Tara Clark and Jaya Deshpande, Social Media Marketers at BBC

So we're the social listening team at the BBC. We work across all of our products, all of our brands, so we cover quite a big suite of things. We work with journalists, we work with TV makers, commissioners, and essentially it's our job to kind of give them feedback about programmes that have already been made or try and feed into making new programmes. So our talk was about integrating social listening into the BBC and integrating it into everything that we do. So we know that it's one of the biggest challenges in large corporations in order to get what we do in front of the right people. So we go across the business kind of road showing what it is that we do. And so our talk was about the milestones and steps that we've taken along the way as well as some of the tips and tricks that you can take if you want to. I think in getting social listening kind of recognised and respected as a way of getting audience feedback, I think that's a challenge that we have. People don't think it's representative or they don't think it's as trustworthy as other methods of getting feedback, so we're just trying to prove to people that it is actually really useful. I also think it's hard to get it everywhere that it needs to be in the organisation. And the BBC is massive, we're across the whole country, we're split into so many different places. And to get everyone trained up and doing the right thing in the right way is also a challenge. Well, video in social listening is, I mean, I don't know if it exists yet, but it's definitely a technology that we would like to have on board. Whether that's through like transcriptions of the audio or if that would be something around just understanding like facial recognition to get an idea of what emotions are being sparked by that video. It's not something that we currently do, but it's something that we absolutely know that the world is changing to. We know that people aren't just going to sit there and text their opinions about our products and services for the rest of time. They're definitely going to start using images and videos in order to get that message clear. I was just going to say one way we can, we do use a bit of social listening to look at videos is in the Facebook comments. So things like Brandwatch allow you to put all the comments into a platform and look at if they're positive or negative. And that's really useful for us. So say a trailer goes out, we can look at if there are a lot of positive feedback, what did people like about the trailer or what do they think was missing? And that can help compare different campaigns. What did people really like about it? And that's helpful for us. I absolutely love using emojis. And I also, it's really cool with Brandwatch that you are able to track emojis. I know traditionally, I think they've had challenges in terms of trying to understand what the sentiment and emotion is behind an emoji. Like, will we get an emoji? And then they're also really different for every individual. And we continue to make new emojis all the time. So it's just something that's really interesting and worth having a look at. And it's obvious that the technology is changing in order to keep up with that. And it's just, yeah, it's pretty cool. And when it comes to looking at a program, in Brandwatch you can get like an emoji analysis, like a word count. With just the emojis. And obviously that gives you a bit of indication of did people like it. But also it's useful for us to feed back to marketing and be like, when people are talking about X program, they're using this emoji a lot. And then if they start using that emoji, it kind of looks like they're listening and it helps win for everyone. It's quite funny as well around emojis that like a program like Killing Eve, the knife emoji kept coming up. Which makes sense if you knew it was in context of Killing Eve and you knew about what Killing Eve was. But I think if you didn't, you just look at it like, what? Yeah, it says a lot about the audience. Yeah. So there's a program that came out, it's probably a couple of years ago, called The Missing, where it sent you like a missing persons case and she comes back. And there was one scene where the family was sat around the table having a roast dinner and someone didn't put gravy on their roast dinner. Which in the UK is like, oh my god, why wouldn't you do that? So everyone was like, whoa, why is this happening? We called it Gravy Gate because like everyone was talking about it. And then the next day we put a video out which showed, like replayed the scene and was like, whoa, why is this happening? And we were like, whoa, why aren't people putting gravy on their food? And it did really well because it kind of gives, it makes us look human, it makes us look like we're listening. And the audience found it really funny and really engaged with the content. It's not something that any of the marketing teams would have ever thought to make content. Yeah, no one can predict it. We do get a lot of engagement. It's really important that our teams don't become complacent. And know that, you know, getting a whole lot of likes and comments and shares. Is what is really great for your brand. You need to keep it going and find a way to build upon it. Rather than just like putting it in as a number. Also putting it in as