Social Listening

Jessy: Awesome. So, Kate, I am super excited to have you on today. I’m excited for our listeners, just get to know you a little bit better, and get to know Dash Hudson as well. But first and foremost, welcome, and how are you today?

Kate: I am good. Thank you so much for having me on today. I really appreciate it.

Jessy: Absolutely. Thanks for taking me up on it. I think that is a really fab place to start. We’re gonna learn about Dash Hudson. We’re gonna talk about, some new tools that you guys have released and all sorts of influencer marketing things, but I personally just love to get to know people better, and influencer marketers we’re like our own breed. I think that it’s a very special type of person that gets into this industry. And so I’d love to get to know you better. 

So can you tell us about Kate? Going back to what kind of kid were you? And I don’t know, maybe that’ll give us some insight into how you ended up to where you are today.

Kate: Yeah, sure. Good question. For context, I grew up in New York City. I am definitely a city kid through. And, I think growing up in New York you have so much access to so many different things and what really spoke to me as a kid, was I loved my favorite afterschool activity, and I’m still trying to like, reinvent this for my children. At some point, going to the met once a week and doing my own versions of paintings on the wall. 

I think I am a somewhat creative person or I at least appreciate art and creativity. And that was definitely a passion of mine.

In addition to art which, again really something that grew up doing as I got older, I think the two other areas that really helped define my high school career were, math and sports. 

So I was really proud to be in the math club. I love math. I think it’s very definite. It’s very analytical and it was a really nice compliment to the creative side that I also enjoyed.

And then with the third part that I really explored while I was a kid was sports. I come from a family of tennis players. I think I was born with a tennis racket in my hand or was told that I had to have a tennis racket in my hand. And so through that experience, I was often playing competitively and I had the opportunity to be the captain of my tennis team for four years through all of high school and I think that experience really, shaped how I look at success today in business.

How everything is a team sport, right? And you all have to know what your goals are collectively together, and everyone plays a role in achieving those goals. So for anyone who has a child who plays sports, whether or not they’re the top athlete.

I think the lessons that you learned being a competitive athlete, or in my case, a somewhat competitive athlete did not make it much further than high school, really have a significant impact on your life later on, or at least it definitely did for me.

Jessy: That’s so interesting. I love that so much. Your kids I think young as mine and I didn’t grow up in sports but I did grow up in the arts, so I can definitely relate to that. I’m so curious though, cuz I do definitely hear this a lot and I can help but agree with what you’re saying, which is just like growing up, in a competitive sport, can absolutely, really prepare you for later on in life.

And that maybe camaraderie or that hyper focusness like what would you tell your kids, as they’re continuing to grow up and like exploring sports? 

Would you guide them towards one sport over another? Or how would that work in your households?

Kate: Yeah, so I have an almost nine-year-old son and a six-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and a two-year-old son. And my two-year-old’s not there yet on the sports spectrum, but one day I promise he will be. 

So I think it’s really important that first of all, they find what they’re interested in. They find their own passion. Whether that be, for my son it’s skiing for sure. He’s a competitive ski racer for my daughter. She’s taken a lot of interest in basketball, whatever it is, right?

I think it’s important that they find their passion and they really love what they’re doing. And secondarily to that, hoping it’s also a team sport.

My older son also plays football and I love that he gets to see how important it is again, to understand everyone plays a role in something and that in order to be successful, you all need to work together. And I think that’s really the goal of sports for me, is to ensure that you get that type of experience.

Jessy: You have made your way through, high school where you like, led your tennis team. So it seems like that for you, it wasn’t necessarily just being on a team, but it was like, I’m gonna lead my team. I’m gonna be a leader. 

And so today you’re a leader at this incredible company called Dash Hudson. A lot of our community is familiar with Dash Hudson, but I think that it would be really great to hear in your own words what are you guys most known for. And like, how our community can, really get to know you guys even better.

Kate: Sure. So Dash Hudson is a social media management software. And we really help brands leverage social media to their advantage with our multi-channel insights and scheduling and content capabilities. So I think what makes us truly different is first and foremost, we are very visual first.

So why am I at Dash Hudson and, thinking about my childhood, like I love the intersection of creativity and analytics, that’s exactly what Dash Hudson is, right? It is a social media software that is that intersection for all social media managers. So we provide those key data and insights points around what is happening in your community.

What is happening in your content, and then how can you really listen and understand what the white space opportunities are, right? Because there’s so much going on out there in social media that is often not caught or not heard, shall we say? And what I’m really excited about, and we’ll get to this, I’m sure in more detail later, is our new social listening product where we don’t just listen to words, which, traditionally is how social listening was built, but we’re also listening to visuals and we’re also reading what is going on in the visuals, which is a really exciting way to look at social listening in a different era, right?

