Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Yaron Hubin Plimmer, global social media manager at EF, on building a socially conscious brand:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Carlotta Pico from The Content Mix . And I’m excited to be here today with Yaron Hubin who is global social media manager at EF Education First, and has over five years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome Yaron. And thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 0:33
Hi Carlota. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Carlota Pico 0:36
The pleasure is ours. I can’t wait to start this interview. Just so that our audience has a little bit of context about you and what you do, could you talk to me about your background, about EF Education First as well, and how you got into your current role?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 0:51
Sure. Yeah. So a bit about my background is that while in university I actually studied history and politics and studied my passion there. But once I was there, I set up a small company with a friend of mine. And we were working with startups, working on business development strategies and looking for some funding for them. But after countless conversations I started to realize that in fact, the digital strategy was one of the biggest things that was omitted from the plan, right? People weren’t putting so much importance into that. So I actually joined another company that my friend founded, which was a small boutique social media agency, with the sole purpose of working with small businesses and startups, and really working closely on developing that social media strategy and how to give them that sort of edge in their industry. And that was really cool. We traveled all around Europe, giving a lot of cool conferences working with so many different styles of startups and businesses. But when I finished my last year of university, I found this amazing opportunity back home with EF Education First as an intern, so I took it and one of the most awesome things I really enjoyed whilst being there was the amount of responsibility they gave you actually and the freedom to work on so many different projects. So from the very get-go you were involved in campaigns, influencer marketing, social media listening, analytics, and so forth. So I decided to take up the full time role after university. And that’s how I ended up with the Education First and for those wondering about EF Education First, it’s the world leader in international language travel. So we’re a travel and education company with over 52 destinations offered in 12 languages, but we also have lots of different products like high school exchange, tours etc.

Carlota Pico 2:57
Okay, so how exciting. So you’re a politician slash historian turned entrepreneur and now a social media expert. What a diverse background.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 3:07
I should probably update my LinkedIn bio description. But funny enough, it’s actually whilst doing history in politics that I actually wanted to get into the field of marketing, because I realized early on that it’s rather important for entities or organizations or companies to really control that narrative, right. And once you’re able to control that narrative, you have so much more space to work from when it comes to either engaging your audience or reaching new audiences. But it really is important to get that basics right. So that’s actually the sort of shift as well from politics to marketing in my mind.

Carlota Pico 3:45
Yeah no, I completely get that I actually started off my career in government relations and PR. And the reason that I went into marketing was because of how important I found it to be for governments to communicate with their audience, which in this case is their citizens. And later on, I started doing corporate communications and also brand marketing. So I completely understand where you’re coming from when it comes to tying politics to social media. Okay, as a global social media manager, what goals you set for your social media accounts, and how do you determine success?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 4:21
Yeah. So several things. I mean, when it comes to our social media accounts themselves, one thing that we or I personally really like to look at is reach, engagement and the collection of UGC. Of course, when it comes to reach when we’re talking about the organic strategy across social media, we know that it’s capped if you’re a business, so that Facebook just wants you to spend more money. So one of the biggest KPIs I look at is if we can beat the average reach in general. I think also with a very strong engagement rate, you will, increase that reach as well. But you do foster that sense of community as well. And when it comes to the accounts, which is something that’s very important to us. And it’s also very important for the algorithms on social media. So if you’re interested in social media success, definitely focus on that. But also UGC, as I mentioned, we’re very much a people’s company, we send students all over the world to, you know, take part in these inspiring life changing courses. So the UGC that we collect we need to really think about how we collect it, how we send it to our visual design team, we turn it around, and we post it straight away. Because that, for us is an important metric in determining just how authentic our social media channels can be at the end of the day, and so that people can engage with something that is authentic and close to them. Right?

Carlota Pico 5:53
And so by UGC, just for audience, you’re referring to user generated content?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 5:57
Exactly.

Carlota Pico 5:58
Yeah. I saw and when you’re looking for user generated content, you’re really hoping to receive content that’s authentic and that is in line with your brand and your voice?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 6:11
Yeah, I mean, again, I think it’s quite interesting because our voice, so to speak, is really the experiences our students have. And so we’re quite lucky in that sense. But we have a global ambassador network. We work a lot with influencers, macro and micro, and also the students that we send is really a key strategy in the user generated content collection, that we asked them to, you know, use those hashtags or send in those pieces of content and it’s in any form. It’s people jumping out of planes for the first time, it’s testimonial content, it’s them talking to their school about EF, it’s lots of different things.

