A deep dive into social media listening [S2E4]

With special guest, Anita Veszeli from Ericsson

This month Base Creative and ContentCal collaborated to interview the Director of Social Media and Advocacy at Ericsson, Anita Veszeli. Ericsson is one of the leading providers of Information and Communication Technology around the world.

In this episode, we discuss social listening – what it’s for, how it can be used, and what metrics are important to measure.

Anita has been championing social-first thinking since 2013. Having amassed more than 15 years experience in B2B marketing and communication, and a decade in social media across various roles, she currently enjoys a unique position with oversight of all social media, employee advocacy and influencer marketing across Ericsson’s global business.

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Episode highlights

• 6:55 – How Ericsson got started on social media over 10 years ago
• 8:19 – Anita explains how thought leadership and employee advocacy works in Ericsson
• 10:01 – Why Ericsson closed over 200 social media accounts
• 10:30 – How Ericsson uses the different social media platforms in its social strategy
• 11:56 – Why knowing where your audience is on social media is key
• 17:54 – How the social media team at Ericsson grew from just one employee
• 20:21 – How to get started with social listening
• 22:38 – What Ericsson listens for in social listening activities
• 23:37 – Using social listening for talent acquisition
• 27:33 – How are social listening activities measured and reported on at Ericsson?
• 33:58 – How Ericsson deals with crisis management on social media
• 35:16 – Anita explores how the results of social listening are used to inform Ericsson’s social strategy
• 36:44 – A look at what’s in store for Ericsson’s social media strategy in 2022

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Read the full transcript

Iain Scott  00:07

Welcome to Episode 4 of our second series of Sharing Social, the monthly show that connects the people behind the hashtags with content, ideas and insights. This is our last show for series 2 while we take a break for Christmas, and look forward to 2022 for our next series. Sharing Social started off as an in-person event, moved to virtual and evolved into a podcast that launched at the start of 2021. If you listened to our last episode, you’ll have heard Ross Middleham, Content and Social Lead at the Met Office bring a ray of sunshine to our podcast, sharing with us the facts on how they maintain engagement with their 1.6 million followers. And as with all our guests, I was blown away with the insight and knowledge that Ross shared with us. There was no doubt as to “weather” it would be a great interview… I’m going to stop with the puns now. I think that’s probably enough for that. Becca, what was your biggest takeaway from last month’s episode?

Rebecca Holloway  01:13

I’m going to tell you with less weather puns if that’s okay. I particularly liked hearing about the partnership between the Met Office and TikTok and how that caused an evolution in content and what the end result was. So now lots of Met Office’s content is a mix of educational and entertainment. And I thought it was just really interesting to find out about how that had come about.

Iain Scott  01:36

That was genuinely interesting too. And you can listen to the last episode on Spotify or Apple now or head over to sharingsocial.london for all the previous episodes from this and the previous series. This series is a collaboration between digital marketing agency Base Creative and social media platform ContentCal. Each show we bring on very special guests to share their knowledge and insight too. My name is Iain. I’m the founder of Base Creative. And I’m with Becca, who works with me as a Social Media Consultant. And we’ve got the founder of ContentCal, Andy Lambert, joining us. 

I’m also super excited to announce we’ve got Director of Social Media and Advocacy at Ericsson, Anita Veszeli, on the show today. She will be joining us live from Sweden. Anita will be sharing her views on social media, and among other things, will be sharing her insights into social listening, because that’s the theme of today’s show. We’ll be deep diving into social listening and is it important? How should we use it effectively? And what are the challenges we face when managing it? That and more coming up on the Sharing Social podcast. Andy, let me bring you in here talking about listening, but probably a different kind. I’ve been listening to your TikTok account. And I’ve seen him at all of 18 followers so far, which is well above double from last month. One thing I think it’s missing – because I do love your social media news and updates – might be missing is music. Have you ever considered rapping your updates?

Andy Lambert  03:14

Oh, it’s an interesting one. That wouldn’t be my personal preference. But prior to doing this thing at ContentCal, I was a professional musician, so I probably should do something like that. So that that might be one for another podcast episode.

Iain Scott  03:28

I did not know that. And Anita, I’d like to ask you some questions. Are you on TikTok? Do you have a TikTok account?

