Social intelligence: back to basics

If you’ve been working in a particular industry or department for a while, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details of your specific challenges. When that happens, it can be helpful to go back to basics. The Social Intelligence Lab founder, Dr. Jillian Ney, recently took us back to the basics of social intelligence, explaining some of the most common hurdles, and also how smaller companies can get involved.

What is social intelligence?

Social intelligence is a “byproduct of people’s social media engagement.” It can be anything from major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to really niche community forums on Reddit. According to Jillian, “It’s all of these online interactions that people are taking within their daily lives.”

“Understanding those conversations and the richness of the conversations, and how people are talking and engaging with each other. That, I think, is what social intelligence is,” she added.

Social listening vs. social intelligence

The terms “social listening” and “social intelligence” are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference. Social listening is about monitoring and listening in on the conversations that are happening. This could be about a brand, a subject area, a hashtag, or anything else you want to find out about.

On the other hand, social intelligence is about the strategic use of social data alongside other data sources and research sources to answer a specific problem. As such, social intelligence provides more actionable insights to inform and guide strategies.

Marketing lead the way

There are a few different ways in which social intelligence is introduced into an organisation. And it’s usually through the marketing department or the insights function.

According to Jillian, she initially believed that if insights teams were generating social intelligence data, then the discipline would be incorporated across the organisation quicker. However, it’s actually the marketing function that’s been able to get the rest of the organisation on board with social intelligence.

“They’re doing great work there and the insights folks tend to try and keep the insights to themselves,” she explained. “Marketing is more agile…ready to spread out,” she added.

How do small companies get involved?

While the approach may vary based on how small the company is, the first step is to approach management to work out the burning questions they need answered.

“Where is it that they’re looking for support? Then go in, look at the data and try to answer these questions with social data as a form of market research,” she explained. The need for insights may be from the marketing teams, executives, HR, or even from the product or brand.

“So there’s lots of different ways [to approach it] and it’s [about] finding that one question that you need to go in and have a look at. It doesn’t always have to be about your marketing communication. It could be something completely different.”

Hurdles

Like everything else, social intelligence also comes with a few hurdles. According to Jillian, one of the biggest hurdles is getting executive buy-in and helping to establish the value of social intelligence across the board.

“It obviously depends on the organisation and where the person who’s trying to get this into the organisation sits,” she explained. People in different functions of the business may have an entirely different way of looking at social intelligence. For example, certain departments may not see the value of likes and shares they got on social media in how it affects the overall business outcome.

To address this major hurdle, Jillian explained how The Social Intelligence Lab has been working with Listen + Learn Research, which specialises in social data analysis. “We’ve been looking to try and reshape the communication around social intelligence,” she said.

“We’ve been starting to build everything up and relate it to the business outcomes so when we go to senior leadership, we can talk more confidently around what it is that we’re doing rather than that one little case.”

So, with social intelligence, it’s often helpful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. By starting with the important question of what the business needs, you’ll not only produce more useful insights, but you’re more likely to get support from the wider organisation.

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