Speaker Corner: Airbnb’s Jasmine Atherton, Head of Social, Americas

By: Sophie Maerowitz

November 10, 2017

As anticipation for the 2018 Social Shake-Up Show builds, our goal is to go beyond the head shots and bios and help all of you Shake-Up fans really get to know some of our amazing speakers. This time we bring you Airbnb’s Jasmine Atherton, who leads the company’s social media for the Americas and who’ll be speaking at the May 7-9, 2018, Social Shake-Up in Atlanta.

Jasmine Atherton, head of social, Americas, Airbnb

Social Shake-Up: What does your typical day look like?
Atherton: My day to day might include looking at cool creative, like social videos, or brainstorming ways for social media to be a part of our upcoming initiatives. I spend time with our insights team to review data from active campaigns and decide how to implement learnings for new content. I also look at other brands on social and keep a finger on the pulse of what people are consuming and engaging with.

Social Shake-Up: Can you give us some 2018 predictions for social media and digital communications?
Atherton: More and more platforms are providing people with tools to be creative and “make” (e.g., Instagram Stories). Users are now all makers. Brands will start to build and create around these tools, further enabling their communities in ways that tie back to their organizations.

Social Shake-Up: What does your team at Airbnb have on the horizon?
Atherton: If I told you it would take all the fun out of launching it into the world! ?

Social Shake-Up: Top tip for measuring success on social?
Atherton: Create a system where you can equalize data across different channels and content types. It will allow you to compare apples to apples and make quicker decisions that inform future content plans.

Social Shake-Up: What’s the most important social media lesson you learned this year?
Atherton: Let the algorithm play a role in your team’s decision making process. Platform algorithms can inform your team what length of content people want—what types of photos work better than others, for instance. It takes personal subjectivity out of the equation and allows for audience preferences to rise to the top.

Social Shake-Up: What’s your favorite trend on social right now?
Atherton: I’ve loved seeing how Twitter is becoming—really, continuing to be—a place where people have fun debates. The Google vs. Apple burger emoji, whether #280characters is a good or bad thing, etc. A good reminder that Twitter can be a place where brands can experiment and have fun.

Follow Jasmine: @jazmalek