What does social intelligence mean to you?
Social intelligence means understanding culture and human behaviour through the ways they communicate and express themselves online. Importantly it’s not just traditional social media platforms but anywhere people discuss things, be that forums, blogs or reviews. It’s a huge source of invaluable data, plus it’s unprompted so even better!
What motivates you in your work? What makes you want to keep working in social intelligence?
Working in a multi-method agency, social intelligence and unstructured data online is a great way to enrich our understanding across projects. It’s also fast-moving and at the forefront of technology (AI, NLP etc.) which means the industry is growing in relevance and rapidly developing, which keeps it really interesting.
What do you think makes you successful in your work?
Maintaining a flexible approach to data, understanding that different sources provide different types of insights and skews towards different demographics or communities. Approaching social intelligence this way allows you to find deeper, more relevant insights.
What are the key skills that have contributed to your success?
As well as a general curiosity in culture and human behaviour, not being afraid of experimenting with methods or starting again. Sometimes you can find signal through the noise really fast, other times it takes a lot of trial-and-error which means you have to be flexible and open-minded.
What makes social data special compared to other data sources?
It’s unprompted for starts and rich: communities form organically around shared interests and beliefs, which allows you to study them almost as a digital anthropologist. There is a space for every interest and passion somewhere online!
What does being a social intelligence pioneer mean in the context of your work?
Constantly bringing new perspectives and methods to my agency and helping others to understand the value from social intelligence. As there’s not much of a blueprint for how best to do it (apart from the SIL!), it means being innovative and trying lots of things out. There are so many ways to approach a business or research challenge through social intelligence.
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