Social Media Practitioner Summit

As artificial intelligence continues to permeate social media, how can brands in regulated industries take advantage of its capabilities while ensuring brand safety — especially when it comes to employee-generated content (EGC)? Join Josh Feyen, Social Media Administrator at American Family Insurance, as he details how he approached identifying AI risks, introducing a compliant in-house tool, and training employees in dedicated content workshops. Attendees can expect to walk away prepared to effectively and compliantly strengthen their employee-generated content strategy.

Keeping your paid content stayin’ alive and top of mind is more than just a collection of fleeting moments — it’s a steady rhythm that requires a thoughtful approach. Inspired by the timeless groove of consistency (and maybe also the Bee Gees), Principal Financial Group Senior Strategist of Brand and Media Olivia Rockers will hit the right note by showing us how the transition to an always-on paid social media strategy can only crescendo into driving consistent awareness and demand for your brand. Attend this case study presentation to ensure your always-on strategy doesn’t fall flat.

Do the goals and priorities placed upon your team align with where it sits organizationally? How are you delegating responsibilities among your team – are you organized by specialty or emphasizing generalists? As we navigate the current phase of social media’s evolution together, this case study is your chance to see behind-the-scenes how one enterprise social media team shifted its structure to keep up with the times.

Organizing and optimizing your brand’s social media resources, best practices, and guidelines is no small feat, but it’s necessary if you want to operate at maximum efficiency. Join Lenovo Senior Global Social Media Governance & Alignment Manager Brandy Mann as she walks us through a step-by-step process of creating a commons and workflow hub for all your social media team needs. In this confidential case study, you’ll learn how to build out internal resources while avoiding bottlenecks and silos that keep you from doing your best work.

Is your social media listening program set up to help you navigate crisis situations as smoothly as possible? TD Bank was able to put their program to the test in 2024 with a brand crisis that became a media circus. Join this confidential presentation from Shagun Randhawa, Senior Manager and Head of Social Media at TD Bank, as she walks us through her lessons learned. We’ll hear the ins and outs of how the organic social media team leveraged tools, processes, and analytics to support social listening and change the online narrative about their brand.

Are you looking to enhance your social media search performance five-fold? Join Head of Social Media & Influencers Kristi Daraban and Social Media Marketing Manager Gabriela Peceneka from the Aspen Group social media team as they share how utilizing AI tools quintupled their social search results. They’ll delve into using AI to optimize YouTube metadata and also refine social copy to boost search rankings, visibility, and share of voice. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at their efforts and actionable insights to help you elevate and improve both your social media content and search optimization efforts.

When your company rolls out a rebrand, how can the social media team utilize its expertise to ensure a smooth transition? In this presentation, hear directly from Truist Vice President of Social Media Intelligence Caroline Braswell about how her team leveraged social listening analytics to prepare for the merger of BB&T and SunTrust to form a new brand, Truist. This case study will cover how social intelligence informed the strategy for sunsetting pages, creating new accounts, and building new operations and governance processes under a new brand. You’ll learn what went well, what could’ve been better, and everything in between.

How do you incentivize and encourage employees to activate and engage in your employee advocacy program? We’ll get behind-the-scenes details on how to structure a program that can scale efficiently – from overcoming challenges with legal to increasing engagement during seasonal lulls and product launches, and even how to templatized your gamification strategy so it’s easier to reproduce.

What’s the role of video in brand storytelling? How can we pivot our social media teams to generate video content that is timely and on trend, but still on brand? In this confidential case study, you’ll hear about building an authentic video content strategy, getting the C-suite on board with emerging formats, measuring and optimizing video performance, best practices for vertical video, and ensuring accessibility.

Over the span of nearly two years, Astellas Pharma embarked on a successful effort to decommission dozens of abandoned LinkedIn pages, reconfigure regional pages into an organization parent/child structure, and eventually align all its local pages into one global site. In this case study, Bob Skwarek, Associate Director of Global Digital Communications Strategy at Astellas Pharma, will discuss lessons learned along their journey to meet aggressive optimization goals, which resulted in a single, holistic LinkedIn page for all their key audiences.

