Get to Know Apryl: Head of Innovation at SND

Ever interview one of your co-workers? And I don’t mean like ‘let me interview you for the job,’ but more like let me really get to know them because you find them

Apryl’s hilarious ice-breaker exercise at a recent team meeting!

Ever interview one of your co-workers? And I don’t mean like ‘let me interview you for the job,’ but more like let me really get to know them because you find them so interesting? I have!

Since the day we hired Apryl Pilolli at SND, I think I’ve asked her a million questions. And I’ve learned so much with every answer.

I feel really honored and privileged to work with Apryl. She was a total trailblazer while working within the Publishing & Broadcast Industry, she stays on the cutting-edge of everything technology related and let me tell you this, if Apryl doesn’t know something, she will FIGURE IT OUT. Determination could be her middle name…but it’s not. If you keep reading, I’ll tell you what it actually is.

Super excited to introduce your to our new Head of Innovation at SND so you can get a taste of where we’re going with this!

Tell us about your background, I love that you pride yourself on having done every job in Publishing & Broadcast: So, funny enough I started as a newspaper photographer when I was 16 years old. It was my first job and I was very nosey and inquisitive. Perfect attributes for a reporter. I shadowed everyone one I could at the paper and learned as many skills as possible from photography and reporting to illustration to layout and design to web design. I carried that desire to learn through my entire career of 20+ years. That has led to me having jobs in sales, marketing, content, analytics and product development for TV, radio and newspapers. I love to investigate, figure things out and solve problems.

You saw the potential for social revenue early on, tell us about being a renegade in that space: Ha! I don’t know about being a renegade, but I hated seeing our social posts being given to advertisers as “added value”. I was determined to show it was valuable and would produce effective results that clients would pay for. So I worked side by side with our sales team to build solutions and use data to show that social media would effectively drive people to purchase products and services. That was more than 8 years ago, back when we used to “poke” people on Facebook.

If a media org isn’t dabbling in making money on social media, where would they start? When getting started, I recommend matching your social offerings to the solutions you are already selling. If you offer on-air weather sponsorships, add incremental dollars with upsells that include your Facebook Lives or Facebook videos on demand as part of that sponsorship. If you are doing contests and promotions for clients, add social to the offering for additional dollars (don’t give it away!). Integrating a social offering into your current solutions will make it easier for your sales team.

When you were fully entrenched, what did you find challenging about the revenue side? Education was far and away the biggest challenge. Social moves fast and it is hard to keep everyone up to date on the best practices when they change every week.

If you could summarize the perfect tool to take clients to the next level without giving away trade secrets, what would it be? Oh that is easy, it would be simple to use but drive powerful results. Plus, I wouldn’t need to login to six different tools. It would be one tool to rule them all.

Professional is cool – but let’s get personal! Tell me three interesting things about yourself in 20 words or less. I am a huge dog lover, significantly dyslexic (which is a good thing) and I got to interview Morgan Freeman once.

And how about that middle name? Well, my family and friends say it is “hard-headed”, but in truth it is Anne after my grandma.

So, there you go. The best part about Apryl is she’s so approachable. I think she’s often the smartest person in the room, but has the gift of making you feel like you are! If you want to drop her a note, do it! She’s always up for saying hello to our awesome clients. Reach out to apilolli@socialnewsdesk.com.

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