Susan Lavington has been SVP Marketing at USA TODAY since 2007. During that time, she spearheaded the brand’s adoption of social media – including turning 100 journalists into regular Twitterers.
We asked her how she did it.
How high do you think the stakes are with social media?
“Not to sound melodramatic, but it’s relevancy. It’s ‘Will we exist or not?’ If we don’t do this, someone else will.”
What changes has USA TODAY made as a result of social media?
“We’ve had to change our mindset to put ourselves in the middle of conversations. We now cultivate customer-to-customer interactions by allowing customers to blog on our site and post directly on our Facebook wall without editorial review, which many of our major competitors don’t allow. On Facebook, we tee up open questions designed to spark discussion between our followers. We also have 27 online communities.”
What are you doing as a CMO?
“I’ve been getting journalists and peers onboard and reassuring everyone that our brand is strong enough to evolve and stretch in these social dimensions. I tried to provide a vision of why we needed to change and I got my staff to provide tactical support. I put one member of my team in charge of teaching the journalists about social media and doing the hand-holding. I said, ‘Make training your life for the next six months.’ He literally had lunch meetings with everyone.”
How did you get buy-in for social media adoption?
“First, we did comprehensive research on our brand equity to clarify why consumers like us and understand the brand’s ability to stretch. Everyone buys into the tenets of this brand study, so I quote it all the time. Second, I showed how our activities would drive commercial results. I was careful not to ask for mandates or incremental resources initially. I simply asked for access to our journalists. Finally, I shifted one person on my own team from traditional PR to social media and cancelled our wire services. But if anything, we now get more – and better – PR at less cost.”
How did you get journalists to change their habits?
“Like any change initiative, you find influencers. For us it was travel journalists. We asked them to blog and then got them to share their successes and tips. From there, social took on a life of its own for the journalists.”
How long did it take you to see traffic/results?
“We went from zero to 100 twitterers in a year and have already seen a meaningful boost in traffic to our website as a result.”
How do you keep up-to-date?
“I rely on my youngest staff. They get the scoop on new platforms well before popular media, or even some of the online social news sites.”
MLC B2C members, learn how other CMOs are spearheading social media efforts at our 2010 meeting series “Closing the CMO Leadership Deficit in Social Media”. For more information or to register, click here.
Meeting Dates
17 June | New York
14 July | Chicago
25 August | Sydney
21 September | London
12 October | San Francisco
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- How To Take Advantage of Social Media in Highly Regulated Environments
- 10 Habits of Highly Effective Social Media Marketers
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