What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I am Senior Insight Leads at the club, mainly focussed on social media insight and feeding that data back into the club. That covers all aspects of the club with data influencing our content strategy, campaigns, digital marketing and everything else in between. We do a huge amount of real time monitoring and in the fast moving world of football that can often be vital and never ending! Understanding our fans is crucial to ensure we create content that is engaging and relevant.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I’ve worked at Man Utd since December 2018 and prior to that I was one of the founding members of HSBC’s Social Listening and Analytics team, based in Leeds. I worked there from 2012. I studied Sports Journalism at University in Leeds and while I had designs to go into that industry, life often has different ideas. My University degree was part of the reason I was hired to create the Social Listening team at HSBC (as it was part marketing and part comms at the time), so it indirectly got me into the sporting world. Eventually! It’s fair to say social listening and insights have changed significantly since those early days of my career in 2012.
What has been your biggest achievement?
I was proud of the work achieved at HSBC in building a team and establishing it within a global business. That’s second to the work I have done at Man Utd. Real time insights was not really utilised at the club when I joined and we now have it filtering into every aspect of our content strategy and more. The work I’ve done on sentiment analysis, how it works and what it definitely doesn’t show was a long-running project and it’s a running joke that my favourite saying is “context is vital”.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
Not sure if I would describe this as a ‘bold’ mistake but it was certainly a valuable lesson. I used to believe that every piece of insight or report had to be a polished, multi-slide deck, no matter who you were presenting/speaking to. The realisation, when insight wasn’t landing the way I wanted it to, that it’s as important to understand your audience as an insights analyst as much as it is for brands…had a transformative effect. Not every piece of insight needs to be a deck, or an email, it can sometimes (especially in a fast paced environment) be a text message or quick call.
What would be your dream project to work on?
Anything that had a transformative effect. Be that from the way people viewed the club (positively) or through our voice being in a conversation that leads to meaningful change. That could be anything that is away from football and wider issues in society. Being able to take a step back and say “I was involved in this” would be incredibly satisfying.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
One of the best examples of the ‘wrong way’ I have experienced is when someone is using it to validate a theory or point of view. I think you have to remove all bias from any data you are collecting because social data will often humble you if you try to use it to fit a narrative.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
In all honesty, we use it extensively and so there is no area where we do not currently use it. We certainly could do more in some areas. Our audience insights capabilities could certainly be leveraged more across certain departments but we are constantly evolving and making progress on that.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
Reddit is currently my favourite. I love that it is full of communities who are passionate, they self-moderate and the level of insight you can get, on pretty much any topic, is fascinating. It never ceases to amaze me some of the sub-reddits Man Utd conversations pop up in. One that sticks in my mind is a ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Sub Reddit.
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