Carlota Pico 6:49
Okay, what an exciting job Yaron! Let’s take a closer look at social listening. What is social listening and why is it important?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 6:58
Social listening is a tool really that allows you to kind of deep search, anything to do with certain keywords that’s happening on the digital space, it also allows you to have a really deep understanding of your performance as well on social media. So to give you a rough idea, for instance, if we’re interested in our brand, we would put in the keywords associated with our brand. And it would pull up all the sort of conversations that are happening online, about the EF brand and we’d be able to determine, you know, whether things are positive, or whether things are negative. We can track in real time, that change in sentiment. And we can also find influencers that are talking about the brand, which is a very neat trick. There’s lots of different things you can do. And, you know, it goes from understanding brand sentiment to crisis management, to crisis prevention, and so forth.

Carlota Pico 7:57
So it sounds like an excellent tool. What do you use in order to monitor your channels when it comes to social listening?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 8:06
So at the moment, we’re using the partner company of Hootsuite, which is Talkwalker. But there are a lot of different social media listening tools out there that are worth checking out. For us, we are working with Hootsuite at the moment. So it was it was a good tool to start working with.

Carlota Pico 8:24
Okay, excellent. So I was on the EF Education First LinkedIn profile, and EF Education First has over 300,000 followers on LinkedIn. How do you or would you manage customers giving negative social media reviews about your services or about your programs?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 8:46
It’s a great question. I think the way you manage negative reviews in general is by talking to people as if their opinion matters, right? And I think that’s what people want. So a lot of times, we’ve managed to completely de-escalate situations just by listening, by then coordinating with the teams that we have to, in general, what we aim to do is turn something around as quick as possible. There was an interesting piece of research that suggested that, you know, people expect an answer to a negative review in 24 hours. I think that’s way too generous. I think people expect an answer as soon as possible, especially if you’re a global brand. So, I mean, that’s what we aim to do. We also aim to reach out personally, to sort this out as soon as possible. So working with your relevant teams is definitely something important to us.

Carlota Pico 9:41
Okay, so your strategy when it comes to negative reviews, it’s really about listening to your customers, and letting them know that you’re on top of whatever their comment is, and you’re doing your best to provide them with the best solution going forward. Just like really looking into that and having their back Giving them a response as quick as possible as opposed to like waiting 24 hours because realistically, I mean, these millennials and generation Z are impatient. We all are. So I would include myself as a millennial. And I mean, the faster that a brand is able to respond to me, the happier I am usually.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 10:19
For sure. And I think we’re reaching a time in social media where, you know, we don’t make the distinction that it’s a company anymore. We engage with companies as if they’re just friends or fellow people, right? So you send that message, you want something back as soon as possible. Otherwise, you get that slight irritation, like when someone reads your WhatsApp message and doesn’t respond, right?

Carlota Pico 10:40
You read my mind.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 10:43
Oh, no, no. Engagement is extremely important for us on social media.

Carlota Pico 10:48
Okay, Yaron. Moving into your brand management experience. I want to talk a little bit about the recent Black Lives Matter movement and brands from around the world response to it. Do you think brands should react to social issues on their social channels? And if so, what type of brands? In what manner? And why?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 11:08
Yeah, I think that especially today, depending on your audience, of course, but people are expecting that companies have a stance on something. And as I mentioned before, I think we’re not just businesses at the end of the day, our audience or customers expect that we have a set values and that we’re committed as well to, you know, leaving the planet in a better place than we found it, so to speak, it sounds kind of cheesy right. But I don’t think it’s a matter of which brands or which sectors can get involved and which shouldn’t. I think the line is very thin and companies, if they have something to show for it, then they should definitely commit to saying something or taking a stance. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of companies issue statements that are blank and vague in support of some things. When in reality in the background, there isn’t really anything that they’re doing to improve a situation. I think that from a brand perspective, that’s extremely dangerous because people are not stupid. And they can they can find that out for themselves. And so from an online reputation perspective that can backfire very, very quickly. So my advice would be when it comes to social justice, or social movements is that you make statements that you can back up with a claim or with some sort of action history that you’ve done as a company, right?

