• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 11, 2013

How many social marketing vendors does a brand need? Sitting on a panel at the Social Media Summit on using paid, owned and earned media. Erin Hoskins, senior, audience development/new media marketing & services, Meredith, said the company is already “rooted in data,” with 800 data points collected about each of its users. So it already uses a lot of tech vendors.

She noted the publishing giant has added in social data to its analytics tracking in recent months in order to tied that information back to revenue. That means being able to turn a combination of paid and earned or owned media into selling subscriptions or other products or increasing the amount of time people spend on its Web sites. Hoskins acknowledged that connecting social efforts to sales is possible, "but it’s not easy."