Anita Veszeli  03:36

I do have one. I’m just using it for stalking.

Iain Scott  03:41

You can head over to Andy R Lambert if you want to stalk!

Anita Veszeli  03:45

Soon, he will have 19 followers. Yes.

Andy Lambert  03:51

Love it. Love it. Yeah. As he already said I’m really, really pleased you’re able to join us because I reached out to you. Because the first time we met with DigiConf, I think earlier this year, which seems like a lifetime ago already. Right? And I think you were on a panel with a former guest that we had on a couple episodes ago, and now they’re at IBM. So I’m really pleased we can bring you on because you’ve got some interesting perspectives. And we’re gonna get into social listening. But I think let’s start with going a bit deeper into your role and evolution of both your role and also the evolution of the culture of Ericsson as well, because maybe not everyone’s familiar with Ericsson as a brand as well and what Ericsson does, and I’m really interested in diving into how Ericsson, which is a very business to business oriented organisation, has become social first as well. So, yeah, that’s a big question to start with. But yeah, take it away.

Anita Veszeli  04:53

Thank you so much for having me and within Ericsson, my role in social media is really the full scope of social. So it’s governance, social listening, organic architecture, paid social governance, employee advocacy, influencer marketing, social media security, intelligence, social listening and analytics. So I never have a dull moment in my life.

Andy Lambert  05:23

Certainly by the sounds of it. And when did your role start? 13 years ago?

Anita Veszeli  05:30

Oh my god. 13 years ago, when I joined Ericsson, I started as a marketing and communication professional. And actually, I started in Hungary. Then I took over different roles. And I moved to Sweden, I think 10 years ago, when I was on a short term assignment. And then somehow they convinced me to stay. And that’s how it started. So I’ve been working across different marketing and communication, PR roles from influencer, or an analyst relations, Stock Exchange, communication, PR marketing, integrated comms, pretty much whatever you can imagine. But I always had a passion for social media. And when I started, it was no proper education for social media. So we just learned on the go. And starting up social media accounts and how the evolution has been, it has been a really, really interesting journey.

Andy Lambert  06:29

So yeah, talk to us about that journey. Because, 13 years ago, 2008 really, social listening was fairly burgeoning back then. And certainly way in front of organisations using it certainly for a B2C capacity, let alone B2B. So how was there any kind of real cold changing point where social became more of an important critical factor to Ericsson’s go to market?

Anita Veszeli  06:55

Absolutely. I remember when the global social media team was one person. And it was really, really challenging to start planning around the content calendar, which social accounts to open and sometimes social media accounts were just popping up. And that time I was joining that team. And 13 years ago, or 10 years ago, when I started at the Swedish office at the headquarters. That’s when I created the first ever social media policy for all of our employees. It seems like 100 years ago, because now it’s just like a must-have. But that was something that we developed quite early. And I think it was quite early, when we also started to think about that, what is the architecture that we should have, and how trusted branded accounts are and how difficult it is to maintain them, and really start to invest in employee advocacy, where we started our journey nine years ago.

Andy Lambert  08:03

Interesting. So talk to us a little bit about the architecture. So where it sits today, is it just a set of corporate accounts across what channels? And then is the focus more around employee advocacy? Yeah, talk to us about where the focus is, and how that overall architecture sits?

Anita Veszeli  08:19

Absolutely. So we have a strategy, which is a social media overall strategy for the organisation. And we want to become a social business by 2025. And that requires a social media transformation. So that is something that we are driving and the strategic choices that we are making is really to work more and more with our employees as thought leaders, how do we have the employee advocacy program or social leadership program, social selling, how our experts can become influencers or thought leaders, and really be part of the conversations around certain topics, whatever is relevant to the business, but also, of course, whatever is relevant and for them, and they are passionate about. So the social architecture I already mentioned, and I think Ericsson is pretty much similar to all other brands, where it is really difficult or historically, your account architecture was just there and employees or colleagues thought that I just needed this Twitter channel or whatever. And they were just popping up like mushrooms. And it is just like after the rain, I was just like, oh my god, there’s another one. We’re just employees because there’s no governance and they are not aware that well, you shouldn’t be opening up an Ericsson branded social media account or anything else because you cannot, you don’t have the right skill sets. And how does that also affect the brand or the customers or anyone? It can be confusing which accounts to follow. So I think it’s quite a bit of a headache, not just for most of the social media teams, most of the companies whenever it’s big, so I think in the last two years, we closed down almost 200 social accounts. So that’s that. Was that real? Wild, wild West!

