David Sanger is, at the time of this publication, the Associate Director of Social Media at FOX Networks Group. He uses social media listening better known as simply “social listening” to advise executives on how to make sound business decisions – Ranging from beloved shows like Family Guy and The Masked Singer to FOX Sports recruitment strategy. Read or listen to the full piece, or skip ahead to one of the key points.
Quick Links If You Want To Jump Ahead:
- What is Social Listening?
- Benefit 1 Of Social Listening: Informing Marketing Team Decisions
- Benefit 2 Of Social Listening: Facilitating Show Development
- Benefit 3 Of Social Listening: Talent Acquisition
- Benefit 4 Of Social Listening: Competitor Benchmarking
- Rapid Fire Questions With David Sager
One of my first jobs out of college was as a Social Media Specialist at a small digital marketing agency in Iowa. After a year, I naively thought that I learned all there was to know about it (23-year-olds, right?). I had yet to realize that the scope of social media marketing is way more diverse than that. Just ask David Sager, an Associate Director of Social Media at FOX Networks Group.
When I first met Sager last fall (we were desk mates over at Fox Plaza in Los Angeles before the quarantine was a thing), he introduced himself to me along with his title: Associate Director of Social Media. I said something like, “Cool! So you schedule FOX Networks’ daily social posts?”
I got a big eye-roll.
Turns out, I inadvertently committed one of Sager’s pet peeves: overgeneralizing all of the nuanced specializations within the industry. Fortunately, he quickly forgave my naiveté and told me about his specialization of “social listening.”
While Sanger rolled his shoulder out with a tennis ball against the wall – something he always does as a part of his PT – he walked me through how his team uses social listening to inform various facets of the business – including marketing team decisions, facilitating show development, talent acquisition, and competitive benchmarking. I was thoroughly impressed and asked to interview him for my blog. And here we are.
Alright, Let’s Get Started. What Is Social Listening?
Social listening is a ‘three-part process’ of monitoring, collecting data, and analyzing an organization’s reputation/perception across social media platforms. Including:
- What type of content is engaged with and shared most frequently
- Who and what target audiences talk about the most (both positively and negatively)
- Emotions and sentiments that target audiences have about a company’s products and services.
“Every company is starving for feedback, and almost everyone is on social media. Whether everyone is talking about you is a different question.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Armed with this data, social analysts then package and apply it in a helpful way for the stakeholders. The analysis can be about the company’s brand, competitor brands, or across an industry.
Benefit 1 Of Social Listening: Informing Marketing Team Decisions
Social listening can help guide marketing team decisions by detailing people’s sentiments and emotions about various aspects of a product. Take, for example, the FOX TV show Lego Masters.
“If the social team understands that people like, say, Lego Masters because of a certain character, or the host, or how awesome the builds are, but the marketing isn’t focusing that [in its promotions], that’s a missed opportunity.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Benefit 2 Of Social Listening: Facilitating Show Development
By performing social listening, you are better equipped to create content your fans enjoy.
When applied to show development, social teams can offer stakeholders data-driven insights about what users like best about a program.
“Social listening helps higher-level content building. Maybe people like these characters on a FOX show, or these voice actors, or this style… We can start to tweak the show a little bit or even help vet hosts or contestants for the next season. “
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Benefit 3 Of Social Listening: Talent Acquisition
One of the newer ways the Social Listening team has helped FOX Networks is by acquiring new talent. A quick example is when Fox Sports built out its TV / Sports commentary staff. The Social Listening team scraped social data to find sports influencers that similar brands like ESPN or Barstool have yet to tap.
The team looks at data points–such as how many followers the influencer has, the average number of times a week people talk about them, how well their engagement rate is on Twitter, and how quickly their following has gone up or down in the last year–and adds it to their running index. These influencers include big names such as Skip Bayless, Shannon Sharpe, and Jay Glazer.
“With this data, upper execs have more than hunches to go on who’s big and who’s relevant right now.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Benefit 4 Of Social Listening: Competitor Benchmarking
The last lever social listening can pull to get business insights is competitor benchmarking.
An example that Sager gives is FOX’s animated TV series:
“If you’re looking at a show–such as Bob’s Burgers or Family Guy–we look for mentions of how many people on social media mentioned us and compare that to a competitor’s animated show… like Netflix or Hulu. Then, you can benchmark [how your content performs] over time and even compare it to Nielsen ratings.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
This information can be shared cross-functionally throughout the company to improve the areas where competitors succeed most.
Rapid Fire Questions With David Sager:
Me: “What are your favorite social listening tools?”
David: “There are a million different tools that do this, but they’re only a handful to do it well the to do that. At FOX, we use Netbase and TalkWalker, and they offer cool advanced visualizations.
“There are a million different tools that do this, but they’re only a handful to do it well the to do that. At FOX, we use Netbase and TalkWalker, and they offer cool advanced visualizations. I also use R programming sometimes, a general data tool not specific to social media. Many social media analysts haven’t learned how to use it, but it’s helpful if you do.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Me: “What’s one of the big mistakes people make with social analytics data?”
David: “The biggest one for me is that they put too much emphasis on it. Social media is skewed. It is a sub-section of the population, and it’s the more vocal people. It skews liberal and male – especially on Twitter. Facebook skews older, while Reddit skews toward the niche gamer. So, if you don’t consider these biases, you might have the wrong insight.”
“The biggest one for me is that they put too much emphasis on it. Social media is skewed. It is a sub-section of the population, and it’s the more vocal people. It skews liberal, and it skews male, especially on Twitter. Facebook skews toward older, and Reddit skews toward the niche gamer. You might have the wrong insight if you don’t consider these biases.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Me: “How into social media are you in your everyday life?”
David: “People always think that because of my job, I must be good at social media. I’ve posted on Instagram 3 times ever, and I’ve posted on Facebook maybe five times in my entire life since being out of high school. I’ve never tweeted. I’m not on social media, which is true for many social analysts. We like being on it so much that we don’t do it after the 9 to 5.”
“People always think that because of my job, I must be good at social media. I’ve posted on Instagram 3 times ever, and on Facebook five times in my entire life since being out of high school, and I’ve never tweeted. I’m not on social media, which is true for many social analysts. I think we like are on it so much that we don’t do it after the 9 to 5.”
David Sager, Associate Director of Social Analytics at FOX Networks
Wrapping Up:
Scheduling tweets and running Facebook ads are, without question, essential elements of social media marketing. However, there are other ways that businesses can use social platforms to improve performance. A niche within the social media marketing niche, Social Listening focuses on the monitoring, data collection, and analysis of an organization’s reputation/perception across social media platforms.
At FOX Networks, Sager and his team use social listening data to help inform various aspects of a business–including marketing team decisions, facilitating show development, talent acquisition, and competitive benchmarking.
Readers, I hope you’ve found this post insightful and picked up some fresh ideas on how to gain new insights on using social media to improve the performance of your/clients’ business.
Have a follow-up question for me about Sager? Drop them in the comments.
