Welcome back to HERstory, where we’re spotlighting Morgan Glennon, a marketing maverick who’s made waves with her transformational work at PerkinElmer and Somfy. From steering a massive corporate split to fostering diversity in influencer marketing, Morgan’s story is rich with strategic innovation.
Drawing from her diverse experiences, including her role at SocialMedia.org and freelance writing for Huffington Post, Morgan offers invaluable insights into the fast-paced world of social media, along with some practical advice on maintaining a work-life balance. Grab a notepad – you’ll have a lot to save from this one!
Morgan, thank you so much for taking the time to join us for this chat. Your work in marketing, especially in the realm of social media, has been inspiring to watch. As a Global Social Media Marketing Manager, you led a transformation workstream for PerkinElmer’s divestment and rebrand, including evaluating, implementing, and rolling out new social media tools. Could you give us an insight into how you approached this and what factors you considered while evaluating these tools?
Halfway through this transformation work, I found out that I would be the only one on my team going over to the “new” PerkinElmer. This meant that I was losing my team, but also that I had a bit more flexibility in which social tools I could suggest to leadership.
Evaluating vendors is never easy, so my first step was to gather a list of the top social media tools and set up meetings with those vendors. Before I hopped on those meetings, I made a list of essentials I needed from a social management perspective and a list of nice-to-haves.
The essentials were easy scheduling, good analytics, and a robust employee advocacy tool. From there I took copious notes and compared investment levels for the different tools. Then I distilled all of those meetings into a short deck to present to leadership, pointing out the platform I thought would be the best fit.
Overall, through this process, I managed to save the company about 80% on their social tool investment over the previous year.
Could you share some insights on how you implemented an influencer marketing program at Somfy? How did you choose the right influencers and measure the success of this strategy?
Getting to build a program from the ground up is one of the exciting things about working in digital marketing and social media! Our influencer program started by wanting to move into the growing influencer space, expand the reach of our messaging about our products, and get some high-quality images we could bring back to our own advertising efforts.
The challenge was that our product (the motors and controls for motorized shades, awnings, curtains, etc) was not simple to send to influencers. For our program to work, we needed to work hand-in-hand with our talented dealers to make sure that the right product was installed for our influencers. This also gave us the opportunity to provide value to our dealers in the form of promotion and visual assets.
We started by looking at our niche in home design and choosing influencers who had beautiful spaces, great blogs, and awesome social profiles. Once we felt strong in the home design space, we started to expand outwards in the types of influencers we worked with.
It was also incredibly important to me to ensure our influencer program was diverse and inclusive. Often influencers from marginalized backgrounds aren’t presented the same opportunities, so I was proactive in reaching out to really amazing influencers from diverse backgrounds.
One aspect of the program I was really proud of developing was a focus on influencers in the disability advocacy space. Motorized blinds and shades aren’t just cool home accessories, they can also make a major impact in the lives of people with disabilities or who have mobility challenges. While social is an always evolving and sometimes volatile field, it’s important to remember that it’s possible for social media professionals to push for increased representation of diverse voices and to give those voices a platform.
Measuring the success of the strategy was a multi-pronged approach, from working with influencers to provide impression metrics, to tracking engagement. One of our best ways of measuring success was to closely track how many leads came from these influencer activations. While the influencer campaigns were primarily top-of-funnel to increase brand awareness, they also resulted in a good amount of qualified leads!
As a Board Member of SocialMedia.org, what insights can you share about leading social media at major companies? What are some common challenges and how can they be overcome?
A big piece of advice is to find other professionals doing what you’re doing and network. Social media roles are often and sadly under-resourced, so finding an organization like SocialMedia.org has been a lifeline when I want to learn from others in similar roles.
The challenges big organizations have are really different but also very similar. This ranges from challenges with leadership buy-in, to activating employee advocacy, to constant platform changes, to shifting budgets, and more. SocialMedia.org has been a great resource to connect with other professionals who truly understand my challenges and pain points.
You also have a background in freelance writing, including writing for the Huffington Post and other entertainment outlets. How has this experience influenced your work in social media management?
As a freelance writer, especially one covering television, culture, and entertainment, I had to get comfortable with turning content around fast. Freelance writing also allowed me to find my writing voice, which can definitely be helpful when you’re developing or adjusting to a new brand voice or tone.
Interviewing prominent people also taught me how to be a better active listener and ask better questions. This can certainly help in marketing roles, whether you’re asking internal stakeholders to explain the benefits of a product to your audience or distilling down something technical into catchy copywriting that’ll grab attention.
Working in social media is notoriously tied to never not working because of our social-centric lives. How do you keep working from seeping into your personal life?
I wish I had a better answer to this question! As someone who has some very online hobbies outside of work time (I co-host two podcasts!) It can be hard to feel like I ever really escape social media. I’ve started to be more intentional about my own time on social. I’ve started to subscribe to more newsletters covering social media news and internet trends, so I don’t feel like I have to be as extremely online to keep up with trends. And I’ve been trying to be more intentional about logging off and going outside for walks, spending time with friends, reading, and just getting away from screens.