Social listening started 15 years ago, and. We’re excited to really bring you social listening 2.0, shall we call it?

Jessy: Wait. I love that. So can we get into that a little bit now? A little bit more about social listening cause social listening, the concept, in general, isn’t anything new, but I’m really intrigued by what you guys are doing with it now.

So could you tell our audience a little bit about some new social listening tools that you guys released and how it’s really new?

Kate: Sure. So we just launched social listening and again, as I mentioned, social listening has been around for quite some time, but again, built in the era of text, right? Social listening was frequently leveraged for Twitter. And then brought onto other channels, but we’ve taken a stance of building it for the ability to pull in content, especially video, and visuals, right? And then of course text.

But we all communicate differently today, right? I communicate with my husband oftentimes via pictures or with friends via pictures. And if that’s how people are also, posting on social media, you’re not necessarily going to catch what the story is. 

So what makes our social listening tool different? What are the opportunities? Social listening tools historically have also been very complex. I am a former, user of social listening tools and I can tell you firsthand, they’re oftentimes not easy to use and you are not really able to cut through the noise. So what our tool does is we really leverage our incredible.

Design, honestly, we have the, rated on G2, the easiest-to-use platform. And what we are able to do is leverage that, mentality and make sure we have the easiest-to-use social listening tool.

So If you wanna go in and understand what people are saying about a certain topic, it’s not gonna take you two hours in a Ph.D. to do anyone can do it in a very quick manner. I think that’s a true first point of difference.

A second point of difference, which is really interesting and we’re hearing from our customers, is a truly strong point of difference. And I’m gonna give an example of a brand that I used to work on.

I previously had the opportunity to work on the brand La Mer, right? And so La Mer’s beautiful brand. But for social listening, it’s actually quite a challenge because your name is also in French, La Mer means the sea. So you’re also pulling in a tremendous amount of excess content around the sea.

And it’s a very hard to actually do the act of social listening. With our keyword capability, we’re actually able to pull out imagery. So if you can actually input an image of what you don’t want to populate, right? 

So you can put an image of the sea and our artificial intelligence will then remove all of the images of the sea and you’ll actually be served the content that you really wanna see, which is what people are saying about your product.

So it’s a really interesting example of how brands have been, leveraging our tool and saying it’s no other tool which is pretty exciting to see.

Jessy: That is super exciting and I just know that like we all know that the content has just evolved over the years where of course it’s been very visual, but now it’s so video-based, right?

So it’s really cool to hear that there’s a focus there. And that there are so many insights to learn from the content itself in terms of a visual capacity, which is really interesting.

And so I’m sure there are different types of customers that use Dash Hudson, but like in our community we have, talent managers that could use tech in their own way. We have agency people who would use your tech in their own way and brands, et cetera, et cetera.

Who is your ideal customer if you have one? Or can they all just use Dash Hudson in their own way?

Kate: Yeah, what a great question. What I love about Dash Hudson is there is such a great use case for anyone and everyone. So for context, I was on a call yesterday with a talent manager and a 10-million-plus follower, creator.

And she saw, really great applications for the tool for her own self and how to build her brand. And as the talent agent.

More often than not, we are working with brands and agencies. So I think we have a very diverse product that again, focuses on your social media data and insights, but also your content, right? And so anyone who prioritizes content, and we all know that in this day and age, you can’t prioritize content, especially on social. So for anyone who’s prioritizing content and where it matters, like that’s our customer, right? 

Anyone who cares about social, who cares about how they show up in the market, is important for us whether it’s the creator themselves, which we’re starting to really speak more to managers, brands of course our historical customer base. More and more we’re seeing agencies.

But again, we have such a great tool to really elevate and improve how you can go to market across channels, whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, and I just prioritize those because the short-form video is just so important right now. Those are the places where we’re seeing the most opportunity in what our customers are looking for.

Jessy: And I also think, I can imagine at least that you guys are in like a really, you have a very interesting vantage point because I’m sure that people come to you being like, oh my God, I’ve got this problem or that problem. Can you guys solve it? Can you guys fix it?

 And I feel as if having that perspective, you’re in this like really interesting place where all the other so many opportunities coming your way, day in and day out because of all those problems.

Or at least that’s the optimistic way of thinking about it. Some people may be like, Ugh, all these problems. But I can imagine that you guys are excited to solve them

 and so I’m curious though, what are some of those struggles that you hear that your clients or potential clients are experiencing pretty regularly? I’m wondering, I’m curious if our listeners can relate to those struggles.

