What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I am the Social Listening Intelligence Manager at NVIDIA, where I leverage social listening techniques in various capacities to conduct campaign monitoring across the business. Additionally, I actively collaborate with diverse teams within our organization. My ability to adapt quickly and tackle new challenges has consistently made this position exceptionally engaging.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
Throughout my career, I have consistently gravitated towards social media. Before focusing on social listening, I spent several years as a social media manager. During this period, I had the opportunity to oversee diverse brands spanning industries such as technology, hospitality, automotive, and food & beverage.
In 2019, I made a shift in my professional trajectory towards specializing in social listening. This transition felt like a logical and natural progression for me. I have always found joy in working with numbers and analyzing data, and the opportunity to combine that passion with my affinity for social media makes this industry a perfect fit for me.
What has been your biggest achievement?
I am someone who highly values education, so I would say having a key role in bringing the first social listening internships to my company was a big achievement for me. The interns that I had the chance to work with had never worked with social listening data before but agreed by the end of their internships that more universities should include courses on social intelligence. While I taught them the basics, they took their fresh perspectives and came up with some amazing projects and applications for the data that I wouldn’t have thought of before. These projects had a role in increasing demand for social intelligence reports from my team.
I was extremely proud of the growth I saw in both individuals throughout their internships. While they may not make social intelligence the focus of their careers, it made me happy to think about the impact the time spent with the data could have on their future endeavors. They learned so much during that time and know that it’s a data source they can always tap into for future projects.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
My boldest mistake occurred long before my career in social intelligence but had an impact on it. In 2013, I co-founded a tech startup with some of my colleagues from my university. Through chance, we ended up getting an initial seed investment from an Angel Investor. We all took a chance, took a break from university, and moved to Austin, TX to work on the company. While our endeavor ultimately failed, and at the time felt like a mistake, it was during this time that I learned two things. First was my love for social media. The second was that through risks, growth happens.
It was because I became comfortable with risks, that I decided to make the jump from social media manager to the social intelligence field. My first role in social intelligence was a brand-new role to my previous organization and gave me a chance to define the role from the ground up. It felt almost like I was working on a startup again. Because I learned so much about pitching during my time as a co-founder, I was able to use those skills to spread the value of social listening data throughout my previous organization to hundreds of stakeholders.
What would be your dream project to work on?
I am thankful for my team at NVIDIA, as they are very open minded and supportive to new ideas that I bring to the table. Because of this, I have been able to see many dream projects and initiatives come to life.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
I believe that using social data as a means of supporting new ideas, campaigns, and to uncover new insights is the best use. Using both the good and bad insights that you uncover can make a real difference for a company. The only way I could see social data being used incorrectly is if it is manipulated to make a narrative seem better.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
Our team at NVIDIA has a very comprehensive social listening scope, so we are encouraged to work with teams across the entire company. Because of that, there aren’t many areas where social data isn’t being used in some form.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
I am a big fan of Reddit. I have been a personal user of Reddit since 2013 and I have always appreciated how open and honest the conversations can get on the platform due to the anonymity. I like to say that through social intelligence you’re able to see the unsolicited feedback from your customers, and I have always felt like that holds true on Reddit. It is through honest conversation that you’re able to uncover insights to find those trends that ultimately can become the actionable insights we are all looking for.
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