What does social intelligence mean to you?
Social intelligence is a powerful approach for understanding the thoughts and experiences tied to your brand. It can also serve as a “canary in the coal mine” to help unlock areas of opportunity for product enhancements and brand voice before crisis occurs. Understanding how people feel about your brand or product before you have a reason has proven to be the most authentic and relatable way to meet your audience where they are, and where they may be in the future.
What skills do social listeners need to succeed?
Agility and Flexibility - things change and move quickly, we must always be at the forefront of the “now” and beyond. With this often comes the ability to reprioritize.
Storytelling - developing cohesive narratives across a variety of audiences with varying degrees of social media use/understanding.
Ability to Establish One’s Own Work/Life Balance - it can be exhausting sifting through the current events of the world, and turning those into meaningful insights that drive meaningful decisions. It's critical that we as humans, take time away from the media to ensure we are bringing our best selves to the table.
Biggest challenge to social intelligence adoption in brands?
The biggest challenge I’ve experienced is guiding businesses toward what to “actually do” with the social insights once they’ve been compiled and delivered. It’s easy for organizations to treat these findings as ones that are “good to know”. The best way to combat this is to kick off the discussion ahead of any research with questions to better understand not only what your audience wants to learn, but also, what they plan to do with the information as it relates to their goals and objectives. This not only establishes rapport as a practitioner, but it also creates a process for direct and indirect feedback of future studies after the fact. The internet is a big place so we want to be sure we're spending our time on uncovering findings that yield outcomes beyond situations that are truly just “nice to know”.
Favourite use case for social intelligence and what decisions can the insight help support?
It’s hard to pick an absolute favorite, but the first one that comes to mind is leveraging social media data for competitive analysis. From my experience, understanding how users feel about your competitors’ product opens the door for your brand to fill the gaps that aren’t being met across the current landscape of offerings, regardless of industry. Pairing this with sources like app reviews (where applicable) or traditional research methods such as UX or consumer insights helps paint a broader, more meaningful view of a consumer’s journey before, during, and after using your product. Doing so can ultimately lead to increased relevancy when it comes to brand voice, capabilities, or overall placement/positioning.
What piece of advice would you give to those looking to do more with social data than just brand tracking or campaign monitoring?
Lean into the adjacencies of your organization. Don’t be afraid to reach out to additional sectors of your organization such as customer service, product, and even senior leaders to gain a greater depth of perspective when it comes to what’s on their mind strategically about the present and future. Doing so empowers your organization to move quickly, as social data can be used as a meaningful indicator without having to scope/fund/wait on the completion of more traditional research methods to obtain directional answers for product improvements or brand messaging. Social data is also a go-to for identifying opportunities to start authentic and relatable conversations with your audience to establish credibility in understanding their needs, versus the traditionally reactive approach we’ve seen historically.
Gen AI in social listening: hype or helpful?
Gen AI should be treated as a slice of a broader social listening strategy. While it can help narrow, classify, and ultimately uncover/summarize broader themes, it is the responsibility of the practitioner themselves to validate the data. Gen AI, in itself, should not be used as a substitute to traditional workflows, but rather as a complimentary optimization enhancing the speed at which meaningful insights are delivered. This is especially true when it comes to preparing insights in a way that resonates with one’s specific audience, with that audience’s proximity to social data in mind.
If we could grant you one wish to help your social intelligence practice succeed, what would you ask for?
I would ensure I have a “seat at the table”, which from my experience, is a two-way street between the practitioner leveraging their expertise to guide the business to what they should know, not limiting the insights provided to the initial “business question” posed combined with the organization's willingness to learn. Being a “master of anticipation” when it comes to the needs of your stakeholders can expedite the establishment of this seat at the table as communicating effectively across multiple business functions is often an overlooked art. The need for this seat is so crucial as once it’s confirmed you can leverage it to start influencing your industry outside of your organization.
If you were to start your social intelligence team from scratch what three things would you do first?
Meaningful Job Descriptions - develop and implement accurate job descriptions that transfer beyond your organization. It’s your responsibility as a leader to ensure your people are set up for success even beyond the time they spend in your organization. This includes capturing transferable skills from data analysis, to crisis monitoring, to the innate ability to blend research methods into one cohesive narrative.
Road Show - get yourself out there, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your tech stack around your organization. Showcase the ins and outs of how social media data can be used to answer current questions, and gain interest from potential stakeholders about how the data can be used to solve future challenges.
Accessible Documentation - from data caveats, to platform restrictions, to how to best get in touch with your team, the easier you make it for stakeholders to interact with you in a way that yields value toward their goals, the more likely they are to return for more insights removing the “mystery” that can be tied to social listening as a function. This can be in a shareable hub, and/or an appendix item in live presentations.
What are you looking forward to in social listening for 2025?
I look forward to the continued shifts in consumer behavior that drive platform prioritization when it comes to where they go to consume content. I find the evolution of how information travels across the globe fascinating, and 2025 is sure to be a year that reinforces the importance of ensuring the accuracy of what we’re consuming prior to making business decisions with that data. I also look forward to witnessing the ongoing evolution of the definition of what it will mean to “produce content” in an AI-driven world.
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