Andy Lambert  10:21

Yeah, absolutely. So now it is just one set of corporate accounts, like one Facebook, one Twitter, etc, not regionalised? They’re kind of centralised?

Anita Veszeli  10:30

That is something that we are working on the actual strategy, what is the best way moving forward, you can have different concepts. So that is something that we are working through. Currently, what we have is on Facebook, we have several ones we are moving towards to the global Facebook pages set up to monitor and for security and compliance reasons. On Twitter, we have quite a few. Sometimes some of them are like business areas or market areas. On LinkedIn strategy, we have one account, and we have the showcase pages. But that is something that we want to keep and not to change, and it has been working really well. And Instagram is also something that we are working through what is the best setup. And we are also working on a YouTube transformation. So it’s quite a lot to work on. And get agreement.

Andy Lambert  11:28

This goes to show that, irrespective of the size of the organisation, it is always an ever evolving beast, isn’t it, the world of social? You’re never finished with strategies that are fascinating. So after all of that growth and all that development over the last 13 years, you’ve amassed something like two and a half million followers across multiple channels. So out of those channels that you mentioned, which are the ones that you see most success from?

Anita Veszeli  11:56

I think it depends on the audience. And I think it’s also like how it evolves. We know that journalists and analysts are really on Twitter, there are different audiences where we can have better discussions on LinkedIn. On Facebook, most of the time is still our employees. But we know that in certain countries, journalists actually use Facebook more than Twitter. So it’s really accommodating and knowing where your audience is, and what is the best strategy or platform besides where they are. It’s also how they are joining that platform. Because we know that whenever we go on Facebook, we have a totally different expectation or user behaviour than when we go for Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok or wherever we go. It’s just how we set it up. And what we would like to see from brands is totally different.

Andy Lambert  12:52

So, is it fair to say that each platform has a totally different purpose for what it’s trying to serve within Ericsson? So whether it’s analyst engagement, whether it’s more sales, prospecting engagement, each platform has its own unique purpose, right? Yes. Okay. So if we didn’t think more broadly, because one thing I wanted to kind of get to the bottom of whose understanding, Ericsson’s overall goal and ambition within social media, what’s the kind of guiding principle of what you’re trying to do and the main objectives you’re trying to achieve?

Anita Veszeli  13:24

I think let’s look at social media as a whole holistic approach. I think the most important thing is that we want to be part of discussions. We want to be seen in 5G, the edge computing, the future of work, what is our future? What is the imagination possible? And how can we get there? So that’s when you really create that strategy. Our organic strategy is that we want to get engagement, how can we be part of that conversation? But again, following up on that one, or employees, whether they are executive sales teams or experts, they have a lot better chance to actually be part of those conversations, because it’s just like so much more natural than you and me are talking and then there would be a brand joining like, “Hey, Andy, hey Anita, this is what I think,” it’s just not authentic at all. But when we have that conversation, and another person joins the conversation, Iain or Rebecca, that is just so much more fun than a branded corporate messaging. And of course, speed social has its parts. That’s when you are really targeted, you know who you want to reach, in which country, what is their behaviour? And of course, the influencer community, because they are the ones who are also helping us to be part of those discussions. So for me social is never an easy thing to grasp because so many companies still believe that social is the channel and for me social really so much more than that. And it’s not only owned by marketing? Because I think that’s, it shouldn’t be just marketing. It should be really, really embedded into each and every function at the organisation.

Andy Lambert  15:15

That’s a major. Yeah. Amen to that place.

Anita Veszeli  15:18

Mic drop.

Andy Lambert  15:19

Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re done with the fog. So with that, I’m interested to know whether there was like a bias between where your focus is, because we spoke about your branded channels, the corporate channels, the employee advocacy and influencers and also paid in terms of  either budget or focus, whichever way you want to think about answering this question, where would you say most of your attention goes to? And where do you say you would see the biggest opportunity outward, those kinds of main things that you’re doing at the moment?

