What does social intelligence mean to you?
To me, social intelligence means utilizing social and internet data to drive business decisions. Although that may sound a bit generic, in the big scheme of things, it is all about answering a business question…and social data provides an incredibly rich, authentic, nuanced, and timely source of intelligence to understand consumer behavior and inform these decisions.
What skills do social listeners need to succeed?
I’d have to start with analytical skills — I think that is a must for any role that requires you to process large amounts of data and distill it into ‘a story’ you can tell. But I’d argue that curiosity is just as important. Curiosity is critical for understanding what’s behind consumer behavior — not stopping at the first answer and continuing to ask “why” until you find out what is really driving that behavior.
Biggest challenge to social intelligence adoption in brands?
I think sometimes brands focus too much on reporting metrics when the most valuable insights from social intelligence often come from nuggets that reveal nuanced consumer behavior or contextual details that add color to broader business themes.
Favourite use case for social intelligence and what decisions can the insight help support?
One of my favorite use cases is analyzing industry trends. For example, we have a cool dashboard that tracks what we call ‘intent to travel,’ which keeps a pulse on consumers’ travel intentions and identifies their stage in the customer journey (e.g., dreaming, researching, booking). This measurement provides deep insight into consumers' intentions and what drives their behavior. For instance, it can tell us a consumer’s desired destination (e.g., Japan), the reason they want to travel there (e.g., anime fandom), when they’d like to travel (e.g., summer), and what type of trip it is (e.g., solo travel). These insights help inform our marketing strategies, allowing us to create targeted content that resonates with our audience's interests and timing.
What piece of advice would you give to those looking to do more with social data than just brand tracking or campaign monitoring?
I would suggest listening very closely to what your company and senior leaders are saying is important (e.g., during quarterly earnings calls, town halls, all-hands meetings, etc.) and find ways social intelligence can provide insights around those topics. For example, if your CEO is telling analysts that the focus next year will be expanding into a new segment or region, then laser-focus your efforts on helping the company better understand that new segment or region.
Gen AI in social listening: hype or helpful?
There’s certainly hype, but I think there’s little doubt GenAI will be transformational. We are already using it to summarize mentions, cluster topics, build better queries, even if some functionality is still lacking. I can only dream of what it’ll be like in a couple of years, in five, ten…
If we could grant you one wish to help your social intelligence practice succeed, what would you ask for?
Hahaha. If I could have one wish, it would be to access all the data I want without constantly worrying about the restrictions social platforms impose on us. I think the practice is doing amazing work, but I can only imagine how much more we could be doing if we could easily access and analyze all the data on all platforms. One can only dream…
If you were to start your social intelligence team from scratch what three things would you do first?
I was incredibly lucky to do just that five years ago at Hilton, and I feel very proud of what we have accomplished. I’d say getting buy-in from leadership at the outset, demonstrating early on that we can add value beyond crisis/brand monitoring, and being meticulous about finding the right talent for the team—people who shared my passion—were critical to laying a strong foundation for our success.
What are you looking forward to in social listening for 2025?
On the bright side, I’m excited about more advanced AI capabilities, better video, audio, and image analytics, and more predictive insights. However, I’m also hoping that critical changes at the largest social media platforms will not negatively impact our work. For instance, will TikTok continue to operate in the US? How will Meta's decision to remove fact-checking and loosen content rules affect user trust and brand engagement? Will X/Twitter continue to lose users and scare brands? Will Reddit’s efforts to monetize its platform compromise its community feel? We are surely heading towards an interesting 2025…
Get Social with SILab
