Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Justyna Ludwiniak, who is senior global social media manager at Luxoft, on how to create a successful social media campaigns:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi everyone and welcome back to The Content Mix. I’m Carlota Pico, and I’m excited to be here today with Justyna Ludwiniak, who is senior global social media manager at Luxoft and has over 10 years of experience in marketing, and communications. Welcome, Justyna, and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Justyna Ludwiniak 0:35
Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me.

Carlota Pico 0:38
It’s our pleasure. Justyna, I’d like to ask you a little bit about your background. How did you end up being a senior global social media manager at Luxoft? What brought you to this to where you are today?

Justyna Ludwiniak 0:50
So I always wanted to be a journalist, but it never happened. But I had the quick, short journey being a radio speaker, it was my actually first real job. But after this episode, I decided to study public relations and communications. And during the studies, I started to work in a PR agency. I worked in a few, actually. And in one of them, I received a task to prepare a social media strategy for our clients. And that was it. Actually, I thought at that time that it will be something I would like to do in the future. So doing social media. And I changed this PR agency for the digital agency just to learn more about the social media about the digital campaigns, how to drive traffic on our website, how to measure it and after this after this work, I received a job offer for for their for IT position. It was a self reliance, social media position. And that time I was responsible for that creating social media from the scratch. And I’ve been I’ve been working in IT industry for the seven years now. So after that company I started to work for for the Luxoft.

Carlota Pico 2:28
Okay, how exciting. So what is Luxoft?

Justyna Ludwiniak 2:30
Luxoft it is a service, IT service provider, worldwide. We have different line of businesses like automotive, financial services, healthcare and life science. Yes, so, that’s what we are doing on a daily basis.

Carlota Pico 2:50
Okay, excellent. And what about skills? So let’s talk about the skills that you need to be efficient in your role. What type of skills are you—would you look for in a new hire?

Justyna Ludwiniak 3:01
I think that it would be both soft and hard skills. So soft skills like effective communication because I’m working in an international team across the globe, actually, because I have colleagues in in the US, the UK, in Sweden. So, we are working online. So this efficient, good communication is crucial for us. Another thing it would be teamwork, because we would like to work together—having brainstorms…just you know, be close, be close to each other to work on the different projects. So the teamwork, as well. But flexibility, I would say that this is also something which has me to work. And if it comes about the hard skills, I could be mining data because we are doing a lot of digital campaigns. So we get a lot of data from from the campaigns. So we need to analyze it—were using many tools to analyze it, to plan the campaign, to drive the campaign. So, all of the all of the tools which are connected with the campaigns as well. And the knowledge of it, right? So this is what helps me to work.

Carlota Pico 4:25
Okay. The other day Justyna, I was actually reading an article about how important qualities are as well on top of skills because skills at the end of the day, well, you can learn skills, right? But qualities are something that are just ingrained in our DNA and it’s part of who we are. So when it comes to qualities, what qualities would you watch out for, in a new in a new hire for your role? What type of qualities would you want that new candidate to have?

Justyna Ludwiniak 4:53
I think that’s the most important thing it would be that this person needs to be open minded. So social media, the marketing industry, is changing very fast. We have new tools, we have new tactics, we have new forms of apps. So this person needs to be willing to know about the new—about all of the new stuff—which is coming. So I think that this person needs to be very quick at learning. About above all of it, I guess that this person needs to be tech savvy. So interested in technologies because we have technology company. So we have many, many solutions like artificial intelligence solutions, like autonomous driving. We are creating apps for digital cockpits and so, this is something which somebody needs to be interested in and excited about. Like me, for example. So I would look for for this feature in a new candidate for for my position.

Carlota Pico 6:02
They ask those topics makes me really excited as well because in my former life, I was a tech entrepreneur. So anything that has to do with tech stuff and innovation, I’m just—I eat it all up. I love it. I absolutely love it. Okay. I was looking at—are you familiar with Paul Gillan? He’s a social media influencer. And he said actually, the following: “Transparency may be the most disruptive and far reaching innovation to come out of social media.” So Justyna, as someone who breathes and lives social media every day, what are your thoughts on his statements?

