Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/853369
44 S C T / A U G U S T 2 0 1 7 the JLL social-media strategy for this year and next involves what could be called "social listening," the firm says. "We are monitoring social media in a way that we can engage with people right at the point that they post something on social media," said Ashlyn Booth, CMD, director of retail property marketing at JLL. Social-listening tools allow monitors to determine the precise locations at or near a given property in which social-media exchanges are taking place. Property managers are able to note when someone on location posts a photo to Instagram or pins an image to Pinterest of something the person has seen in a store. "You can immediately start to dialogue and engage with a shopper right then and there," said Booth. Or a mother may post to Facebook a video of her children while they wait in line to see Santa, and a member of the management team can go out and hand that family a welcome package, having seen them waiting there. "It is a way to enhance the experience of a shopper who is right there at the property using social media," said Booth. Active listening also involves enabling shopping centers to leverage user-generated content to share or repost on their own social-media sites. Location-based settings on smartphones can enable a property's management team to track social-media usage related to a given property and to respond to those posts. If a shopper has dinner at a restaurant and posts a photo of the meal, mall's management team could comment or share the photo on the mall's own social-media channel to keep the conversation going. CBL is listening for conversations that are happening on or near a particular property, as well as conversations related to seasonal shopping, to help develop its content strategy. A marketing team may create a blog, say, about Father's Day gift ideas and where at a given shopping center those items may be found. When the team members hear those conversations that mention Father's Day, they can use the mall's social-media accounts to engage in conversations with people looking for gift ideas. Ideally, this engagement will drive traffic back to the website and, ultimately, to the mall, notes Lutz. "We are making a significant amount of investment on our back-end systems so that we can build a foundation to not only do this well today but [also] to evolve these strategies moving forward," said Lutz. "As we are engaging with all of these consumers, we want to be able to capture all of that information and deliver that robust customer profile to our retailers so that they can take action on those customers." n Talking & Listening w w w. t h o m p s o n t h r i f t r e t a i l . c o m INDIANAPOLIS 111 Monument Circle, Suite 1600 Indianapolis, IN 46204 317.853.5475 PHOENIX 3131 E Camelback Rd. Phoenix, AZ 85016 602.313.8631 From the editors of Shopping Centers Today, SCTWeek is an e-newsletter delivered to your inbox every Friday morning with the week's most important news and announcements. Sign up at www.icsc.org/sct/sct-week