What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
As Vice President of Social Media within the ad sales team at TelevisaUnivision, I lead our internal paid social and creator agency that plans, executes and reports on social branded content campaigns. Social insights are key to the development of our in-culture campaigns for the U.S. Hispanic audience. We use insights to inform content and distribution strategy.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I started my career in consumer research at media and entertainment companies (Time Inc and HBO). I pulled syndicated research, conducted surveys, and planned focus groups. At HBO, I was given the opportunity to create a social insights practice from the ground up, in order to inform program and marketing strategy. At CNN, I moved into the activation side of social, but continued to leverage insights for campaign development and measurement. Having a traditional research background has helped me understand the applications of social listening, and be able to thoroughly vet the methodology and use cases of different tools.
What has been your biggest achievement?
Social is an innovative field, so I’ve been able to grow three separate social practices at HBO, CNN International and TelevisaUnivision. I enjoy building teams and developing go-to market strategy, so I find this incredibly rewarding!
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
When I first started the social insights practice at HBO circa 2012, there was a debate in the industry about social listening: should we buy a tool or build one? Several companies were ingesting API data and building their own proprietary tools. I pursued this strategy, and we started ingesting the Twitter firehose. It was way too much data, and we didn’t have the resources to maintain it in house. That was a learning lesson for me: make sure you have the internal support before you launch an ambitious project!
What would be your dream project to work on?
That’s a tough one, since at TelevisaUnivision we have relationships with leading social platforms and intelligence providers. I have the ability to work on many dream projects now! My wish list, however, would include partnering with TikTok to unlock more insights on their platform.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
I think users of social data need to be aware of the sources and methodology of the tools they are using. There are many types of social insights—they are not all “social listening”. For example, other tools ingest social APIs to develop audience profiles that can inform content development and paid social activations. The end user should think first of their research need, and then look for a tool that will meet their objectives.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
Social data use cases are well explored, but what could improve is their consistent application across companies. There are organizations maximizing the potential of social insights, but others are not leveraging them at all. As an industry, we need to get out there and reach new business audiences with our social insight use cases.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
We have developed a custom emotional analysis tool with Talkwalker that reads Spanish and English language comments on our campaign posts, which yields deep insights about our campaigns. For example, we developed a unique emotion—“pride”—that reflects the way our U.S. Hispanic audience engages with our in-culture content. Our social posts generate 37% more “pride” than other U.S. media companies, showing the power of representation and authentic content in driving social impact.
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