What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I’m currently holding the title of Social Media Intelligence lead for Roche within the Group Communications and Global Social Media function. We have positioned ourselves as a Centre of Excellence within the company by internalising the skills and becoming more agile in how we surface insights in the company.
There are many use cases where we use social listening in our daily jobs. Our main goal is to enable communicators and stakeholders to make data-driven decisions by providing access to digital insights. This ranges from brand tracking from a company performance and product point of view as well as benchmarking against our competitors as well as understanding therapeutic and disease areas better and what our reputation is within those areas. While that is pretty broad, we also focus a lot on understanding our various audiences and how to communicate with them more effectively.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
Well, I started by landing my first job as an online banner ads salesman. Soon there was a position open for a head of social media role, and I have a big passion for social/digital media, especially from a data point of view. I applied for the internal role and the rest was history.
Social listening was still a very unfamiliar topic in South Africa at that stage but soon became vital in understanding your reputation in the market as a brand. This is where my interest in social listening grew. Tools weren’t always available and it was quite pricey for South Africans. Luckily we made friends with amazing vendors and resellers who helped us get access to information and to make the business case that these tools are vital in any organisation. Fast forward a couple of years and company changes where I spent most of my time in agencies like DDB and Ogilvy Social.Lab using various tools from a social and web point of view to understand consumer/customer behaviour and my passion for it just grew exponentially.
What has been your biggest achievement?
I’d say my biggest achievement is from a personal growth point of view and where I currently am in my career. I pride myself a lot on the fact that most of what I know is self-taught, fueled by passion, and a lot of engagement with like-minded peers. I am very fortunate to have landed my current role and constantly trying to make an impact both internally and externally. I also hope that this could be an inspiration to those who would like to get into the industry. On top of that, I’d say it is the recognition that I/we have received as an individual and team.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
I don’t know if I’d like to call it mistakes, but there are obviously a lot of calculated risks when it comes to leveraging data. For me, it’s more about developing a hunger for testing and learning. Social and digital data provide us with near real-time data to inform whether our executions are working or not. And it is here where we can test new theories to see whether it’s working. The most important point is to actually listen to the data and pivot where needed. Don’t be afraid to take risks and test theories.
What would be your dream project to work on?
To be honest, I haven't given it much thought. Currently, I'm deeply engaged in my dream job within an industry that resonates with my passions. Each project I undertake feels fulfilling as it contributes to the broader picture. However, looking ahead, I envision integrating social data into our reporting ecosystem. This integration would offer a comprehensive perspective on the impact of our work, aligning with my goal of understanding our contributions holistically.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
Tough one! I would say it depends more on your level of maturity as opposed to a right and wrong way of using social data. If you’re not using social data, that would be wrong.
The biggest thing is to just start using it and develop your capabilities over time. You can always learn and improve on your capability to contextualise data better. There are so many changes in this industry and it involves constant learning, so start somewhere, even if it’s small and iterate it as you go
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
We’re in a very fortunate position where we can utilise social data in numerous areas of our business. This encompasses brand tracking, product insights, and even incorporating it as RWD in product development. However, I believe we are currently well-covered in terms of usability but won’t say no to new or interesting areas to test and learn.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
As cliche as it sounds, I still very much enjoy all the data that we can get from X (Twitter) and Reddit. Reddit would probably be my favourite source as it’s just completely unfiltered and you get a true sense of a topic and someone’s perspective. There are great communities on Reddit and it’s simply one big pool of insights! I also really love search data and the correlation between social and search data. We might speak in a specific way, but we search like no one is watching.
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