What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
As the Social Intelligence Lead at Taco Bell, social listening is at the heart of all my work. It's integral to understanding feedback from both our diehard and lapsed fans, shaping menu decisions, enhancing the app and digital experience, of course refining our social media and marketing strategies, quantifying the impact of our campaigns and collabs, and much more!
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
Fresh out of college, I followed my childhood passion and worked in baseball research and analytics at MLB Network. That led me into SEO and social media marketing, where I found a new love for turning analytics and fun facts into money.
Crimson Hexagon took me deeper into social listening tech and analysis with some of the biggest brands in the world. Then, at Talkwalker, I moved up from the commercial side of the house to Product Management, playing a key role in enhancing and expanding data integration.
And now, as the go-to person for social listening and intelligence at Taco Bell, one of my favorite brands ever, it feels like I've found my professional sweet spot!
What has been your biggest achievement?
My most gratifying accomplishment extends beyond professional success — finding unparalleled happiness with my amazing wife, Sarah Anne.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
Crimson Hexagon's Customer Success leadership strictly prohibited CSMs from training customers how to use their social listening software. By pushing against that ridiculous precedent, I gained firsthand experience using social listening in the real world and got to work on some very cool projects with some of the biggest brands in the world.
That risk carved out the path that led me to the marketing team at Taco Bell, and hard-coded the invaluable lesson of trusting my instincts, challenging the status quo for the greater good, and navigating my career with authenticity as my north star!
What would be your dream project to work on?
My dream project would result in a completely new Taco Bell menu item from social listening insights!
In an alternate social-verse though, I'd love to help Major League Baseball connect with younger sports fans. Both the teams' and the league marketing seem detached from modern social media and younger audiences. There's infinite potential in the rich history and narratives, blending physical and digital experiences, showcasing personality, and leveraging star power to bridge the gap.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
While there may not be a single definitive right way, there are undoubtedly a lot of wrong approaches. Social listening is a unique art where slight variations in method can result in wildly different insights.
Social data can easily become fool's gold for brand leadership if their analyst doesn't appreciate the nuances of data access, tool limitations, and query-building.
Lazy queries, whether too narrow, too broad, or lacking context, can generate random, meaningless takeaways for the audience receiving the reports. While misleading and vague marketing materials from SaaS and services providers can set false expectations for the capabilities of social listening to brand leaders as well.
The data becomes more useful, and takeaways more impactful, when everyone is honest about capabilities across the entire industry, from the development of listening software to the delivery of brand analyst reports.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
Yes! Being a team of one, this is an easy answer, but outside of what would be possible even with unlimited resources, I wish we could use more data from Twitch and other streaming platforms. Gaming is such an important, growing audience for us and so much of that conversation happens outside of the measurable social channels.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
Hands down, Reddit is my favorite data source. It's a goldmine of rich, real-time feedback from our most devoted fans. Whether it's insights on our menu, app, or campaigns, Redditors provide sound bites that are not only rich but also concise enough to make analyses clean and accurate. It also has pretty minimal spam and the infusion of absolutely wild (text-based) creativity is unmatched.
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