Stay ‘one jump ahead’ of the competition through social listening and fan-centered content

Thom Lytle is senior director of social business at Dell. He leads the marketing team responsible for managing all aspects of social media for Dell Technologies, Dell and Dell EMC. Most recently, he managed social media activities in support of Dell's $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corporation—the highest-valued tech acquisition in history. Before Dell, Lytle spent 10 years with EMC, where he established and led its social business team and launched social and community programs. In addition to his social media focus, Lytle was the lead evangelist and co-host, alongside EMC's chief marketing officer, of "Launch Pad," an innovation-focused investment program modeled after NBC's "Shark Tank."

Josh Margulies is director of marketing for the Jacksonville Jaguars, overseeing grassroots, digital and email marketing, along with social media and paid media. He led the team to record social media growth and harnessed its robust analytics department to drive unprecedented ROI for ticket sales and marketing campaigns. Prior to joining the Jaguars, he was vice president of marketing for the Arizona Coyotes.

Melissa Marchionna is the director of social media at Major League Soccer. A strategic young executive with a more than 10-year track record of leadership and innovation stretching across all areas of social media and content strategy, her mission is to ensure women can prevail in an inclusive and progressive sports industry. Marchionna is responsible for spearheading the overall direction for the league’s social media department, which she successfully developed into one of the top in professional sports. Her growth strategy, combined with launching new partnerships with both Facebook (2017) and Twitter (2018) for live-streaming regular season games on the platforms, resulted in MLS growing its social media followers by 963 percent since 2013, the highest growth rate among U.S. professional sports leagues.Marchionna and her team of more than five full-time editors were recognized by Sports Business Journal as “Best in Social Media” in 2018 and by the Shorty Awards in 2017 for “Best Instagram Stories.” Prior to MLS, Marchionna spent a year with the New York Jets, where she spearheaded creation of programmatic social media content. Before that, she was part of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ award-winning new media team for three years, where she oversaw the team’s digital media strategy.

Ryan Delgado is the manager of digital marketing for the Tampa Bay Rays, where he oversees all social media strategy and posting for the official Rays accounts, RaysBaseball.com, Rays emails and the Rays app. Delgado is in his 3rd season with the Tampa Bay Rays, tasked with best leveraging all Rays digital properties to represent the club. He has had previous experience with the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and Major League Baseball.