As the scope and expectations of our social care teams continue to grow, how can we scale our capabilities without additional headcount? This off-the-record case study will show examples of how to create efficiency and bandwidth for our teams to take on new responsibilities – including how to leverage AI for populating response libraries, considerations for expanding to new platforms, as well as best practices for reviews management and proactive monitoring and response.

Are your paid social media efforts helping you make the most of influencer and celebrity partnerships, sponsorships, and even general brand announcements? You’ll gain first-hand insights in this presentation from Dylan Samuels, Manager of Paid Media at United Airlines, as he walks us through how extending reach and engagement on content can drive your overall business goals forward. He’ll share lessons learned when it comes to efficient execution of paid campaigns for brand partnerships, how to maximize ROI, and how to create platform-specific paid strategies to ensure a cohesive message across internal and external teams.

When it comes to elevating your content and channel strategies, many of us have lofty goals and no clear roadmap for how to get there. Join this session to hear from Cigna Healthcare’s Insights, Analytics, and Content Strategy Senior Advisor John Kosash, and Head of Social Media Marketing and Content Strategy Shannon Waldschmidt, about how they drove a comprehensive channel and content audit to improve their organic performance on Instagram. You’ll learn how a data-driven approach can enhance user engagement, build stronger connections with your identified audiences, and ultimately drive success on your priority channels for social media.

As a global house of brands, how do you optimize your social media presence across the globe? Join Whirlpool Social Media Manager Jennie Schumacher for a confidential, behind-the-scenes look at their Social Media Center of Excellence (COE). She’ll share how their COE team manages brand presence and consumer needs across 13 brands, multiple lines of business, and across international markets. You’ll learn how they equip global social media teams with resources and guidance – from risk mitigation and rules of social engagement to strategic employee amplification and general global social media governance.

Do you have hopes for thought leadership as part of your executives’ social media presence that haven’t been realized? This case study will reveal how to work towards creating a culture of high-quality thought leadership on social media that increases brand recognition, reputation, and trust. We’ll cover everything from strategic ideation to content creation, publishing, response strategy and attributing value to the business and executives. You can expect candid takeaways about how to take actionable steps to enhance this integral part of your social media strategy.

Taylor Swift doesn’t just drop songs — she crafts eras, tells stories, and makes an impact. Join Katie Agresto, AVP of Social Media at Synchrony, as you learn how your social media reporting could do the same! In this session, we’ll discuss how to go beyond vanity metrics and use data insights and weighted metrics to prove real impact. Learn how to craft reports that resonate — whether your leadership team is in their “Debut” era of understanding social, or if they’re ready for their “Mastermind” moment, this discussion will turn your insights into an album leaders will actually put on repeat.

How do you successfully quantify the value of your community management efforts? Join Jada Souffrant, Social Media Associate Manager of Community at Darden, as she leads a discussion on uncovering the tangible and intangible value of community management. We’ll explore key metrics that demonstrate business impact, including engagement and sentiment analysis, as well as other ways to quantify and demonstrate the value of building and nurturing online communities.

As a regulated brand, how do you avoid your brand’s social media content becoming stale and boring? What can you do to be more engaging and “social-friendly” when you are required to adhere to strict advertising guidelines and compliance requirements? Join Nilam Patel, Nationwide’s Social Media Influencers and Ambassadors Consultant, in a conversation on tactics and strategies that can help regulated brands be more creative and boost the business impact of social media.

How do you know if you’re really making the most of LinkedIn? You gather with your SocialMedia.org peers to compare notes! In this interactive workshop, Tayler Felix, Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, will guide our conversation around how to maximize your presence on this platform. We’ll discuss thought leadership ads, video performance and strategy, reaching ideal audiences, keeping up with changing platform features, and much more.

How are you facing the question of whether to manage paid social media efforts internally versus outsourcing them to external partners and agencies? Join this confidential discussion with other senior social media leaders to delve into the pros and cons of each approach and to discuss how to optimize your paid social advertising budget. We’ll discuss how you’re working to wrangle paid social sprawl, strategies to centralize the function, and the resources and headcount required to transition paid social operations in-house.

Once you build an employee advocacy program, how do you sustain and grow it over the long term? Do you have unique strategies for activating different types of employees, and what strategies can help keep your advocates engaged? Join Crystal Robertson, Senior Social Media Strategist at the United States Postal Service, for a candid conversation on how to keep your employee advocacy program going strong.