Kate: Sure. Yeah. I love actually being at this vantage point to your point we have over 6,000 handles of data. So we get to interact with a lot of very different people in different industries, which again, my history is, I actually came from beauty and had an incredible experience there, but I’m loving right now just seeing many different industries and something consistent that we see is how do I sell in short-form video, right?

 I was just at social media week last week and I was speaking on stage and someone actually in the audience asked that question, like, how do we even sell this, to my executives and leverage our, content segmentation tools or even our social listening tools, there are ways we can highlight like how this will help brands sell things in.

Additionally, to that point, we also try to quantify for our customers I think conceptually, and I’m sure everyone listening to this podcast can agree social media obviously does have an impact on your bottom line. Obviously hard to attribute. 

So we try to close that information gap with partnerships. So we’ve been partnering regularly now with Nielsen IQ to really highlight that data of, the brands that have stronger content on TikTok or Instagram, for example, do have better sales results. And oftentimes that’s not such an accident. We found out last year that beauty brands within the first six months of joining, TikTok actually had a 27% increase in sales versus brands that had low-performing content.

So again, it’s like helping brands sell in why this is important, and then how to sell in the content piece, but also answer that why with how it’ll actually impact your business. On a tactical level, I would say that is probably my favorite question to answer when we speak to customers.

And then the second question we often are answering, this again, is probably what prompted us to do social listening is like, what are people saying about me and how can I leverage my, user-generated content or influencer content? And we have the unique ability to pull in user-generated content and leverage our artificial intelligence to actually predict how that content will perform before you, post it.

So that’s a huge point of difference for us as well. And something that again, our customers love to understand, which is how will this user generate content or influencer content perform? What will this do for me? How will it impact my campaign? And so again, we’re able to walk through the steps on how to understand that, how to position this content, and what makes the most sense to put out on social.

Jessy: I’d love for you to dig into that a little bit more, cuz that sounds really interesting. 

What are the options? What are people seeing, what are you sharing with your customers in that capacity?

Kate: Yeah, so every piece of content that comes into our platform, that’s earned content, right? So influencer content, UGC, is tagged with our artificial intelligence. And it’s like we’re a very visual platform, right? So either it has a star or an upward arrow or a downward arrow. So a star indicates that content will perform well for you, and an upward arrow will perform not as well, but still will perform. 

And then a downward arrow is indicating that you probably shouldn’t post it. You can post it if you need the content, but if you wanna get strong results our artificial intelligence is 98% accurate. So if you want strong results you should really prioritize the content with the upward arrow or the star.

Yeah, so oftentimes our brands and this is how I as a class former customer would leverage Dash Hudson. This really would help me be a data-first marketer, if we would, for example, do a campaign. This is a Tom Ford lipstick next to me and we would either work with influencers or get users to post conjure or encourage users to post content actually.

And, then what I had the capability to do is pull in all this different content into one part of the platform segment at this content, and then based off of the artificial intelligence, then I will post the content, that seems right, whether it’s from the brand, whether it’s from the influencer, whether it’s from the UGC.

And that really cut down a lot of barriers with creative, right? Because oftentimes, it’s challenging as a social marketer to work with the creative team. And this just becomes much more of a data-first social strategy. Not to say you can’t post brand campaigns that may or may not be predicted to perform well but to really ensure that you’re always putting your best foot forward in social, this data truly helps you do so it’s pretty exciting.

Jessy: Where do you see are like the opportunities for growth in that area? Because I can imagine that you guys can do a lot, I can also imagine there’s so much more to do, like especially, you mentioned AI and there’s so much more like advancements coming. So I don’t know. 

I guess is there anything on the horizon that you can give us a first look at?

Kate: Yeah, so think, artificial intelligence is always learning, right? Our AI it’s been learning for the last six years, but we really apply it to all of our platforms, which again, is a unique point of difference. 

So I spoke to you a little bit about social listening and so we do have the ability with the content that you’re listening to and understanding how it’s performing again, we do provide that overlay of artificial intelligence to understand if that content that people are speaking about your brand will perform or you as an influencer will perform. 

So think that is a true key point of difference. In addition to that, we also have an opportunity to identify trends in the market.

That is a great way to see, visually, what are people talking about. Are there visual trends happening based off of a particular topic? Jessy, gimme a topic and I can explain how that would work.

Jessy: I don’t know. Let’s say sports. Could we do sports?

Kate: Sure. Okay. So like we can look at the term sports and then, we’ll be able to pull in your traditional social listening, which is sentiment. How is it performing? But then what we can do is we can actually segment out what are like the key visual trends with sports.

We spoke about tennis. Is tennis and pickleball, imagery popping up much more so than football, right? Football season’s over. So maybe football is not as popular right now. 

So it gives us the visual ability to understand not just what people are saying in  text, but also what are people showing in visuals. Again, something that people really haven’t been looking at before.

So when you go to market, Jessy, let’s say you wanna do an influencer partnership with Nike, right? And you wanna say, what are people saying about sports? And you could suggest I want to do a tennis partnership because I know tennis is super popular right now. Summer is about to happen. People love to play tennis in the summer and they’re all wearing the new hot color is green because of, this new influencer wore a green outfit, right?

So there are a lot of things, whether an influencer, whether you’re a brand that you can pull from this data to help it make various strategic decisions to impact your content and creative strategies.

Jessy: There’s a lot of it following trends and like listening to trends or so much more than that?

Kate: I think it’s a combination of listening to trends, but also, being who you are. I think any good brand first of all, you need to know what’s happening in the market. You need to know where you stand, but it’s like what you do with that data that makes it impactful, right?

I think it’s super important to understand the trends. So again, it doesn’t mean you need to act in every single one, but you should be acting on the ones that are relevant for you as a brand.

Jessy: No, I think that’s interesting. I ask cuz if you go on Instagram and search like you know how to grow on Instagram or how to grow on TikTok or any of those people will tell you all the time to just follow trends and I think that brands are also trying to hop on any trends that they can.

And I wonder if, the data to dig into is what trends to follow. Or, predicting trends, or just digging into your audience. 

And I think, I guess to your point like there are so many variables where it depends on, what you’re listening to and if that’s relevant to you and your brand’s story and, all that.

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting, the data tells a story and there are so many stories to be told, and I think it’s really interesting to see what direction did we go down? Because I can imagine there are so many different directions to go down and as a company, like I appreciate when we even first started this conversation, you’re like, Dash Hudson makes it really easy to find these things because what I’m just even describing, I’m like, ooh, that’s getting a little complicated. And there’s just so much data there to look at what do I pay attention to?

What do I focus on? So how does your team help with that aspect of it?

Kate: So our customers are really enabled to be able to help identify trends. And I think there are two kind of types of trends that you’re touching on. So one is like this macro trend, whether it’s again, I’ll go back to tennis, right? Tennis could be its own trend, right?

And so maybe that might impact if you’re at a photo shoot the type of sports that you’re highlighting. If you’re highlighting a new face cream that could be leveraged, out outdoors and is good for with SPF, right? So that’s one macro trend. Then there’s more of a micro trend I would call, which is, what sounds, should I be leveraging?

What imagery should I be using? Is it Pedro Pascal? Is it, the new Taylor Swift song? So we have the ability also in our product for TikTok to understand what are the trending sounds. 

And I think that micro trend is highly important. Being on trend within your particular, channel is definitely a great way to drive engagement but also ensure that you’re aware of what’s happening outside of your immediate world and what people are speaking about in the ether.

So it’s really that balance between the two. And then the third pillar is like, who you are as a brand and where does that work, right? It’s always a struggle for what to prioritize.

Jessy: Yeah, for sure. No, I appreciate that so much. I also, I’d love to dig into a little bit more of the behind-the-scenes as well because right now you’re in this really wonderful leadership role and I know that, some people listen to these episodes for a variety of different reasons. I can imagine that some people are gonna tune into this one being like, oh my gosh, it’s really incredible what Kate has achieved. 

Perhaps I can learn something from her to follow in her footsteps. And I wanna give our listeners that view of you as well.

So If you could share like both a highlight and a lowlight of your career, I think that it would be really interesting to hear.

So if you could share that with our listeners, that would be amazing.

Kate: Sure. I would say honestly, is I’m really excited to be in the position I am in today. I am honored to lead such an incredible team and be able to have the agility and opportunity to make an impact on not just our own business, but the industry at large. That’s really what I love about what I can do at Dash Hudson.

I think it really makes an impact and, I would say I’ve had a lot of experience. And I don’t believe in low lights. Like I really don’t. I think every experience gives you something and who you are as a person in your career is highly impacted by the experiences that you’ve had previously, right?

So while not every experience is going to be perfect and not every experience is going to be great, you just have to learn from what that experience gave you. 

And I’ll give one example I had a year where I was in a somewhat challenging role, but I knew from that role, I really didn’t like this one part of the business, and I knew that’s not something I am personally strong at and didn’t feel like I could make a difference.

