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.

What is the true value of community for a brand? How do you know if your efforts are paying off and your communities are really influencing buying behaviors? Join Delta Air Lines’ Senior Manager of Social Brand Community and Engagement Strategy, Andrea Feminella, as she pulls back the curtain on how they’ve grown and measured the impact of their brand-owned Facebook Group. In this presentation, Andrea will share her lessons learned as well as discuss the time and resource investment required to successfully foster conversations in their communities across a variety of platforms–to generate organic brand advocacy and measurable ROI.

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 Pecenka 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.

When misinformation about your brand gets spread online, how do you respond – especially if it’s coming from a very prominent personality? Join this off-the-record presentation from Meghan Anhalt, Global Social Media Lead at John Deere, where she’ll share step-by-step details on how John Deere carefully navigated a serious brand reputation predicament. You’ll hear how they updated social listening terms to better understand the shape and scope of online conversation, the decision-making process for whether to respond publicly, and how they leveraged organic and paid social media to tactfully build a fact-based counter narrative to set the record straight.

How and where does social media fit within highly integrated marketing campaigns? How do you optimize creative to fully leverage the strengths of social media while maintaining a consistent look and feel across channels? Join Alden O’Kelley, Sr. Advertising Project Coordinator at Chick-fil-A, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they approached social creative within an integrated campaign to drive mobile app downloads. She’ll discuss the processes and partnership with creative, campaign performance and outcomes, and how they evaluated the efficacy of their creative.

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.

In their first-ever Super Bowl commercial, Georgia-Pacific Senior Manager of Corporate Communications Mary Beth Lucy positioned their executive leaders to play a key role in the Angel Soft brand’s campaign success. This presentation will give us unprecedented access to how dashboards were built for executive social media posts, how paid social was leveraged, which content management queries were built, as well as a front-seat view of the full communications plan (internal, newsroom, exec social national placements, external publishers, etc.) We’ll also learn how her team addressed executive hesitancy by making the case for the value of social media and brand awareness. You won’t want to miss this case study!

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.

If executives have ever peppered you with questions like, “Can you tie your team’s metrics directly to revenue?” or “What if jumping on this trend generates negative PR?,” then this workshop is for you! Molly Maj, Director of Corporate Social Media at Walmart, will lead a conversation on how to position social media as a critical business function for enterprise leaders. We’ll discuss the insights that get their attention and the stories we’re sharing to ensure continued investment.

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.

Is it worth having a brand presence on Reddit? If so, what’s the best approach — organic engagement, social listening, or paid advertising? Join Jenny Reineck, Senior Social Media Specialist at NCR Voyix, for a discussion on how brands are using Reddit successfully (and unsuccessfully!). You’ll hear from others who have navigated the platform and gain insights on how your company can engage effectively while respecting Reddit’s unique culture and user base.

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.

For many brands, boosting organic content is more of an afterthought than a strategy, depending on how the content performs and if you can scrounge up the budget. But what if your approach to boosting organic content looked more like your approach to paid social media: methodical and with dedicated spend? In this workshop, Minali Liyanage, VP Social & Content Strategy at Synchrony (CareCredit Health & Wellness), will guide the conversation as we discuss what an intentional boosting strategy could look like, and how to approach conversations with leadership to secure their buy-in.

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.

As audiences increasingly leverage social media as a search engine, what steps are you taking to integrate SEO tactics into your paid and organic social media? Join Jessica Nelson, Director of Digital Marketing at S&P Global, in a discussion of all things search and social – from profile optimization to ensuring your social ads and content are more easily discoverable. We’ll discuss tips and tools for keyword research, how some social platforms like Reddit are more discoverable on Google, and how we’re leveraging SEO tactics with our YouTube content.

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.

When reorganizing your social media governance strategy, where do you even start? Join Jim Lin, Director of Enterprise Social Media at Caterpillar, for a guided conversation around systematically auditing your current state and building out an enterprise-led model going forward. From gaining buy in and conducting interviews to understanding needs across the business and equipping all stakeholders with social media expertise – this workshop will cover everything you need to know about how to manage these changes smoothly and increase visibility (and accountability!) across the enterprise.