Carlota Pico 12:34
Yeah, definitely. Now, I do want to talk a little bit about COVID-19 as well. Some brands have decided to address the issue head on and other brands have gone radio silent across their social media channels. How has EF Education First reacted to COVID-19 across its channels?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 12:54
Yeah, so in regards to our customer engagement on social media, our whole business is travel, international travel. So we’ve had to make sure that we’re extremely responsive to people’s questions and problems. So we’ve been making sure that we’re there in that sense. And when it comes to our social media content that we’re pushing out, you know, it’s been more let’s not focus on traveling right now, but it will come back and we continue to try and inspire as many people to think about the future, right. And we’ve also been working with a lot of our local stakeholders including our schools as to social distancing methods, how to create masks, so there’s always there’s also been that fun element to it. And in addition to such we’ve come up with a lot of different style of content that people can enjoy whilst at home. So for instance, we had an explore the language series, in which we took we took our audience, you know, from the comfort from the palm of their hands around the world to all across our destinations, we taught them how to make Costa Rican coffee, how to make local Italian cuisine, so on so forth. And so for us, it was still about engaging our audience, letting them know that there are still ways to enjoy international cultures whilst we’re not traveling at the moment, but also, you know, keeping them inspired for the future.

Carlota Pico 14:24
I love that pivot strategy. I had the opportunity to interview the global social media manager at Skyscanner. And I asked a similar question. His response was very similar as well that although right now, people aren’t able to travel because of the health crisis, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t able to connect with each other over digital, over technology. And that one day, we all will be able to travel again and the new normal will possibly be a different but more exciting type of normal because traveling has always been exciting. But now I think it’s just that much more exciting since we can’t do it. So the day that we’ll be able to jump back on an airplane will be like discovering the world all over again.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 15:09
No, and you can see that right? A lot of people were still writing to us, you know, saying we can’t wait to travel again, when is this school gonna open or any news on this? So the excitement was there. But I think what’s really important, regardless of the good times, the bad times is that we need to keep in mind that humans are extremely social creatures, their narrative-based, storytelling-based and so whatever content whatever the times, if you can kind of tap into that and trigger some sort of humane responses to the content you’re putting out there. I think as a brand on social media, you’re doing well, and that’s something that we were trying to do during these tough times.

Carlota Pico 15:46
And I love how you’re humanizing your channels as well. You’re very much aware that on the other side of the computer, there’s a human, a human with emotions and human with stress. A human with anxiety is human with just so many different characteristics and personalities and that you’re addressing these humans in different ways, according to your services, your programs, but more than anything, just letting them know that you have their back and that you’re going to be constantly engaging with them, because you’re in it for the long run and not in it just for a quick win.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 16:19
Yes, for sure. I mean, that’s what we try to do. And I mean, the audiences that we have are, you know, past students. So we definitely want to keep that vibe strong, but also customers, potential future customers, right. So we want to make sure that they understand the sort of experience they’re going to get offline. And also, one thing that’s extremely important is that like, today, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of content, which is the equivalent to the Statue of Liberty. So we need to make sure that we, you know, we stand out somehow that we kind of navigate through this content pollution, I call because not everything is relevant to the average social media user. And we need to make sure that we somehow become relevant right to the person that is looking at the content. So again, good times or bad times that’s what we tried to do during COVID.

Carlota Pico 17:09
My eyes definitely popped out with the Statue Of Liberty comment. Let’s finish this section off with a practical example which social media campaigns have you admired lately? And why?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 17:22
Oh, interesting. I tend to think that simplicity is key and anything that kind of triggers a some sort of response is really cool. So from the bottom of the barrel I really enjoyed that Burger Kings campaign, which was, I don’t know if you remember, the banana that was sellotape to the wall in the basil world in Miami.