Justyna Ludwiniak 6:43
I will start with this, that we are living in a consumer world. That consumers are taking control of what they want to read, what they want to see, what they trust. So the organization which provides the reliable, and trustworthy information, gain more, just like this. So gain more followers, maybe they’re selling more—and this is the question for this for these companies. But I guess that Paul said this many years ago, and so many of the companies just doing it right now. So they are transparent. They have transparent in the communications. If it comes about the social media, we have data right? After the campaigns, we have a data and anybody can see those data. So those data are also transparent. So we have like two funnels of the communication in here. And I guess that this, a great example of of being transparent, I don’t know if you’ve heard about the MasterCard case studies? Many years ago, the MasterCard executive leadership challenged the organization just to change a little bit of…so to transform the b2b financial services guidance, to be a more customer friendly company. They wanted to be just a more friendly company. So they, they’ve created a conversational suit. It was a global engine, which was gathering all the data from from the globe, was monitoring all the conversations about the MasterCards. The issue, the question they asked was, how the people are using mobile payments. It was like the main subject, but I’m talking about that because they got all of this data. They monitored this data, and they applied it to the marketing strategy and the global strategy. So they were listening to people who were talking about the products, and just they—MasterCard—just took it and created something bigger, something bigger. And I think this is a great example of the transparency. So they were not afraid of what people would be talking about them. They were just curious what people are talking about, about the MasterCard and this mobile payments, in this particular case. So the transparency is very important. And I also worked in a company, which transparency was one of the business core values, one of one of the five business core values. So the communication was totally transparent.

Carlota Pico 9:53
That’s so interesting. Well, thank you so much. As a spin off as well, what brands do you think will disrupt the market and what do they bring to the table in the social media sphere that makes them stand out?

Justyna Ludwiniak 10:05
I can tell you that it will be, I don’t know, Starbucks, Tesla, or Microsoft, but I don’t know it. I didn’t know it. I can tell you that the brands will, in my opinion, that the brands who will disrupt the market, it will be brands who are innovative, who are not afraid of using new technologies, new tools, like MasterCard, right? It was many years ago but I guess that the social media listening tool was quite innovative. So I think that those brands will stand out from from the crowd on different levels. So we have many tools which are available and we just need to use it and analyze it and just take everything what we can do, with what we can take from it to become a better company, to be become a better team, to have better performance. So that would be my answer to this question.

Carlota Pico 11:13
Okay. Very nice. And now, moving into a quote from Mark Zuckerberg, who, as everyone knows, is the founder of Facebook. He famously said the following: “The biggest risk is not taking any risk at all. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” On a personal or professional level. Justyna, what risks have you taken that have really paid off?

Justyna Ludwiniak 11:45
I can say that every campaign I drive on social media—on LinkedIn, on Facebook—is a risk. It’s risky, because we have many different targeting options. Our audience is also changing because every day we have new users, right? So every time I launch the campaign, I’m thinking Okay, is this gonna work or I will need to optimize it?” So it’s pretty exciting, right? But it’s not a big risk. But what else? I think I have one thought in my mind…Many years ago—I guess maybe five—we organized an IT conference in Wroclaw dedicated to the developers. And then I was also in the spot—I had social media and social media corner here. And I would like to do something more exciting for for the attendees, something interesting. And I thought that we can just put there a big screen with live tweeting. And I also talked with people, which I work with. “Do programmers, the developers use social media?” And they said, “I don’t know. Maybe Twitter, but not really…” And I was just a little bit stressed, because you know, there would be a huge screen with live tweeting, and then, I will get five tweets, for example. Oh, no. This is not what I wanted to see there. But took the risk. I did it. And actually, it was a pretty, pretty nice effect. Because people were taking photos in it. They were curious how it works. Yeah. because the audience it was developers, so they would like to know how we did that. So at the end of the day, I said, “Okay, it was a good decision to do that.” Yeah, I did it. Just like this. You we cannot be we—shouldn’t be afraid of anything, I guess. We just need to go for it and do it and see what happens.

Carlota Pico 14:22
Definitely, definitely. Time will tell, right? Like Mark Zuckerberg said the only risks is not taking risks at all, right? Yes. And that’s will lead to no change and change can always lead to new opportunities.

Justyna Ludwiniak 14:37
Yeah.

Carlota Pico 14:38
Okay, Justyna, you seem like someone who loves her job. So I do have to ask you, what makes you passionate about social media?

Justyna Ludwiniak 14:49
I think that this quickly changing environment. I hate doing the same thing all the time. So I need to change and be passionate about my work and social media just gives me it. So I think that this would be the most interesting part in social media, for me. And this…and social media are also maybe nothing new, but we have new platforms, right? So you need to learn about it every day, you can just read news, and then just apply this news to your work, right? You can give, give a proposal. Okay, let’s do it. Because LinkedIn, launched a new feature. Let’s do it. Let’s test it. So this is something which which makes me passionate about the world—constant change.

Carlota Pico 15:48
Yeah. Speaking of which, Justyna, from my research, I was made aware that you’re quite good on LinkedIn. Could you talk to me about some of your secrets in terms of outreach campaigns.

Justyna Ludwiniak 16:01
I don’t know if I can tell you my secrets about the LinkedIn. But yes, actually, I love it. I love the campaign manager. I love LinkedIn. I think it’s a really good tool for b2b because I’m working I’m working in a b2b marketing team. So for me it is something which I use on a daily basis, not only organic, as well as the campaigns. What can I tell you about it? I can tell you what content works for me, from my experience on LinkedIn. So definitely it would be the video contents, some unique tips from from the companies. I also promote the magazine because we have our internal magazine, Tech Spark. So we promote many things and we just focus on how to show it. So I’m talking about about the visual side, how to show it to our audience, properly, just to make sure that they will read it, they will download it, they will click on the website. So this is something what I’m doing on a daily basis. Managing LinkedIn campaigns is about 40% of my work, I would say. So quite a lot. Yeah, because we have several, like I said before, we have several lines of businesses at Luxoft. And for each of them, we have different marketing managers and marketing directors working on marketing strategies. So for each of them, I’m doing some stuff on LinkedIn. I would say that, yeah. This is my overall experience on on LinkedIn.

Okay—

And I recommend it, and I recommend it for all of the people who would like to start doing campaigns on LinkedIn. This is not a very cheap business, I would say. We need to pay for it, but the tools are great. The region forms, the video content—like I said before—video ads, In-Mail, some direct messages…. it gives us a really, really huge opportunity to get our clients.

Carlota Pico 18:35
Okay, I am still going to pick your brain further on LinkedIn and your expertise. Okay, so let’s talk about LinkedIn Campaign Manager. How does the bidding work, the optimizing campaigns in real time…? Could you talk to me more about that, like, how how do you optimize campaigns in real time through the Campaign Manager on LinkedIn?

Justyna Ludwiniak 18:57
Yeah, sure. So you need to remember that optimization is a day to day work. So you need to look at this stuff almost every day. I’m doing it every day. And just looking what people click, what content works, what doesn’t. So I stop the content which is not working, add another variation of ads, another variation, another form of ads. The same with bidding, right? Because bidding is setting the price for the click. So if I if I can see that, I don’t know, and ad is running very low, so the first thought would be okay, so the bit maybe it’s a little bit higher—too high, for example. So I need to change it, right? And go back and to this tool another day and look if it works or not. So it’s also very interesting because this is something which is constantly changing, right? Because I’m, logging into Campaign Manager and just looking at the data, okay? Is it working or not? Should I change it or just stay with the previous settings? So the same with target audiences…we need to think exactly what the target audience for our products, our services is. It can’t be too big and it can’t be too narrow, because we will pay for it too much, for example, right? So we need to be very careful with with targeting, targeting our audiences. And I would say that this is very crucial for from my perspective, to choose the right target audience because one of the reason I’m doing it is because after the campaign, I have great insights. When I have the reports, I can see exactly what people are clicking on my ads, what jobs or seniority they are, [inaudible], what country they are from. So we have many, many other things which are very interesting because we can analyze it and see how our target audience really, really looks like after the campaign. Yes, so it would be my experience with LinkedIn and targeting.

Carlota Pico 21:40
Very interesting, Justyna. So the LinkedIn Campaign Manager gives the client the data in order to see how their campaigns are performing across LinkedIn, and through that data, then the company is able to optimize the content, according to audiences, targets etc.

Justyna Ludwiniak 21:59
Yeah, exactly.

Carlota Pico 22:01
Okay, we are moving into the next section of our interview, which are a set of rapid fire questions. To get this section started off, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration, Justyna. So a professional role model or an influencer that you just really admire?

Justyna Ludwiniak 22:20
It is actually just the one person that came into my mind. And it’s Gary Vaynerchuk, and the book, “Ask Gary Vee.” He’s an entrepreneur, he’s the CEO of a digital agency. He’s a coach, he is a mentor. So, here’s my inspiration, I would say. He’s very charismatic. So I like him. I like him a lot. And if it comes about the source of inspiration, I like to watch TEDx speeches about related to marketing, related to social media, different ones. Just searched on YouTube—everything is there!

Carlota Pico 23:03
Yeah, me too. I’m a huge fan of TEDx. And now as today’s last question, I’m going to ask you about your favorite app at the moment and why?

Justyna Ludwiniak 23:14
I think that’s TikTok is blowing every other platform out of the water at the moment. So I’m exploring it very carefully, from the business perspective. So the features…new features, they provide, how the influencers are behaving on TikTok. So not for the pleasure… Maybe, a little bit too, because it’s a lot of fun. A lot of fun for me. But for the business perspective, yes, I explore TikTok, right now.

Carlota Pico 23:53
Justyna, I wish we have more time today to talk more about TikTok and what you think about it on professional level for companies. But unfortunately we’re gonna have to leave that conversation for later on. It was a pleasure to have you on The Content Mix. I really enjoyed getting to know you and learning about your experience and your journey so far in marketing, so thank you.

Justyna Ludwiniak 24:14
Thank you very much for inviting me to this project.

Carlota Pico 24:17
The pleasure has been ours. And to everybody listening in today, thank you for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every week, so keep on tuning in. Thanks again, see you next time and have a fabulous day! Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai