Marketing Happy Hour - The Future of Social Listening (AI for Consumer Insights) | Megan Duong of Plot

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Megan Duong, the CEO and co-founder of Plot, an AI-powered social video listening tool backed by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. With a background in brand marketing at Apple and years leading her own agency, Megan brings a rare mix of creative intuition and data fluency to the table. We dive into how short-form video is changing the way we understand consumer behavior, why traditional social listening is no longer enough, and how brands can use these new insights to drive strategy. Key Takeaways:// How Megan’s experience at Apple shaped her approach to tech, culture, and storytelling// Why traditional social listening tools fall short in a video-first world// The difference between “monitoring” and true insight—and what to do with that data// Surprising social behaviors that brands often miss entirely// What authenticity really means in 2025 (and how Gen Z defines it)// How Megan is building Plot with intention, from team culture to product vision// The vanity metrics social teams should stop chasing—and what to focus on insteadConnect with Megan: LinkedInLearn more about Plot: LinkedIn____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

I don't care about followers. The views on your video, but also bookmarks, are actually an indication of the quality of your content if people care about it. It's very rare for people to actively follow brands these days. And especially because my personal for you page is based off of my own personal interest, you're really designing off of the content experience. And I really care about the performance of an individual post and if it reached a certain engagement. Kasey Panetta Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Kasey, consultant, podcaster, and your host.

Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals to building leadership skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers, this show is all about practical empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. Today I am joined by Megan of Plot.

We're going to talk all things social listening, just a really one of the first strategies, I would say, like being in the social media space that I learned. And it's something that is so effective for any brand and just about plot and how plot can make social listening easier and just capitalizing on what those conversations are happening within our consumers, just worlds. So Megan, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm super excited. I'm like, I always like to preface and say, I have a tech company, but my background is in marketing. So like, it's rooted in this industry. So I'm excited to just like chat and share about plot

and why you built this. Yeah, absolutely. I love that though, that you have that background because I feel like a lot of times brands will launch tech services for marketing and maybe it's from people who haven't necessarily been in that space and like done the work that that tool is helping us to do. And so I really appreciate that.

And this tool is so awesome. I loved learning about it and I think our friends here listening will as well but would also just love to hear more about your your world and how you got to where you are today and everything so we'll we'll dive into all of that but Megan first I have to ask you what's been in your glass lately? Yeah so I've been I've made a transition recently. So I've been just like a straight iced coffee girlie. But recently I've been on a huge health kick just because I don't know, I feel founder life is always really crazy.

And so I'm trying to like take less coffee in general. So I've been really into iced matcha fizz, but it's, I don't know if that's a thing, but it's right next to my apartment in New York called Cafe Inaugural. And it's a matcha that has lemon and ginger. And so it's just like a healthy little kick. It doesn't have too much sugar

and that's just like energized me. So I'm like heavily addicted to that right now. And I've weaned off coffee. So that's my new thing. I love that. I need to work on that myself. I love matcha though. And I will definitely be trying that next time in the city.

That is so fascinating, but I feel like it works. Like matcha seems to really do well with a lot of different flavors. So I feel like that makes sense to me. I also feel like I, um, I'm not as addicted to it, right? So if I, um, don't have matcha for the day, I don't get a headache. So it's just, it's just been like a healthier alternative for me. Um, but also it's like summer, so it's very refreshing. Who knows what happens in wintertime. I'm like, I need something cold and then I'll go back. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, just go with the seasons. It's totally fine. But no, that's so fun. I'm going to definitely note that for my next trip. So thanks for sharing. Okay.

So you mentioned that you are a founder. So of course we're going to dive into this brand that you've built. But I want to kind of back up a little bit. So how do you feel your time at Apple and agency life inspired the creation of your business or even just sparked this like entrepreneurial journey that you're now currently on? Yeah, I think about this a lot because I knew one day I would have a company but I didn't know what it was. In fact, I just thought I would stop at like an agency. But what ended up happening was I've always been on the creative side. So I when I graduated from college, I worked in a startup and I was like their first social person.

And if anybody knows any role in social, you're doing like a hundred jobs. And I'm like a millennial, right? So our version of social was like graphics and like photos and things that are highly curated. But in many ways I owe so much of my career today because I played the social role for so long that I learned copywriting, I learned everything under the sun, and I always believed that social was like the heart of the business. So naturally after I worked at a few startups I went to Apple and it was such a huge shift right because I went from like extreme chaos to doing everything to okay like somewhat slow pace things are more on the operational side and I actually did really well there just because Through my career I was designed to be in like startups

So going into a more of a corporate scene things are just much more structured and and slow-paced But you can actually accelerate if you have a straight background, right? So, you know how to like pitch ideas you can just get things moving you can execute faster And so I really enjoyed that and I was in in a division that was around their new low-code, no-code product. And what's fun about this specific division that I was in was that it wasn't the sexiest product at Apple, but you still had the budget of Apple. So you have, in a sense, the startup feel, but not necessarily like the brand awareness of this product at Apple. So I got to play around with a lot. And I learned so much. But I think after four years, I kind of had a little bit of

this like existential crisis where I was just like, okay, so I'm kind of like doing whatever I want. And I think I'm good at what I do, but I questioned like if I'm actually good at my job and I came to the point where after four years I was just like, okay I feel like I'm kind of outsourcing everything. I also feel like as I was growing into my career I was doing more operational work versus just like the thing that I love to do which was like creative execution and that happens Naturally as you go in your career, right? You end up like managing people, you're like managing project management tools to see like

if someone's hitting certain milestones. And I just didn't love that. I just felt like I was spending more time on like the busy work. So I left Apple, the height of COVID, I don't know, I'm like kind of insane. It was like March 2020. And I was like, I'm just gonna COVID. I don't know, I'm like kind of insane. It was like March, 2020 and I was like, I'm just gonna leave, I don't know. Like there's something there for me. And I, now that I look back at it,

I'm so neurotic because I, it was during COVID and I actually was getting offers from like startups and even like an agency to start my own division there. And still I had this like motive to just start my own thing. I didn't even have clients ready. Like, I don't know why I decided to just do this crazy thing. Um, and then, uh, what ended up happening was, uh, COVID happened. And then I started doing, um, a COVID related project that actually helped me

get a sense of what building a company was like. And what ended up happening with this COVID project was we created this like alternative for N95 mask and we sold like almost $150,000 in sales in like two days. And that was like my taste of like a startup. Eventually, obviously COVID passed and then I went back to wanting to start my agency. And so this is where kind of all the chaos happened. And during that time when I was starting my agency, I loved what I did because for some reason I decided to do social for multiple customers at this point. And even though I loved doing that, I realized I was like back into the same situation back at Apple,

where I was like, I feel like I'm doing a lot of operational work, right? Like I'm back to being this person where I'm like basically outsourcing. I'm like doing the busy work of everything. And so that kind of made me spark an idea with with plot where I was like, I just, it's interesting what you said earlier, where I feel like tools that have been designed today by tech bros, right? People who aren't actually understanding fundamentals of how marketers work.

And so when I took a step back in the industry, I was like, there's all these project management tools, where in fact, like, if you think about Asana, Asana was designed by like the co-founder Facebook for their product team, and they pushed the tools on marketers. If you think about Sprout Social, all these tools, they weren't really designed by marketers, yet they forced these tools and assume it's efficient. But

what ends up happening was that it made it more unproductive in the industry. So I decided to leave my agency and start Plot and really solve for how can we enable brands to be more creative and focus on inefficiencies and operational work. So that's kind of the TLDR of like how that's like the longest TLDR but like that's kind of my journey. It's like so not linear. It's like so messy. And then somehow I got here and in many ways

it makes sense now, cause I think when I look back at my career, all these random things is what kind of got me to be good at my job today. It's like, I got a taste of like this COVID project. I got a taste of like the agency to like manage clients and like things, think about things at scale. And now it all kind of rolled up into a product and a company that I really love.

But I never really expected that to be in tech. I kind of thought it was going to be in an agency. Yeah, it's so interesting how that happens in so many different ways for a lot of us. There was a guest on the podcast a few months back named Kyle. He's from Morning Brew and he said this quote that I now repeat like every single week. He said, you have to collect the dots before you connect the dots. And that made so much sense to me, because same thing with me, like completely nonlinear. And I still feel like I'm kind of

figuring it out. But I feel like you do have to kind of do all the things in order for all of it to make sense. And it's so funny how a lot of times like, you'll look at where you are today and look back and be like, wait, I'm doing all those different things I was doing previously, but now it is tied and buttoned together in a way that makes the most sense. So it's just, that's why I tell professionals all the time, be patient with your career. Take the leap, say yes to things, and then later you

can piece it all together. But so amazing. It's just not linear. So I'm always just go for it. Like take it and then it'll make sense at one point and you'll take these little pieces of learnings. And like, like that's why I say I owe my career to literally being a social media manager because it was, it is still the most chaotic role, but you have to learn so much. And I think the reason why I'm good at what I do today is because in this specific role in social media, you have to constantly context switch

and learn how to adapt and take on new tools for one day it's Facebook, now it's Instagram, and then TikTok, you just have to adapt. And I look back and I'm like, I owe so much of my career to that because one, I built a tool for the industry, but two, like I can move really quickly because I've built this mental model in this career. I don't know if that would be the same if I was like specifically an SEO or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. I love it. Thank you for sharing. Tell us a little bit too, just about plot. So you gave us a little bit of context on what it is, but what do you guys offer in there? What kind of teams or professionals is it for? How can we best utilize what you're building?

Yeah. The way I like to position plot is that we are the next gen, I like to say quote, social listening platform where we really focus on video data. And so the reason why we focus on video data is because we believe obviously, like right now we're on a video, but the world has moved towards a video. And there's such great deep context when it comes to watching a video. So for example, on TikTok, you'll be watching somebody doing a Get Ready with Me video and all of a sudden they're holding Fenty Beauty, but they're not tagging the brand and you can't surface that data. So we believe that video extracts such powerful

information for brands. And so we power that data by analyzing every layer of the video to find opportunities for two ways. One for like, who's your community or superfans who are people that are actually using your product without tagging the brand? And then the second thing is that people also use this for research. So understanding what are consumer behaviors and what are people purchasing? Why are they purchasing it?

So a good example is that you can use our social listening and pull a topic around soda packs, for example. And we read every single video that's happening and we can see that people are putting jalapenos or proteins in their drinks by analyzing and enriching what's happening on the video. And what ends up happening is that we have an AI analyst to extract that data and create insights

and send this report to brands or agencies or even like financial firms on like what's the next like consumer behavior that's happening. So it's really interesting because we took this flip approach where it's like we believe that people need to start analyzing video whereas the rest of the industry is still analyzing things from a text-based layer right so if somebody is tagging you know at Fenty Beauty in the captions it'll pull it in but like who's who's writing like a whole thing on the captions, who's actually tagging. And I actually feel like if someone's creating like hashtags and tags in the caption, you're trying to be seen by the brand. But like,

so many people don't do that, you know, people are just doing their day to day get ready with me video and showing the products that they're using. And so we're able to identify all those opportunities there. So it's been really fun. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. No, seriously, like when I got started in the social media space, it was just the tech space analyzing. So I worked for an agency in New York and we used Sprout, as you mentioned earlier in the episode. And it was like literally just any sort of caption mention or whatever that was brought up. But to your point, there's so many more conversations happening that we just sometimes are not privy to seeing or to hearing. And less like back in the day too, we'd have people send us like, Hey, this person mentioned you or look at,

look at this video that this influencer made of you or whatever. But it's just, so having a tool to kind of work for you in that nature is so huge. And social is truly like the heart of every business. It's not even just, oh, let me talk with my fans or whatever. So many of the brands we work with are also on the product side because they want to know, well, what do people think about my product? How are they using it? Are they using it correctly?

Like, what are people saying in the comments so that we can fuel our next like product idea? Like, social, especially for CPG brands, are like the heart of a business, yet there's always one person doing the job and they're like trying to piece things together and make sense of it. And so it's funny when you bring up like these other tools, but like I just truly believe they're really outdated. and like the way that we've designed certain features in our product is like We know that it's a luxury for you to be a social media manager and have like a ten person team So we try to design in such a way where we were truly designing for efficiency So I don't know if we're using sprout social but there's like a lot of Boolean's and then you have to like do XYZ You're literally just describing what you want to find.

So you can say, I want to find somebody unboxing Happy Meals and have over 200,000 followers and engage with that. We can actually pinpoint the type of visuals and pull that in. And that's all you have to do. Like we try to make it really efficient because we know you're busy and also you're creative. So designing that in mind is really important because you have to understand that they're playing a lot of different jobs

and different roles. So yeah, it's really fun. I get really nerdy. And going back to like my industry and how my background and how it's just like, doesn't make sense, but now it does. We work with a lot of brands and I feel like I'm's just like, doesn't make sense, but now it does. We work with a lot of brands and I feel like I'm essentially still like somewhat like an agency in my head, but I

just built a tool to power like my strategy for marketing. So it's so funny because we're predominantly enterprise. But when I work with these brands, it's almost like I'm still like their strategy consultant where I'm like, Oh my God, look at all these opportunities and we'll start doing them ideas. And it's like, but I'm just using the tech to like power my strategy. But that's why a lot of these brands that we work with trust me because they're like, oh, well, she has like a strategy background and understands this industry pretty well. So it's funny how like my background on the agency side has played so much on like the client side with working with these brands.

So yeah, yeah. background on the agency side has played so much on like the client side with working with these brands. So yeah, yeah. And it, I feel like from an authority angle, this is like a whole nother personal branding tat tangent, but I feel like from an authority angle, the fact that you have experience in that space and you're able to speak to that, not only the product you built, but like why it makes sense in a strategy. I mean, that's, that alone is huge with just like clients and brands using a plot. So yeah, I imagine that that makes a ton of sense. So and it and I guess like, it also means more to

me. Like, I just feel like I have PTSD from all these tools working at Apple agency where I'm like, it cannot be productive for you to like be in there and do all these things, yet you still have to run social. Like, I just feel like this industry became so backwards in so many ways. So it's very important for me to like build a solution that actually delivers a value. And so I think because I've been on the other side, I'm like, I really hope that this is a tool that inspires real creativity. And like, this is where I personally hate saying AI for some reason, but I just have to but like, this is where, in my opinion, AI is like helpful, because I'm

doing it in a way where it enables the inefficient things, right? So like, how can I help supercharge like community? Or how can I help with like, the influencer partnerships? Or how can I help with expediting research faster like all of that takes a lot of time. So the way I think about AI is like, how do I focus on the thing that they don't want to do and then actually enable them to do the creative stuff. So that's my mission and like building plot is like, I will design solutions that enable them to do the thing that they love and then focus on using AI on the things that they don't love.

And I think that tends to be like the opposite when people design solutions. So for me, it's really exciting, but it means a lot because if you ever talk to like any of our customers, they're just like, I actually feel like people are, are, are building products for, for us. So yeah. Oh, I love that. So good. So good. So good.

So let's dive into social listening just a little bit here then. Just outside of, you talked about this ability to analyze video content and scanning not only what people are saying, but what they're showing in the products. Are there some surprising things that you've seen brands just not listening for but absolutely should be outside of just a video versus a text sense? Yes. So like just like use cases that I'm seeing. Okay.

So my biggest one that I was like kind of shocked about earlier this year, but now kind of makes sense is around brand safety. Because of our platform, we are able to extract conversations where it's typically unseen to the brand, right? So if someone's speaking positively and using your product and they didn't tag you, we surface that data. But we also see it on the opposite end, which is the negative conversations. And the scary thing about the negative conversation

is that there's this rise of like fake UGC growing. And so a lot of These brands that I've been meeting are experiencing like misinformation where ultimately people create fake UGC to create some sort of like conspiracy in the beginning about like Ex-ingredient about the brand and then if you watch it for like a minute They're actually pushing for like an affiliate sale And so I've seen more and more of that coming and it's interesting because a lot of these brands

don't see it. And so I'm starting to see all these like tactics come in place. And this is particularly dangerous because the idea of an influencer has changed. You are now essentially being paid for performance, not necessarily like how many followers you have. So Cassie, I can pay you if you hit a million views on a video and you'll get paid out maybe $3,000 or whatever.