Carlota Pico 17:40
Now, please describe it for us. Let’s imagine it.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 17:44
So this banana was sellotape to a blank canvas as part of a portrait and it was it sold for $120,000. And so taking on the hype, Burger King very simplistically, just took a picture used a picture of the banana and put the price tag of the banana and then put a french fries salad taped to a wall and wrote one cent, you know. So that was that was extremely popular. I thought it was brilliant. It was comical. It got a lot of social media attention. But then on the other end I’m a big fan of the content or the campaigns that KLM run in general, I have to say today my favorite campaigns they’ve run are two, one of them was during Christmas in which they set up a table in the middle of the airport, and the table would only release the food when 12 people, 12 strangers sat down and had a meal together. And of course you can imagine this was like wildfire. It was emotive. It was it was very nice. And in addition to such they also went round before people were boarding their flights and they were asking them about their story. You know, who are you visiting? What are you doing? And it really drew out some very, very beautiful stories that we all as travelers could relate to. So no, I have to say I have to say KLM is definitely up on my list of favorite campaigns, whatever they do is fantastic. I think in general, if you want a smart campaign that works, you need to understand how people operate. And we are driven by emotions, and even the coldest person will react to something that is emotional right? And I think I think that is key. And they do it very well.

Carlota Pico 19:28
Yeah. But I mean, talking the talk is a lot easier than walking the walk. So although I think a lot of marketing professionals from around the world understand that they need to create emotions through their campaigns. I think it’s a lot easier said than done. And just hearing stories like the one that you were just talking about is quite inspirational, very admirable of whoever created those strategies.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 19:52
Well, I highly recommend that you go check out our Christmas video. Actually, we did something similar. If you want I’m happy to tell you about it. So during Christmas, we have a lot of long term students that don’t go back home. Some are in Hawaii, for instance, and to travel back for maybe a week is not economically feasible or for whatever reason, right. So what we decided to do is we went to a couple of students’ houses, their parents’ houses, and we filmed a Christmas message for them. And then we on the other end, we asked the student to come into a room. And on the laptop in front of them was the Christmas video from their parents and family, basically telling them we miss you, we’re very proud of you and so on so forth. And then they were greeted with a nice gift that we had organized with a lot of local delicacies from where they were, but also from back home. And the idea was that wherever you are with us, we’re your home away from home. So you can imagine there were a lot of tears flowing at the office while we were editing this video, but…

Carlota Pico 20:58
Yeah, no, you’re gonna make me cry I just like literally touched my heart because I was overwhelmed with emotions just listening about the campaign

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 21:08
Well, you can check it out on our Instagram, it’s there.

Carlota Pico 21:11
Yes, we will definitely link it for audience will be able to click on that link and check out the campaign themselves. Beautiful. Okay, moving into a set of rapid fire questions which are basically your recommendations to our audience to get this section started off, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration. So for example, a professional role model or an influencer that you admire?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 21:36
Yeah, I think in the field of marketing, I’m very lucky to have a great boss very inspirational in that sense, but also at the beginning of the beginning of my marketing career, Gary Vee definitely was one of them. I think there’s a lot of useful content there, especially about content marketing and his approach is very refreshing.

Carlota Pico 21:56
Okay, yeah. Are you looking for a promotion?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 22:00
It’s okay. My boss is watching .

Carlota Pico 22:04
I’m just like right now. Okay, and what about a book or publication that you’d like to recommend to our audience?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 22:13
Yeah, I think my all time favorite is Sapiens by Yuval Harari. I think the focus on understanding the way the human works is key to understanding how social media users operate. So definitely recommend that book and you just draw the parallels to marketing.

Carlota Pico 22:31
Okay, and last but not least, what’s your favorite app at the moment? And why?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 22:37
What’s my favorite app at the moment? Oh, that’s a great question. I you know what I’m gonna stick to maybe traditional but I’m really enjoying Instagram at the moment when it comes to the social media apps. So that would have to be it.

Carlota Pico 22:51
What makes Instagram so enjoyable at the moment?

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 22:55
I think if you if follow your interests, you follow people that inspire you and create good content, it’s very hard not to like that app. But you need to take the time to curate it very well, I’ve realized that. Yeah, I think also with their push now with more vertical content, a lot of brands are posting great stuff there. So you end up spending more time on Instagram than you do on YouTube, at least myself.

Carlota Pico 23:20
Well, I’m a big fan of Instagram myself as well. I probably spend at least 30 minutes a day just scrolling through my friends stories and photos. And it’s a great way to just keep in touch with my network as well and see how they’re doing. Although I am a big fan of YouTube, so everybody watching us check out our podcasts. And Yaron thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you and to learn about your experience and social media and across all the different hats that you’ve worn.

Yaron Hubin Plimmer 23:54
Yeah, thank you. The pleasure was mine. Really. Thank you

Carlota Pico 23:57
And to everyone listening in today. Thank you so much. 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. Have a fabulous day and see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai