Welcome Roberta Cianetti, Director, Social Operations & Global Partnerships Strategy from Condé Nast, sharing her insights and experiences on Social Media Marketing, MarTech Skillsets, & Customer Engagement, as part of the MarTech Thoughts series.

What is your industry? And how would you explain your job to a 5-year-old?

My industry is Publishing. Condé Nast is one of the world’s most renowned media companies with a footprint of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 markets through print, digital, video and social platforms and home to some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest (AD) and Condé Nast Traveler.

To a 5-year-old I would explain my job with the following statements:

1. I create opportunities for my company and others to become allies and work towards something mutually beneficial

2. I try to facilitate how things are done and support our brands making plans and tactics on social media platforms.

Currently, what are you primarily looking for in your social media and partnerships efforts? Why?

I like to always think about new ways of driving a quality audience, with a focus on GenZ audience, to Condé Nast brands on social media, aggregators & messaging apps.

And really try to diversify traffic and audiences as much as possible, in order to be anywhere matters and expand on new opportunities.

At your organisation, what tasks in marketing are good to automate and what tasks still need a human touch?

First of all, there is a lot of cooperation between departments and, as you can imagine, some projects may ignite from one particular team and subsequently expand and involve more teams, so we are quite intertwined since our current structure facilitates growth and agility worldwide.

So, I’d say there’s a lot of human touch but of course certain tasks, especially analytics needs, are automated whenever possible.

Buy, build or both?

Focusing just on social media, I think it is a mix of both whether it is internal ways of measuring data or building a newer and faster approach to address your market goals — as frequently as needed (adapting yes, but also imagining new ways of doing things).

And more than “buy”, I would say “partner up” and create value in your projects and keep in mind platform capabilities (and their evolutions) since it takes a village to constantly update so you should consider, first of all, if you have that capability of building products internally.

Consider also social updates are quite frequent and needs change rapidly so my take would be to build internally when possible, buy when not and challenge tech and platforms internally and externally to adapt, change and update.

What are some of the significant changes to your customer outreach and retention strategies? And how has it impacted the growth plan for upcoming years?

I strongly believe it is crucial to closely and actively listen to our audience, foreseeing opportunities, focus on today’s but mostly on tomorrow’s expectations in the ever rapid changing world of social media where platforms constantly evolve – for instance let’s just think about the video revolution which is a forerunner of the metaverse and how that is surely one of the faster-growing parts of our business – and imagine new ways forward to reinvent ourselves.

Nowadays, more than ever, it is essential to have a strong sense of the market and how this will evolve in the short-mid term and of course strategise longer term but, at the same time, re-consider your steps and re-adapt to changes quite quickly.

How do you see the skillsets needed for the marketing profession changing?

I see skillsets for the marketing profession transforming swiftly, more so everyday, affected by a number of factors like users’ behaviours becoming more elaborate, the rapid evolution of technology but mostly an ever-changing market scenario.

Expertise and recurring adjournments will be needed more and more in the future: acquiring a wide set of skills is important just as having vertical, hands-on skills, especially with the need to understand fleeting change, particularly within the social media and platforms scenario.

At the same time, in an era of AI and task automation, I believe personal relations and human connections will acquire even more relevance since every business requires empathy and relatedness.

Three takeaways you want to share.

• Adapt to change and mostly innovate.
• Reassess and review your strategy often.
• Create value in your relationships and partnerships.

A big thank you to Roberta Cianetti for sharing her insights and experiences on Social Media Marketing MarTech Skillsets, & Customer Engagement!

If you want to connect with Roberta after reading her MarTech Thoughts, please reach out to her via her LinkedIn Profile!

See more MarTech Thoughts interview posts here: https://themartechsummit.com/category/martech-thoughts/

Last updated: Aug 2023