context in the whole market. And looking at competitors as well and understanding how well we're doing and benchmarking our performance. One way we use social listening is to look at our brand as a whole and see what people are saying about our brand. So we wanted to mention this earlier but we didn't have time. When we talked about this thing called a buzz tracker. Where it's looking at where people have mentioned the BBC and what is their sentiment. Around us as an organisation. So I think weekly that's getting like 220,000 mentions. So you can't expect anyone to go through that and be like is that positive or negative. So we use things within the tools like looking at sentiment analysis. We kind of built bespoke sentiment rules. Also looking at topic clouds. What were the key things that they were talking about when they were talking negatively. Was it the news? Was it a TV programme? And also what were people talking really positively about? Was there something in that week that made people really love the organisation? So that's one way we can kind of condense it down. We're increasingly getting more community managers. Especially when it comes to big programmes. So there's a new series of a programme called Line of Duty that's come out. And it's really popular. Everyone's watching it on a Sunday night. And so we get someone to come in and monitor those social channels for the time that it's on. So we can respond to people's comments. We can reply with GIFs. We can reply with like yeah we're loving this too. Or like oh my god I can't believe that. And I think it just makes the community feel more engaged with what's going on. I think it's important for the BBC to have that two way conversation. Because in the UK we're seen as quite like a top down organisation. And we're talking to the people. But we know now that young people want to have a two way conversation. They're not interested in being told what to do anymore. So we've got to make sure that we're facilitating that. And I think it's working. There's so many metrics available to us. And we can look at impressions. And impressions are sometimes good. Because people are like whoa look. Six million people might have seen your content. But they might have seen it. They didn't definitely see it. So I think there's more of a focus towards what we call deep engagement. So like comments, shares, likes to an extent. But things where people have actually had to stop, look at the content and do something with it. And that's increasingly what we're focusing on. And also that engagement that's coming outside of our own communities. So the peer to peer interaction where they're sharing recommendations is so important to us. And it's one of the ways that we can see that things are growing in that area. And also that we need to keep up with it. And we need to understand what's happening. Because often like internal stakeholders will look at what's happening with our own content. And how much engagement happened off of our own content. Like a trailer that went out. But actually lots of the conversation is just happening between people. Like any conversation would be. Yeah. And I think UGC is playing an increasing role in engagement as well. Like a lot of people make memes or gifs about our content. And it's just about trying to feed that back to the audience. And being like we found this really funny. I think you will too. And I think the audience quite like that as well. They're one of the most interesting campaigns that I wouldn't say that we worked on so much. But one of the coolest things that I've seen lately. There's a program on BBC3 called People Just Do Nothing. And they did a live commentary over Blue Planet. And it was just hysterical. And it got picked up. It's not like a. They're not the type of people who would normally talk about documentaries. And it's not the usual like fit between two of the brands. So it was just really interesting to see how the two would kind of converse with each other. And what it did. It was really funny and people loved it. Yeah. A key takeaway for me about our talk would just be to start listening to people as well as talking to them. So having those conversations not only with key stakeholders but just with practitioners of social media. They're going to be the ones who are using the social listening tools. And they're going to be the ones that will find it interesting and helpful to their day to day lives. So making sure that you're present with them. I was just going to say kind of believe in what you do. And I know some a lot of people who work in social listening struggle to get them themselves kind of respected as a method. So kind of trying to find gaps in the organization that can be filled with social data I think is really valuable. Especially with us. If you can save people money they'll respect what you do. So that's a really key takeaway for us. And also talk about what you do a lot. Take it around the organization. People will find it interesting and hopefully that'll pick you up as a method. If you're not doing social listening. You're really missing out on a whole lot of conversations. And that's probably happening about your brand that you would never have known about otherwise. It's just not good enough anymore to wait for survey data. It's really important to go where the people are and listen to what they're saying.