Anita Veszeli  15:51

Since we’re driving that transformation, we need to focus on each and every one of them. Because for the organic social architecture, and how we work with it, on a global level, how advanced or mature each of our local teams are, we really need to put a focus there to ensure that whatever we talk about as a brand, locally or globally, it makes sense to the audiences how it can be audience centric, whatever content we create has a social approach that social media, or a social strategist is brought into from the beginning, shaping that strategy, creating content with a social first mindset. So that’s something that we need to focus on. And that’s the basic level where we need to be, just like top notch, or that’s the aim that we would like to do. But the biggest effort where I see growth, and I’m really advocating within the organisation, that it’s not just me or the global team, but each and every one of them should focus a lot more on executive spokespeople, experts, sales teams, because that is really the future that also requires change, not just from social media, but really that transformation and the behaviour, that people actually feel comfortable. Being on social, using it either for learning, networking, connecting, and ultimately really connecting, get back to the business.

Andy Lambert  17:26

Really, really interesting. So the final question before we move on onto the social listening part, because we could actually speak for about six hours, I think. But I’m kind of interested, though, because you mentioned that right from the start. And the global social media team was one individual. So how big is the social media team that’s trying to coordinate it excluding, obviously, your influencers, ambassadors, and your advocates, how big is the team that’s managing and the one that you’re leading Anita?

Anita Veszeli  17:54

Absolutely. And actually, when I took over this role back in 2017, I already had a similar title. And the whole function was me, myself, and I, it wasn’t that long ago. And, again, sometimes people just thought that, okay, it’s managing the global social account, which again, it can be a lot for just one person, but not the full scope. So that’s when we started with a maturity assessment. And really looking into that where Ericsson stands there, and back into 2017, we were on a tactical level. And now through the different programs, and as the team grew by 2021, we are in the leading position. So this is why we are now able with the help of the maturity assessments, we could actually make the case that this is the business and the social business, that’s the ultimate goal that we want to be. So now the team is a mix of full time employees and also consultants on how we work. And I think I should have counted it, I think we have around 10 of us working in the Social Media Centre of Excellence.

Andy Lambert  19:07

Nice, nice and I love the terminology that you’re using, like Social Media Centre, a Centre of Excellence being like a social first organisation, and that maturity stuff as well. I’m a huge fan of looking introspectively at a business and trying to establish where you sit and where the gaps are. So yeah, I absolutely love it. So talking actually about looking more broadly and trying to establish where the gaps are, it kind of takes us quite nicely on to the social listening piece, which is a particular area of your expertise Anita. So talk to me just more kind of generally like the importance of social listening for those that potentially are listening in right now and not really thinking about what it is and the opportunity. If you lay it out for us that would be a brilliant starter to this part of the convo.

Anita Veszeli  19:55

Absolutely. And just to be super honest, I’m not a social listening expert, but I have people in the team who are.

Andy Lambert  20:06

Talk to the overall value of what social listening is, this is not a test. 

Anita Veszeli  20:14

I don’t need to set up queries, right, and do the analysis?

Andy Lambert  20:18

We won’t be talking about Boolean searches, don’t you worry. So we’re all good!

Anita Veszeli  20:21

I would need to ask for help. “Tim, can you come in?!” I think it’s really important to know how to start with social listening. Because of course, again, just like with each and every program, you have different maturity levels. So I think every brand knew and if they didn’t know that social listening is super important, but in 2020 and 2021, it became the most important, what were the conversations when the pandemic started? And then the social unrest in the US – how your brand is listening and responding? Or is it totally out of touch? It is quite a key and important element of being social and being relevant with the video community. So the basic part is, obviously, the monitoring. So you can set up Twitter alerts, Google Alerts, what is trending? What are the topics to join on, maybe topics to avoid, because I think it’s also important to talk about social issues. So many things just shouldn’t be talked about or not at the right time, because that’s when it can totally go wrong. And then you can have social listening tools. Of course, if you’re a bigger brand, and have a list of first starting with dashboards and receiving information, but the ultimate one is really when you have at least one social listening analyst, because tools and dashboards are really great to take a look at. But what the AI usually cannot really do is make sense of that data, and really tell the story that what is the actionable insight that you’re looking for? And what marketing teams, sales teams or even PR, or other parts of the organisation can really use?

