Social Intelligence Stories that Caught Our Attention: Volume Three

Here’s the stories that caught our attention across the web week of 29th April.  This week we’ve got collecting social data, major events talking social listening, humanity and insight, and where social intelligence fits into research schedules.

Collecting Social Media Data For Research

In this article, Jason Radford, CEO Volunteer science and visiting researcher at Northeastern University discusses the different ways you can collect social data.  Radford argues that in access to API’s are becoming increasingly curated and the available data from APIs is shrinking. In the article, he discusses data gathering methods from manual to APIS, web-scraping and do it yourself.

Major Events Talk Social Listening

The social listeners were out in force at Social Media Week New York and Social Day 2019 [London] last week.  It seems like a week does not go past without another event where social listening is a feature.  While the advice remains relatively basic, and still, in part, very focused on social data for social media, it’s great to see the industry conversation continuing.

“If you’re not measuring and not listening, you’re literally throwing a dart at the board and hoping for the best.” @julio_e_silva from Google on the importance of social listening in running #socialmedia channels and campaigns ??#SocialDay19 @social_day pic.twitter.com/zXAsAeXbj5

— After Digital (@AfterDigitalUK) May 2, 2019

We're with you Julio. But we can't help but think we need to push further.

Seth Godin’s keynote at #SMWNYC19 seemed to go down very well, and like we discussed last week, questions if just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean you should.

“Beware false metrics. If a media platform wants to show you a metric, it probably doesn’t matter to you. Just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean you should.” - #smwnyc19 @smwnyc pic.twitter.com/AWAk6Waotc

— Bailey Gannett (@HayBailes97) May 2, 2019

And, Linkfluence’s session around human insight and moving out into the consumer insights team seemed to go down well too.

Marketer first, geek second: @linkfluence evangelist @benjaminduvall uses an AI/human hybrid model for making the leap from social listening to actionable insights in order to understand the cultural trends that influence product choice. @socialmediaweek #SMWNYC pic.twitter.com/dztuBZZC9z

— ThoughtMatter (@ThoughtMttr) April 30, 2019

Recovering Humanity in Research and Insight: Standing in the Way of Control

“We all need to understand people insights as opposed to consumer insights… You are a consumer of products for two to three hours a day.  The balance of time you’re living as human beings; as a person with hopes, anxieties, aspirations and so on” (Stan Sthanunathan, SVP Unilever UK)

In this article by Emmet O’Briain, he talks about the balance of interpretivist research and quantified, automated and standardised research.  With the world moving towards the latter research mode, what should we be prioritising with social intelligence research?

Swiftly followed by…

The Role of Social Media Insights in Research Schedules

In this article, Emily James discusses how to fit social intelligence into different types of research schedules.  She argues that for the money and effort that businesses spend on research, working through a full spectrum of research (including social intelligence) will generate more valuable customer insights.  The up-side of this? Return on investment through informed decision-making and improved business orientation.

‍