Social media has become a huge part of digital journalism — something which Condé Nast’s Roberta Cianetti knows all too well. We chatted with her about her experiences at Condé Nast Italia, where she serves as the Social Media Director.
Condé Nast is a global media company that produces some of the world’s leading print, digital, video and social brands. Headquartered in New York and London, Condé Nast operates in 32 markets including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Latin America, Spain, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S., with additional license partners throughout the world.
Overall, each month the company’s video content generates more than 1 billion views, and globally reaches 83 million consumers in print, 402 million in digital and 474 million across social platforms.
Roberta is a Senior Digital & SM Strategist with more than 15 years of experience, in key roles of leading companies, developing and executing business & social media growth plans, team mentoring and leadership, brand and campaign management. She joined the Condé Nast Italia team in 2013, and explains how NewsWhip has helped to tackle the challenges of journalism in the digital age.
“As far as the Italian market is concerned, NewsWhip has been an important partner since June 2015 for all our iconic brands: Vogue Italia, Vanity Fair Italia, La Cucina Italiana, Wired Italia, GQ Italia, AD Italia & Condé Nast Traveller Italia.”
Trend spotting in journalism
Roberta often finds herself working with key partners to implement best practices across the company’s digital arm. To do this, she maintains constant communication with heads of media/success and expansion managers of top platforms in Italy & Europe, including Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and vendors such as NewsWhip.
She does this in order to grow Condé Nast Italia’s social media properties, forge meaningful communication and Social Media opportunities for Condé Nast Italia’s consumer, and sales teams, as well as editorial teams and editors-in-chief.
NewsWhip in particular supports the team in scouting trends and having a complete overview of what’s generating engagement around the world.
“It is an extremely flexible tool which allows editors, social and audience managers to create their own dashboards combining real time feeds of social & web content with public engagement data as well as structuring specific news alerts on peaking events expanding this knowledge further to the entire team in their inbox. It is surely an ally in speeding up some of the daily work in a much more efficient way, being hyper-connected to real-time data.”
Incorporating data into journalistic workflows
Data has always been central to the Condé Nast team’s strategy with respect to content and producing incomparable experiences and events.
“It is at the heart of our methodology and NewsWhip surely helped some of that data to be easily accessible especially to the Italian editorial teams, supporting them with being at the forefront of current news trends in Italy or worldwide.”
Roberta maintains that real-time engagement data, provided by the likes of NewsWhip, is key as much for Condé Nast brands’ content as for finding trending stories.
“It allows us to listen to our audience thus improving our conversations with them, creating ad hoc initiatives and events which take that into account as much as delivering products that can respond to our customers’ real needs.
“It also supports the browsing of meaningful conversations out there on any specific topic or significant news which just occurred and/or detecting early spikes of predicted future interactions.”
The challenges facing digital media
Being a global media company does bring its own challenges though, and in response the group largely diversifies its businesses and revenues.
“We do so with a lot of true talents in different sectors collaborating locally and around the world. Values, quality content and videos and providing unparalleled experiences are surely key to us.” Roberta explains.
Challenges exist beyond the business side as well.
When it comes to digital content, the Italian teams use NewsWhip to spot & follow trends as well as tackle misinformation and fake news more generally.
“We have seen how important this was especially during the Covid pandemic era when scouting dominant narratives in public health topics such as vaccinations was significantly important. Having NewsWhip as an ally during that time especially was critical to do extra research and analyze data of meaningful and real people’s interactions vs fake websites and the like. Of course it is something we appreciate every day in our partnership.”
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