Andy Lambert  22:12

Really, really interesting. So I’m guessing on your team of 10, you’ve got one analyst dedicated to this endeavour. So in terms of tools, go watch or talk about tools as well.

Andy Lambert  22:30

So on that one, then when we think about social listening, what are the things you’re listening for?

Anita Veszeli  22:38

I think the ultimate one where we need to have is the Always On listening. So that’s when we need to understand what are the top trends driving the conversations, obviously brand mentions we need to spot early on if there’s a crisis coming up, for example, or an issue management, but we need to monitor. We knew that if certain bigger events are happening in geopolitics, what are the conversations that we want to listen to, to inform even business decisions? Then, of course, whenever we go for events now, Mobile World Congress 2022 is coming up, we already have social listening set up, so then what is the sentiment in conversations around the brand? What are the key topics that for example, the influencer community’s really excited about the brand. So those are always on. 

And then we also have specific ones. Whenever it comes to, for example, talent attraction, I think it was a really good and non-traditional use of social listening. That understanding, even though you’re looking for data scientists or software developers, what is the messaging that you need to use in specific countries? How is the Hungarian market different from the Swedish one? What is the key for some of those countries? People want to join Ericsson or other companies, because it’s the latest tactic you’re going to work on. In other countries, it’s really how you treat your employees that they don’t want to be crying at the office. They don’t want to be dismissed, but they really want to be treated as a human being. So what are those key highlights when you put out those job ads or recruitment is quite key. And that’s how listening can really help, not just the social team or marketing and communication.

Andy Lambert  24:43

Yeah I’ve never really considered it from a recruitment perspective, actually. So it’s really interesting, from your experience of social listening. Have there been any other really interesting discoveries culturally content wise, in addition to that you could think of?

Anita Veszeli  24:59

That’s a good question. I think that sometimes this was the latest one. And it was really, really interesting. I think that there are different conversations. And I think it was also really interesting to the other one around the 5G factory or the automated factories we were looking into, because Ericsson opened up its own 5G factory during the pandemic. So there have been a lot of stories, but we weren’t really able to tell. And there’s so much to do, because we think that onboarding people through virtual reality is something that is for the future, but actually, we have been doing that during the pandemic. That’s how we onboard people. And it actually, for me, was mind blowing. What we did is just amazing. But many of the conversations around automation, or driverless buses or automated factories, is that people are losing their jobs. So how can we avoid those conversations and really focus on but actually, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. But for people who cannot work in the factories, how can you make the environment safer? Because those are also the discussions that people are worried about their loved ones? Are they safe in that environment, not just because of the pandemic, but how to use the machines? So if you can take some of these insights from listening, then you can already set up your conversation messaging and your social-first content in a lot better way than without these and you don’t have to answer questions that you don’t want to answer or be part of those discussions that are not really driving your business success.

Andy Lambert  26:48

I’m with you on that. So it’s really interesting to give yourself a human lens through your marketing content. Because of course, when you’re putting out content, you want to promote the things that you want to talk about in the business. But then when you look at it through social listening, or put it through a social listening filter, you’ll then think about it more from a human lens to think actually, how is my message going to be received? What are the cultural differences within each individual country? Which is fascinating to get our perspective, so outside of sentiment and certain event orientated listening activities, and also those cultural and regional differences as well. Are there specific metrics as well that you measure through listening, like share of voice or reach or anything like that, that you report back to the business?

Anita Veszeli  27:33

Absolutely. Share of voice not just for the overall brand, but we also share a voice around certain topics. And on top of the layer, we also look at the influencer network maps. Because I think it’s just like a really easy way to show executives what share of voice is? I mean, they see a graph or a dashboard. Okay, what does it mean, but when you take a look at the network map, that is the topic, this is where the brand is, or some of our employees or experts, this is where competitors are. And this is the current snapshot. And this is where we would like to go. And based on all of these activities, this is what we achieved. It’s a really super simple way to showcase it to executives, sentiment is always key, just for brand health. And of course, then, whenever we have separate programs,specific ones in marketing campaigns or around certain topics, then we also set up different ones. And I don’t think it’s new to anyone, we also have social listening set up for competitors.