How can we build social media teams that are data-first, particularly when we have limited bandwidth? Join this confidential, members-only workshop as we discuss both current and ideal reporting structure and workflows, as well as success we’ve seen with presenting report findings to leadership. We’ll benchmark with our peers at big brands on the successes and pain points of building a “data-driven” culture.

When your brand inevitably finds itself at the center of controversy or crisis, how can you mitigate reputational risk while still being empathetic to customer concerns? What changes should you make to your social care and crisis response strategies to help your brand weather the storm? Join Donna Mun, Director of Digital Communications at Hawaiian Electric Company, to discuss how to set your social care teams up for success – before, during, and after a crisis hits.

How is the rapid evolution of the social media landscape affecting your BtoB social media strategies? Join Jared Siegel, Social Media Director at Franklin Templeton, in a candid conversation about how and where we’re finding and targeting key business audiences, as well as which platform features and tactics are proving successful for our BtoB brands. We’ll also benchmark which content strategies and creative formats are working — and which aren’t.

With technology and social media in a state of perpetual evolution, how can you capitalize on the Next Big Thing? What evaluation criteria can you use to determine if a new platform or functionality is the right fit for your brand? Join this collaborative session to discuss which technologies are poised to revolutionize social media. Together we’ll discuss strategies for innovating in an increasingly competitive space including the merits and foibles of everything from artificial intelligence to augmented reality.

As a global brand, balancing regional content needs with unified standards is essential, but how do you prevent stakeholders from going rogue? Join other senior social media leaders from global brands for a confidential workshop on defining and maintaining social media governance globally, partnering with regional teams to align on a holistic global content strategy, and enforcing governance policies across regions, while allowing for cultural nuance.

The value of a robust executive social media program is undeniable – but how do you scale it beyond the C-suite with limited resources and staffing? Join this workshop about strategies to create a self-service model for your executives’ social media presence that is sustainable for your social media teams. We’ll talk about staffing and resource allocation, and how we align executives to content pillars.

As social media platforms constantly update their features and functions, how does your social media team adapt its short-form video strategy to stay current? Join Alan Adjei, Social Media Content Strategist at Vanguard, for a candid discussion around best practices for staying ahead of trends, tips and tricks by platform, and methods of testing-and-learning for short-form video content. As platform functionalities and content strategies continue to evolve, you can always turn to your peers in SocialMedia.org for unbiased advice.

Join this candid, confidential workshop to share risk management and crisis communication strategies. We’ll walk through how we’ve turned potential brand threats into opportunities for strengthening brand loyalty and compare our processes for strategic risk management on social media. Be ready to talk through effective crisis communication plans that preserve brand integrity and trust.

What does it take to ensure an influencer partnership can withstand the test of time? In this session, Nadine Gillespie, Social Media Manager at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, will guide our discussion on how we approach building and maintaining these relationships – everything from tips and tricks when selecting a would-be long-term influencer partner, contract considerations, strategies for gifting and sending merch, and successes/failures when it comes to fostering an authentic brand affiliation.

When it comes to social listening, can our all-in-one social media management tools (like Sprinklr or Sprout) get the job done? Or do specialty tools (like Brandwatch or Meltwater) still win out? Join your fellow social media leaders for this vendor-free, confidential conversation about what’s working — and what’s not — regarding our social listening tool stack.

How and where does AI fit into your program? How could it fit in? Join other social media leaders at billion-dollar brands for this candid workshop. We’ll share and hear tangible insight into use cases for AI that go beyond content development, processes for internal adoption across programs and teams, and challenges or questions you still have about this developing technology. This won’t just be another buzzword-ridden lecture about the future state of this tool.

By the time a trend goes viral on social media — whether it’s a meme, audio clip, or short-form video — it’s probably too late to be joining the bandwagon. Identifying trends your brand can participate in before they reach their peak is your best bet for engaging your audience and demonstrating your brand’s relevance. But how do you find trends that haven’t gone viral (yet)? Join this workshop to dive into tips and tricks around social listening for trends, best practices for working with legal teams, and which teams should be involved in execution to move as quickly as possible.