Let’s start simple. Who are you, and what do you do with social data that others might not expect?
My name is Laura Antoniello and I work on the Global Communications insights team for Dell Technologies. My role is concentrated on integrated media measurement and strategy. From the strategy side, I focus on developing the most effective ways to measure our coordinated media efforts to identify insights across integrated paid, owned and earned strategies. To do this, I’m focused on bringing together various types of listening - social, traditional media and LLMs. From a measurement side, I take that integrated approach and deliver reports to our stakeholders to inform their future campaigns. This fusion of sources is a great way to identify broader trends and opportunities, as well as give social data more visibility to the wider team!
What’s something in our industry we pretend to understand, but don’t?
We still have a lot to learn around the impact and behavior of LLMs in sourcing content, and how sources like social influence them. The need for LLM search strategy and insights grew exponentially this year - across the industry, everyone is focused on optimizing content for LLM findability and understanding what content LLMs favor. There has been an influx of new tools and research in this realm, but we still have only a basic understanding of the functionality. I think we get better every day, but we need to be careful not to significantly overhaul our strategy or make broad claims or assumptions based on initial learnings, since this is truly a brand new space and no one knows exactly how these algorithms work.
What’s a moment this year where social data helped your team do something bolder, faster, or better?
I developed two custom measurements for our social team, one focused on growth and one on quality, each considering the full social footprint across owned and earned. Reviewing these areas as our two overall priorities has enabled us to zero in on each area and aggregate results in a simpler way than tracking numerous KPIs. We use the learnings to identify actions to weave into our quarterly planning sessions and build a cohesive global social strategy. Insights from these measurements span things like posting cadence, key external accounts to engage with, and trending themes.
What’s one belief about your audience that social data completely upended for your teams?
Over the past year, we’ve done an extensive clean-up of our owned social media footprint. Historically we had hundreds of accounts across the globe, with the belief that we needed those niche, specific presences in every market or every product category or vertical. Social data enabled us to reduce the size of our ecosystem and optimize our resources. Backing up our theory with performance data gave stakeholders concrete evidence that not all accounts were needed (or effective), earning their agreement to focus efforts elsewhere while still being confident that we’re reaching our global audience.
If you could build your dream social intelligence team from scratch, with no legacy and no limits, what roles would you include?
My social intelligence dream team would be a group with a wide range of experiences and expertise. I believe a well-rounded, effective team would include:
- A social analytics expert, with knowledge of social platforms and strategies, as well as social measurement and listening.
- Someone with a PR background to bridge social intelligence with traditional media intelligence.
- An LLM or prompting expert to bridge social intelligence with LLM findability and insights.
- A crisis listening leader, to monitor hot topics, red flags and negative sentiment.
- Someone with a data science or engineering background to help with advanced modeling or the development of custom AI agents.
- A governance leader to manage tools and processes.
- A marketing strategist to plug insights effectively into the larger business strategy and act as a liaison between our team and the full organization.
When do you feel like you’re doing your best work?
I do my best work when I have freedom to experiment, to explore new ideas or test theories. I think it’s important to give yourself “thinking time” to be innovative and avoid getting trapped in doing the same thing over and over. Having a supportive team around you is key - my best work always comes when I’m surrounded by people I can rely on, can bounce ideas off of and can work through challenges with. Having trust from leadership is also one of the most important factors - that support empowers me to bring new ideas to the table and understand how my work can make the most impact.
What’s your browser history giving away about you this week?
True to my field of listening, my main browsing activities are related to reviews or research. Three of my most recent include Disney restaurant reviews and EPCOT festival news (as a proud Disney Adult planning my next trip), book reviews to kick off the new year, and tennis racquet research for my latest hobby.
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