And so going forward, I knew not to go in that area. And like I really, truly believe everyone’s career is a journey. And just knowing what you don’t like and what you’re not strong at is equally as important as what you do and what you are strong at. So I’m gonna flip that one around. I think all experiences are good experiences.

Jessy: Cuz you can learn from them. So a very valid point. I’m sure you’ve been given lots of professional advice along the way. Has there been a piece of advice that you just think was unhelpful, that probably the person who gave it to you thought was very helpful, but you’re like, I’m gonna put that aside?

Something that like maybe, was the worst piece of professional advice you were ever given. What was that?

Kate: Yeah. Look, I think I’ve been fortunate enough to have many mentors or many honest conversations and I think, I do have a lot of ambition and I think the only kind of challenging conversation I had at one part of my career, and again, it goes back to a learning experience, which is, clearly wasn’t the right place for me at that time, was ambition was definitely not, valued in that place.

It was definitely not a characteristic that was, helping the business grow in that area. So I think the worst piece of advice I received was, don’t be so ambitious. But again I think it was just a piece of advice that I received that helped me realize that it wasn’t the right place for me.

Jessy: And what do you think that was about?

Kate: I think there are certain types of roles and certain types of functions that lead a business, and then there are certain types of functions that support a business and certain personalities fit those business types. I really do believe it has to do with the culture of what you’re trying to accomplish and again, just goes back to, some roles, patience, and compliance is the number one asset. So again, it goes back to what your goals are and what you can achieve in that role.

Jessy: Patience and compliance are interesting. And if you could take all the learnings that you’ve learned over the years and having gone through your professional journey that you have, 

what are some of the characteristics if you could create your dream team, like what attributes would your teammates have on that team?

Kate: Sure. I think I do feel very lucky today and feel like I do have that dream team. I think what I love about, the team at Dash Hudson is, we lack that sort of red tape, right? 

We set a goal and we just go after it and everyone’s all hands on deck. I think that’s what’s really important.

Self-educating, self-starting, and really going after something together as a team is really what is highly important.

And leaving egos behind. I think that is a huge, win, right? Like we’re all here for a greater good and identifying what that greater good is. And that team mentality and being all in it together.

Jessy: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I always like to ask this question, especially to people who have been in the space for a while. Are there any tools, or resources, like a newsletter you love or a person that you’re like, follow this person on LinkedIn. 

Are there any resources that you can share? A social media class, like whatever it is. Is there a resource or a tool or, person that you can suggest that our listeners, follow or check out?

Kate: So I am a huge fan of Maggie Sellers. Maggie is a great influencer in the social space. She seems to always know everything that’s going on. And just gives great feedback and anecdotes on how to leverage social, how to leverage the right tools. So huge huge fan of Maggie Sellers.

Jessy: Where does she sit in the ecosystem? What side of the industry is she on?

Kate: So she, I believe has brand experience. And she also is an industry creator herself. So yeah, she has both sides where she is a creator, but she also has worked with brands and I believe she still works with brands. DTC brands and yeah I think her perspective is just highly interesting and her content on TikTok is fantastic.

Jessy: Oh, I love a TikTok content creator. So I’m definitely gonna check her out for sure. Thank you so much for recommending her.

My last question is, I’m sure some of our listeners would love, love, love to get in touch with you. Some people prefer email, and some people for LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera.

What’s your preference and how can listeners get in touch with you?

Kate: Sure, I’m always happy to chat. I love talking anything social. So you can either reach out to me on LinkedIn, Kate Kenner Archibald. And if you want to learn more about Dash Hudson, you can just request a free trial on our website or a demo. We now offer two-week free trials, so I’d love to hear anyone’s feedback about the product. But, always feel free to get in touch. I’d love to chat with anyone.

Jessy: I love a free trial and I know our audience does too, so I really appreciate that you guys offer that Now, I feel like some of the best tools have that, right? Cause you’re like, we’re just super confident in what we have and what we offer. So like just check it out for yourself, dive in. 

I feel like the companies that have that, I’m like so much more likely to end up actually using, everyone’s different in that capacity. Like I really need to get my hands wet. There’s only so much that you can hear secondhand, about a product. 

So I love that you guys offer that. And we will definitely drop links to get in touch with you, and links to check out Dush Hudson, in our show notes.

So Kate, thank you so so much for taking the time to chat with us and our community. And for everyone who is tuning in, we will see you guys next week.

Kate: Amazing. Thank you so much for having me on, and I look forward, to hearing from the community.