How did you get into social intelligence? What was your career path to your current position?
I was leading customer experience and e-commerce programs in financial services and in 2009 was fortunate for the opportunity to help build a world-class social media listening program. I had always enjoyed working in the digital space from the early days in online news to online learning and then e-commerce but social media had redefined the consumer landscape and I knew I had to be part of it.
What's your proudest achievement of your career to date?
Building an end-to-end integrated social intelligence capability at a large financial institution. It provided a critical social media capability at a time when the company needed it the most. It also enabled leaders to easily connect with consumers and culture in a direct and real-time way that wasn't previously available.
How is your organisation using social data to support business decision-making?
Social data is being used daily to better understand consumers' unprompted needs and wants and inform decisions at the local, regional and global levels. Simplifying, streamlining, and scaling how social data is being used with test and learn approach to increase engagement, awareness, and share best practices.
Looking into 2022, what are your expectations for how social intelligence is going to support your organisation?
I expect social intelligence technology to further enable the ability to connect consumer conversations with additional datasets to help analysts answer critical business questions and provide actionable recommendations.
What's your view on how to develop social intelligence and get organisational buy-in?
Social intelligence has the opportunity to prove and earn that buy-in every day given the real-time availability and cost-effective access to consumer culture and conversation. I recommend taking the time to educate key stakeholders and ensure they are able to actively experience social media conversations and insights being shared.
What piece of advice would you give to others working within organisations doing social intelligence?
Make it a priority to connect social intelligence to specific business impact and align social data points to meaningful business metrics that are already used across your organization.
Where would you like to see the discipline of social intelligence going in the future?
I would like to see social intelligence practitioners continue to develop their digital storytelling and business acumen to further help drive actionable results by influencing business decisions.
What would you say to business leaders about why they should be incorporating social intelligence into their growth strategies?
Social intelligence is a vital and proven capability to quickly and effectively identify consumer growth opportunities and drive meaningful actions with business impact. If you are not working with social data today it is not too late to get started.
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