What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I head up the Data, Intelligence and Planning Team at LADbible Group, a leading social first publisher. Alongside other data sources, our team looks at overall trends on social media, especially for the commercial teams to help inform the best campaigns for our clients. We keep on top of sentiment and topic themes for specific categories to tweak and optimise our creative ideas and understand young people on social media to benefit the wider business.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I have been at LADbible Group now for over 4 years and this has been my biggest learning curve for social listening. I started my career in traditional market research, and at an agency I worked at army first exposure to a social listening team and was interested in the depth it added to our projects, but it wasn’t until I was at LADbible and we started using social listening tools that I have learnt how to use it best and integrate it into our projects for well rounded insights.
What has been your biggest achievement?
The team at LADbible Group is a new team and I am super proud of what we achieve, I was the first insight hire and to look back at the developments we have made over the last 4 years makes me super proud. A project we did for The Prince’s Trust last year is a real highlight, as the work into Gen Z and dream jobs was debated in parliament, so really feel like we made a difference.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
Not sure this is ‘bold’ but I think a mistake I have made in the past and learnt for is keeping tools for too long that are not doing what you need them to do. It’s hard to make time to do for RFP’s ahead of renewals, but renewing for a year without doing this gets you stuck with tools and services that are not pushing the boundaries. I’ve learnt to ask questions and look at new tools throughout the year, and make sure there is time before renewals to challenge to make sure we have what we need at the right time. Tools make us quicker when you have teh right ones, and means we can spend more time adding the value that we do.
What would be your dream project to work on?
I would LOVE to work on an ethnography somewhere hot over the winter, I hate the rainy winter so if I could be somewhere warm learning about a group of people as a direct experience ethnography that would be great! I would have course overlay other data sources to make it robust!
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
I see quite a lot that teams skim the comments and think they can see how people are reacting to content. Without a team and tools to do this properly, people need to understand that they are adding bias and pulling out the comments that they want to see. I think there is a role for data teams in a lot of social teams that would add a lot of value.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
I think a lot of brands still commission traditional market research with agencies that do templated surveys and outputs. There’s many things that can be learnt from social research and brands should look to utilise this as part of their projects to inform strategies and not rely on their old ways of doing things.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
LADnation - our own Gen Z and Millennial panel. We use for quant and qual research, but also have a hub where they can share their thoughts daily, which we can get insight from without having to ask questions. The level of detail the panelists share, and often photos, really give us so much insight, but also so much joy every day reading through what they are up to.
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