There's so many different programs. And so there's a rise of just like fake UGC where people are just like creating content to make passive income. So if there's anything we learned about advertising is like people will do anything to like make money. So whether it's like spreading misinformation, especially if you don't know who if this is a real person or not, like people will do it because the video became viral and now people know about your product. They're buying it. So that's the thing that's been so interesting for me because, you know, because I'm on the venture side of things. venture side of things. People are like, isn't AI UGC so exciting? And I'm like, no, because it's really designed for businesses, right?

Like it's for you to like, if you don't have the marketing budget, it's the most efficient way for you to make money, right? But people don't actually think about the creator side of things. Like I don't, I'm not 100% convinced that, you know, existing creators are going to leverage AI to like manipulate themselves and like create content. Like their community and authenticity matters more with their followers.

So it's kind of interesting to see this like rise of AI UGC really on the business side, not necessarily on like the creator side. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think just in general, this level of trust is changing on social. We're seeing a lot of AI influencers too. I was at a conference a while ago and someone was like, essentially in the next few years, we won't really know the difference between a real person and an AI influencer, which is terrifying. But that's all the more reason as brands and as influencers and creators, we need to be like humanizing our content and what were this community that we're creating more and

more and build trust with our consumers, like actual real trust. Because it is sad that that's kind of where we're going. But it's good to have a tool to be able to analyze where those conversations are popping up and being able to kind of tackle it as they come out. To take it early on. Yeah. That's what we do is like, I don't think I can control it,

honestly. But what we do is be proactive and be like, OK, do you see this negative conversation that's rising? And then we can pass it over to PR. And then they can figure it over to PR and then they can figure out how to manage that brand risk. But I do get concerned because I think if the community on platforms aren't sure if things are real or not, I actually think it'll impact the ecosystem.

Like I don't know if I would want to spend time on a platform knowing that I might be manipulated in some way or form. So I'm just, I'm always just more curious being like, don't forget like the community and like, no one wants to be scanned by some sort of like fake UGC to buy a product or whatever. Like there's some ethics in place

that's required. So. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation too, just about how we should be fostering those communities and creating content in a way that's real. And I think consumers more and more are going to just keep trending in that direction to desire more of that just because they are inundated with so much stuff that is not authentic. So yeah, it's going to be interesting over the next few years to see how that shifts

and changes too. Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm very curious, but I'm, I'm seeing things on the brand side, but also like crater sites, right? Like people are using craters to create their, use their likeness and sell products. Like, I don't know. It's, it's all to support a business. So that's why I'm like, this is a good marketing strategy.

I don't know if the community is actually going to love this. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I want to ask you, too, with a tool like Plot, we're analyzing this data. We're seeing people talk about us in a certain way. We're seeing people ask certain questions and use our products in a certain sense. What should we then be doing with those insights and the data?

And how should we be capitalizing it in our strategies or in the way that we're talking about something or whatever it is? What's the best use case for that? Community feedback, powers or innovation, right?, that's how Glossier grew, was literally reading the comments to see the next product that they should fuel. So you need to be able to analyze the insights at scale. And there really is no way to do it.

The old way used to be, OK, well, you see the data. Then you pass it over to an analyst team. Then you see a report three weeks later. And you're like, OK, so great. This had a lift. And the problem with the way we analyze things is that it's just like basic performance, right? It's like, oh, you got like a million views or whatever, but you're not able to ask deeper questions. Why do people like Glossier's perfume, for example, or why do people like Fenty Beauty's like You Miss Spray?

And you can't actually pinpoint that efficiently and at scale because one, the data is hidden. And then two, it's actually hard to extract the information. So what we do is that we have an AI agent that allows you to ask specific questions on this data so that you can learn about anything. So think of it as like chat TBT but from social data. And so you can ask and be like, okay,

well, after we spent millions of dollars to launch this product, like, what do people really think? Why do they like it? What's the issue? Rode actually just did an amazing job recently where I don't know if you saw that they released a new peptide. And she posted stories recently where she said,

we changed the formula and we listened to what was happening because it was grainy. And that's when you're taking real consumer feedback and actually improving the experience and all that came from social right a lot of times this is hidden especially if you're at the scale of like L'Oreal or any of these other brands it's like they're dealing with so many different products and so many different brands and so what we do is that we can help them one, understand who their community is so that you can create a relationship with them at scale. But two, we can actually fuel them from product innovation, product feedback, and really understand like, okay, one, what

was the feedback on our existing product or the launch or two, what category should I enter into next? If I want to learn about protein, what's the opportunity in protein that makes sense to us? And then we can ask and see how people are using it, how people are using like protein bars, protein shakes, whatever. And again, we extract deeper data because it's coming from the video. So like, even if they're not talking, I can see that they're holding a protein shake and putting it into like a cup of water or whatever. So what it does is that it provides better insights to fuel true like consumer research. Yeah, I love that. I think that's kind of the basis of social listening over time, even though tech has

changed and everything is just being in the conversations with our consumers. That's so important because a lot of times, especially us as marketers, we're so close to what we're building and promoting that a lot of times we don't think about some of those questions that consumers have or the ideas or the likes and the dislikes. And so having a tool that kind of goes beyond, again, that typical copywriting listening that we're doing is so huge to to hear some of that sentiment around our brands. And it's crazy that oftentimes, again, if you're a big company, you might have a bigger

team, but it's always down to the social media marketer to synthesize that insight. It's just like how. We all know it's important. Now we're lucky that the new leadership is like Millennials that understand social But it's just like you really have to synthesize a lot of data and extract that information And so you really have to rethink about how we can power Socialist in different ways to do your job, right? Comes analytics community whatever you need to figure out a way to like scale that up much more efficiently.

And that's why I'm super excited because it truly is the product I wish I had when I worked at Apple. And I really hope it really supercharges people work and like provide some powerful data to make better decisions on their brand or even enable them to, to scale like better relationships with their community. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you guys, um, also just have a really awesome blog on your website. And so I was, um, scrolling through and I found a blog just about some metrics

and things that we're paying attention to nowadays and how that impacts our teams in 2025 and beyond. And so I would love to hear from you, just kind of like being in this data driven space, especially in the marketing world, um, in your view, what metrics actually matter in 2025 and which ones are vanity. I know sometimes this can depend on what the campaign objective is or the post objective, but we'd just love to hear your thoughts on that specifically. Yeah. So I don't care about followers.

I know you mentioned that earlier, but I really don't, I just don't think it's, it's, it's great if you want to be an influencer because I think ultimately your distribution matters. But really performance is key, right? So like the views on your video, but also bookmarks are actually an indication of the quality of your content if people care about it. Likes, like it's really just from an individual post performance than the actual owned analytics. I actually think it's really hard for brands these days to optimize for their own content. Like it's actually very, maybe it's just me, but like it's

very rare for people to actively follow brands these days. And especially because my personal For You page is based off of my own personal interest, you're really designing off of like the content experience. And I really care about really the performance of an individual post and if it reached a certain engagement or bookmarking or likes, that's an indication that we built content that resonates with people. I don't necessarily care about the follower count. I think it doesn't translate to any real value at the point. So I really focus on just post-performance independent. No.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The follower count thankfully hasn't been hasn't been a, as much of a thing for many years and I'm really thankful for that. And obviously brands are now tapping into more micro creators and, um, just building long longevity with them. And we're even seeing two brands like create influencers, quote unquote.

So finding someone with talent or an excitement for a specific topic and elevating them through that versus someone who's an existing creator, quote unquote. So I just love how the space is changing and I think it'll continue to change. We actually just grew from that. We were very simple. We've grown 100% organically and I decided to only put my eggs in like one basket, which was in just because like, I knew if I hired someone social and expect them to do all channels, like I'm

not going to get a good output because one specifically on TikTok is a different skill set than LinkedIn. So I made a really good bat where our head of marketing, she's also what we call like a LinkedIn influencer. And between her and our content, that's actually what helped us grew. And it's very unusual for tech because all of our leads have been 100% inbound. I don't even know an outbound motion, that's not my world. And so we just fully bank on the content creation that we have. And I don't really care about my own follower growth, but I know from an individual performance

when I post about a product, it's getting high engagement that's actually correlated to signups and demos. So I only care about just individual performance, and that actually is correlated to ROI for us. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. And LinkedIn cannot say enough about that. Like brands need to be pouring more into LinkedIn. I mean, you're a media company,

you have to be on LinkedIn. Like, I actually tried to do the sexier thing early on and tried to focus on TikTok. And we actually did decently well. Like we were growing our channel, like performance was good, but it wasn't attracting like our actual like persona because we brands. Then one day I decided to post on LinkedIn,

and it drove like 100 leads into and I was like, what have I been doing? And then I decided to switch gears and only focus on LinkedIn. I'm like, all right, I guess I should, I should have just started here. So right, but always optimizing and always pivoting, right? Like that's okay, too. It's good to like test channels. But if it's not the place that you should be pouring all of your energy into, it's okay to pivot. So I think that's great.

Yeah, just like focus on the platform that's actually driving growth. And I think sometimes you want to do everything, but it's like, no, but where is your actual actual personas out? And obviously, that's LinkedIn. And I, I don't know. That was, that's something I know, but fundamentally I was just like, Oh, but tick talk is like where the fun content is. I'm like, actually it doesn't really matter. Like it needs to be, you know, we're, we're, we're that. So, yeah. LinkedIn can be fun too. It's okay. Yes. Megan, I'll have to have you back later to just talk

more about social listening and just future insights as you continue to build plot. But I want to switch gears really quickly here as we get ready to close out and ask you about leadership. Just as you're building a team, you mentioned you're millennial. Again, we're having more and more millennial leaders stepping up and guiding teams and building companies. And so I would just love to hear like just a couple things that you've learned about leadership while building and

scaling your team. Yeah, I love this question. I, someone actually asked me this recently, especially like in building a startup and like, we actually had like a pivot early on and now we found our thing and it's great. But in leadership in general, or just like anyone who's thinking about entering into the new career or anything, or if you want to just like move people into your company, it always has to anchor into like the why and like why you exist and why you like built the company. And when I reflect back early on to our company, you know, we pivoted once, but my why has

always been so near and dear to my heart. Like it really was like, how can I bring creativity back into the role that I really love? And I was really bogged down into like bullshit work. And I just felt like this industry was so backwards. And that has anchored me into decisions across the company but it also helped me recruit people because they're like, yes, like this is what I felt at in my own career and like being able to really fundamentally

understand your why is important to you for you to navigate decisions, right? And I know that sounds really simple, but I meet a lot of tech founders who actually think about that after they go through this like brand exercise and say, what is your mission? What is your position? I'm like, how did you not start off with that first, right? Like you start off with like a hack, and you're like, this is a good problem. And then you hire these brand people to figure out your why. And I've always been the reverse where it's like,

I can't start something until I know why I'm doing this because you're gonna be in this game for like 10, 15, 20, whatever years, right? And that has helped me anchor decisions across everything in the company when it comes to like the products, the people we recruit, how we recruit. And so I always advise that where it's like,

when you're starting a company, think about why you're doing this and what you're solving for and what your mission is, and then it can help you navigate through any pivots or anything that happens. And our mission still stands true today, even when I started at this point two, three years ago. But it's still something really important to me, and I'm glad that it's starting to

shape in what I've envisioned in terms of our mission. Yeah, such a good reminder. Thank you for sharing that. Of course, I have to know too, where can we follow along with all things plot and also your personal channels? You mentioned LinkedIn. What's the best place to connect with you online? LinkedIn is, is great. Um, we're super active there.

And then I'm slowly getting back into tick tock. So I'm doing that, but you know, that's, that's a slow roll, but I got, I got like a couple of posts and it did really well. So now I'm encouraged. But I'm mostly on LinkedIn. so that's probably the best. Awesome. And then Plot's website is? Plot, PLOT.SO. Amazing. Okay. I'll have everything linked below too. Please go check out Plot. And also just as a marketer as well, the branding is amazing. So you'll appreciate that as well,

but also the tool itself, of course. So yeah, Megan, thank you so much for joining me today. This was so wonderful. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate your time and I appreciate just like the opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. We'll have you gone again soon, so stay tuned. All right.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future marketing happy hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at marketinghappyhr.com.

Thank you again and I'll see you next Thursday.