Andy Lambert  28:53

So that takes us quite nicely on to the final question before I hand back to Iain actually, which is how do you then take these learnings and share them to the executives within the business? And the purpose of showing them, that’s what I’m interested to dive into in this final point. How would you use that data to build your case as well for increasing investment in your team in different activities, etc? So, I think a lot of people listening to this, think social media isn’t perceived as strongly and as you know, “forward-thinkingly” if that’s even a word, as it is at Ericsson, right? So there’ll be a lot of social media folks listening to this thinking, I wish my senior team invested in social thought in the same way that clearly you and Ericsson do. So that’s the kind of lens I’m thinking about this question through. Sorry, it’s one of my very long questions, but hopefully that makes sense. 

Anita Veszeli  29:48

it totally does. I think it’s always what I really like to do and what works for me. First of all, this is where we are. This is the maturity and it can also be for listening or for other things, conveying the message that social is not just for kids or how it has been 15 or 20 years ago because people think that social is still new. It’s not at all. I mean, it has been there for 20 years now. And is it going to stay? Most probably. Are they going to be the same platforms? We don’t know. But social is a platform that ‘s always going to be there. I always like to start small and really set up for or put maybe additional workload on myself or some of the team members to set up and share some of those insights to really convince people or, or not to convince, but really to show them how they can use that information. And when you provide that, and the company or an executive could actually act upon that one and could do a better messaging or better business results, then, of course, you can show the carrot that or, actually, we could do more, if we would have this and that and that. And imagine that this is what we can do. And this is the long term goal that we would like to build towards, but this is a small start. So we need to scale it up. So for me, that’s super important. And another tip that I like to give to others is, depending on who’s buy-in you need, if it’s money, then you need to learn the language of your CFO. If it’s your CMO, you also need to understand what is on top of their mind. Is it security? Is it better relationships? Is it collaboration? Then use that information and knowledge to actually make your case because then ultimately, you’re going to succeed a lot faster.

Andy Lambert  31:56

Very, very strong advice. I love that. Anita, thank you so much. And I’m going to hand it back to Iain now. But yeah, a huge amount of value shared. So thank you very much.

Anita Veszeli  32:09

Thank you for having me.

Iain Scott  32:11

And thank you Andy for that. Thank you again, Anita, for sharing your thoughts. A few things that really stuck out for me, probably like many of our listeners as well, learning about how big or I should say small the global social media team was when you joined 2017. It was just you, is that right? But now with a combination of full time and consultants, you’ve got around 10 people. I think it shows certainly how seriously Ericsson are now taking social media. We can also appreciate the time and the resources and the skill sets required to effectively and strategically run corporate social media. A quote that stood out for me as well, “Social isn’t just owned by marketing.” 

You mentioned the need to be intrinsic to every facet of the business. And we were talking a bit more about employee advocacy at that point, too. And certainly on the social listening front, what you and Ericsson listened out for I found really insightful using it for talent attraction, as well. And you mentioned that you’re looking at the influencer and network map, reviewing sentiment analysis, and probably unsurprisingly, but a great tip for us all, using social listening for competitor analysis to find out what the other side is doing and what people think about them. Anita, thank you for that. But there is more. I’m bringing Becca in here, who’s curated some questions for you as well. 

Rebecca Holloway  33:39

I have a question. So you mentioned crisis management at one point, and I just wondered what steps you have in place, or what you’ve had to maybe do in the past when you’ve seen negative comments come through from your social listening activity on what you do in that situation?

Anita Veszeli  33:58

Absolutely. I mean, I think most brands, if they don’t have a crisis protocol, then they definitely need to start somewhere and right now, because it’s not a question that a crisis is gonna happen. But it’s always when and if you’re not prepared, then it’s a huge problem, what anyone needs to work through. So we have a crisis protocol in place, and not just for social media, but it was something that we also had to integrate with media relations. When we see what the analysis is, what are the different touch points? Is it an issue? Is it a crisis? So how do you define each and every one of them because some of them might need a different approach than others? And we in a team manage through that step by step protocol. And of course, you also need to practice, so if your crisis plan is just written down, like somewhere five years ago, and it says that all we meet in the War Room, then just laugh really hard and update it so that it’s 2021-proof, because I don’t think that we can meet in the War Room! So it’s good to just dust it off and take a look and go through that.

