This helps you zero in on where you can make the biggest impact.

• Start Small, Scale Fast: Experiment with a single tool or process to collect and analyze social data. Once you’ve proven its value, expand your efforts to other areas of the business.

• Turn Insights Into Action: Don’t just admire the data—use it! Share your findings with your teams, whether it’s product development, marketing, or customer success, and take clear steps to act.   

Social media doesn’t have to feel like an endless hamster wheel of content creation. When you start treating it as a source of actionable intelligence, it becomes a business advantage—not just a marketing task. And that’s just the first step in unlocking its full potential.

Social Media Maturity: Where Do You Stand?

Not all businesses are created equal when it comes to social media. Some are just getting started, posting sporadically and hoping something sticks. Others have nailed down a rhythm, but their efforts are still siloed—disconnected from the bigger picture of their business goals. And then there are those rare companies that treat social media as a fully integrated, strategic asset.

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The question isn’t whether your business is “doing social media.” It’s about where you fall on the social media maturity curve and, more importantly, how to move up that curve in a way that drives real results. This isn’t about fancy tools or bigger budgets; it’s about aligning your strategy with the goals that matter most to your business.

3 Stages of Social Media Maturity

Recognizing where you stand is the first step. Are you stuck in the tactical stage, spinning your wheels without a clear path forward? Or maybe you’re in the connected stage but need to level up by breaking down silos and aligning social with other departments?

The good news is, no matter where you are, there’s a clear path to progress. But first, let's take your temperature on your starting point:

• The Tactical Stage: At this level, businesses are focused on basic execution. You’re posting regularly, but it’s more about checking a box than driving outcomes. Metrics like likes and impressions might give you a sense of activity, but they’re not tied to broader business goals.

• The Connected Stage: Here, social media efforts are starting to sync up with other areas of the business. Your content aligns with marketing campaigns, you’re using social listening to inform customer service or product decisions, and you’re moving beyond vanity metrics.

• The Strategic Stage: This is the sweet spot. Social media is fully integrated into your business strategy, influencing everything from brand positioning to sales enablement. You’re using social data to uncover trends, outpace competitors, and deliver measurable ROI.

Putting It Into Action

If you’re ready to move your social strategy up the curve, start here:

• Audit Your Efforts: Take a hard look at what you’re doing today. Are your social activities tied to measurable business outcomes, or are they disconnected from the bigger picture?

• Identify the Gaps: What’s holding you back? Is it a lack of data, misalignment across teams, or a shortage of resources? Pinpoint the barriers so you can tackle them head-on.

• Break Down Silos: Social media shouldn’t live in isolation. Bring marketing, sales, customer service, and even product teams to the table and ensure everyone sees how social fits into the bigger strategy.

• Invest in the Right Tools: At higher stages of maturity, you’ll need tools that go beyond basic scheduling. Look for platforms that aggregate data, provide actionable insights, and track ROI.

• Set Clear Goals and Metrics: Don’t just focus on activity metrics like impressions or clicks. Identify outcomes that align with your business goals, whether that’s driving leads, increasing customer retention, or entering new markets.

Social media maturity isn’t about being perfect—it’s about making intentional progress. Wherever you are on the curve, the next step isn’t as daunting as it seems when you focus on aligning your efforts with what matters most to your business.

Align Your Social Media Strategy with What Matters

It’s easy to fall into the trap of treating social media like it’s living on its own little island. You post, you get some likes, maybe a share or two, and it feels like you’re doing something. But here’s the thing: if your social media efforts aren’t tied to what your business is actually trying to achieve, you’re just spinning your wheels.

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Social media isn’t just a megaphone for your marketing team—it’s a bridge that connects every part of your business. It can help you generate leads, improve customer retention, and even guide your product strategy. But for that to happen, your social strategy has to be in lockstep with your broader business goals. 

How to Connect Social Media to Your Business Goals

The magic happens when you align the content format with the creator’s strengths. SMEs are perfect for long-form content—they shine when they have the space to dive into the nitty-gritty. Influencers? They’re made for short-form, high-energy content that can quickly reach and excite their audience. Thought leaders can often straddle both, providing big-picture insights in a webinar or a snappy soundbite for LinkedIn.

• Start with What You’re Trying to Achieve: Are you trying to build brand awareness, generate leads, drive conversions, or improve customer satisfaction? Without a clear goal, your strategy will always feel scattered.

• Find the Metrics That Matter: Skip the vanity metrics. If your goal is lead generation, focus on metrics like social-driven website visits or form fills. If it’s customer satisfaction, track response times and sentiment for customer interactions on social.

• Build Cross-Department Buy-In: Social isn’t just for the marketing team. Sales, customer service, and even product teams can benefit from the insights social media provides. Make sure these departments know how it supports their work.

• Use Social to Close Feedback Loops: Customers are talking about what they want, what they love, and what’s driving them nuts. Use those insights to refine your brand messaging strategy, products, or customer experience.

Putting It Into Action

Here’s how you can start making your social strategy work for your bigger picture:

• Get Your Teams Talking: Bring together your marketing, sales, and customer service teams to define shared goals. How can social media support each group’s objectives?

• Map Social Metrics to Goals: For every goal, assign metrics that connect directly to outcomes. For example, if your goal is to drive sales, track click-through rates to your landing pages and conversions from social campaigns.

• Create Feedback Loops: Set up regular reviews of your social media data with key stakeholders. Share insights that impact more than just marketing—like customer trends that could inform product development or service improvements.

• Focus on Quick Wins: Not everything has to be a massive campaign. Small changes, like responding faster to social inquiries or testing new ad formats, can have an immediate impact on your goals.

Again, the keyword here is "alignment"—making sure every post, campaign, and conversation is part of a bigger strategy that moves your business forward.

Your Social Media Success Story Starts Here

At the end of the day, driving success with social media isn’t about chasing the latest trends or throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks—it’s about intentionality. Whether you’re rethinking your strategy, trying to align your efforts with business goals, or evaluating your social maturity, the best time to start is now.

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No one expects perfection out of the gate, so take it step by step:

• Clarify Your Priorities: What’s your biggest pain point or opportunity right now? Start there.

• Audit and Align: Evaluate how your current efforts stack up against your goals. What needs to change?

• Start Small: Pick one key area—whether it’s tracking buyer intent or refining form lengths—and focus on testing and iterating.

• Engage Your Team: Bring in different departments, share insights, and create a culture of collaboration around social media.

The first step is always the hardest, but it’s also the most important. Even small changes—made intentionally—can lead to big results over time.

Still Need Help Getting Started?

If you’re sitting there thinking, “This all sounds great, but where do I even begin?”—we hear you, and you don't have to do this alone. My team at Sidekick Strategies and I are here to help. Whether it’s developing a social strategy that aligns with your goals, diving into buyer intent, or making the tools and platforms work for your unique business, we’ve got your back.

Start a conversation and let's see if we can tackle your social goals together. It’s time to move your social media from a box you check off to a force that drives your business forward.