What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I lead social intelligence at Mondelez International in the Global Insights & Analytics team. It’s my job to help our insight and marketing teams around the world use social listening to understand and stay close to our consumers.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I started my career as a journalist, then moved into content development, which segued into market research to understand what content would best match our audience’s needs. I stumbled on social listening by chance, but I was hooked by the richness of the data and the ability to always go back and dig deeper.
What has been your biggest achievement?
I have been responsible for standing up a social listening capability from scratch at two different companies, which has required continuous evangelizing of the value of social listening and educating a range of teams on how to make the best use of this data and what kinds of questions we can and can’t answer. I love the “a-ha” moments when someone sees how rich this data can be. I’m also quite proud of joining the inaugural class of the Social Intelligence Insider Hall of Fame. 😊
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
We have scoped an extensive program for social media monitoring, and while I don’t necessarily think that was a mistake, I’m learning how important it is to narrow the focus to a few areas where I can make the most impact through the most insightful, intelligent uses of social listening.
What would be your dream project to work on?
I’m always looking for projects where I can combine social listening with other datasets to get a richer understanding of what’s important to our consumers, especially for looking beyond brand mentions to see broader consumer trends or needs.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
I think the wrong way to use social data is to focus only on quantitative metrics and miss the qualitative richness of what people are sharing about their day-to-day. The right way to use it is to look for the answers to your question/hypothesis, plus be open to unexpected insights, which often reveal something you didn’t think to ask.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
We are using social listening for trendspotting and to uncover emerging signals and needs, but I believe there is much more to do in this space - it’s a huge growth opportunity, and Gen AI will help make it more accessible.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
I especially like working with Reddit data because it is detailed, raw, and a great way to understand the conversations that are happening on a person-to-person (not promotional) level.
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