Rebecca Holloway  35:16

Make sure people know it actually exists. Yeah. Thank you. I also was going to ask about any social listening activity that you do, and the results of that. How does that actually impact your social media strategy going forward?

Anita Veszeli  35:32

Oh, that’s a good question. And I think it might seem that our social listening is super mature, I really see that we need to step up our game to be a lot better. And there’s so many opportunities we can use social listening for. 

I think it’s really about the trends that are shaping. And what we see from social listening, that’s where the strategy or probably the content strategy needs to be evolved. So when I look at the overall company wide social media strategy that is not necessarily impacted by social listening, but whenever it comes to the content marketing and the organic, or for our experts, or sales teams, social listening, and those insights really inform their content decisions.

Rebecca Holloway  36:44

Thank you. Finally, could you give us a quick glimpse into what’s on the horizon for your social media strategy going into 2022?

Anita Veszeli  36:56

Ooh, I think we are looking through what has worked in 2021. How can we work with the changes? What we really hope 2022 will bring is something that we can have physical events, and we can meet face to face? And really working through that. Oh, my God, it was in 2019 when we could do that. And what are the tactics that we used to use back then? Working with events, for example? And we cannot use the same tactics? And how do we develop a plan when we work with a hybrid environment, for example? How can we be prepared for that? How do we prepare if our team is going to work together? And what will be the discussions that are going to happen in 2022? In 2020, everyone was, I suppose, “Oh my god, I’m working from home?” Now, it’s kind of like the new norm. So what will be the behaviours that are driving the changes in 2022? And how can we adapt our social media strategy to to really be relevant and be part of those conversations?

Rebecca Holloway  38:14

Fingers crossed for those in person events!

Iain Scott  38:17

Right. I think it’d be great to have you back on the show Anita and share how Ericsson has, at that point, adapted to the more hybrid way of working for events. I’d love to find out what the outcome of those discussions were. 

So just a quick recap on what we’ve shared. Today, we’ve learned how important social media listening is, not just for us individually, but also for attracting talent and spying on competitors. The importance of bringing employees into the mix for effective message amplification, and also how using social listening can be highly valuable for content and content direction too. 

You can get involved in our next series or ask questions for our next show. You can find us on our website at sharingsocial.london, on Twitter @ShareSocialLDN and on Instagram @SharingSocialLondon. Again, a big thank you to Anita from Ericsson for being on the show today and for sharing your thoughts. A quick reminder on how can people get in touch with you?

Anita Veszeli  39:22

Thank you for having me. And as a social person. First of all, you can follow my personal hashtag which is #SocialAnita. Or you can find me with my real name on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and I’m really happy to connect with anyone. And I’m always open to talk about social!

Iain Scott  39:44

Brilliant, I don’t think anyone’s shared their hashtag before! That is almost a wrap for the final episodes of the second series of Sharing Social. We look forward to the new year. I also want to thank Andy Lambert from ContentCal who’s been our co-host this series. Andy, it’s been a pleasure collaborating with you. Have there been any standout moments from this series for you?

Andy Lambert  40:15

Too many to list, so I’m going to write them all up by the end of the week. But I think there’s one thread that links the last four conversations. And it’s really interesting because they’re all very different organisations that we’ve spoken with over the last four episodes. And the one thread that goes through it all is really culture as the shift of those businesses to more social-first embracing social. From Kelsey from Reckitt from a corp comms of a very behind-the-scenes type of brand, the understanding from the executive teams as the importance of social, once that’s understood at the executive level, it seems like the power of social is unleashed. I think probably that the main takeaway from this is that if we can change cultures at the highest level of an organisation, then the true potential and power of social will be seen, so that’s why it’s so good to hear from businesses like Ericsson and Anita because when I hear a social transformation plan, and a real hard and fast 2025 goal to get there fills me with joy. So, yeah, thank you for sharing all of that.

Iain Scott  41:32

100% agree. And you mentioned a couple of our other episodes for our listeners, if you do want to hear now from Nada Alkutbi from IBM, Kelsey Nebbeling from Reckitt or Ross Middleham from the Met Office, who each share their insights into social media, you can head back and listen to the series’ previous episodes, but from Becca, Andy, Anita and me, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next year.