What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
Director, TRUE Global Intelligence
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I started as a general research analyst at a PR agency in Chicago, then quickly pivoted to focus on social listening, analytics and intelligence early in my career. This was when the discipline was first gaining momentum, and I was intrigued by the ability to utilise what was then a “new” research methodology to get to the core of what people think and feel, put a structure to unstructured conversations, and provide a new point of view to our clients that they weren’t used to having access to previously. My passion in this area has grown over the years, particularly as social research methodologies have become more commonplace and evolved to be key in integrated data understanding. In my current role, I work with very talented colleagues to continue pushing the boundaries of how and when to use social intelligence to solve our clients biggest business and communications challenges.
What’s been the project you’ve been most proud to work on?
Our team is currently doing some social intelligence work for a global pharmaceutical client, which is being used to inform patient engagement documents - these essentially provide a holistic guide to the patient experience across a number of different disease states and therapy areas. This project, and most of the patient and healthcare-related work we do, really inspires me because it’s intrinsically linked to helping drive impact among patient populations.
What’s the biggest misconception about your work?
That social data is completely unrepresentative of the way individuals think and feel. While there is truth in the fact that not all communities are online, and certainly not online where traditional social listening has taken place, I do find that utilising social intelligence methodologies gets us 80% of the way to an answer faster and cheaper than other research methodologies. While I agree it is not perfect, it can be definitely undervalued.
Any nightmare clients? Why? (No names)
Not one in particular, but I think there’s an ongoing educational piece that needs to be done with clients around the difference between outputs of social intelligence tools and technologies and translating that information into useful insights. While data outputs from tools and tech help us tell a story, it will always take human interpretation to make sense of what it means and how it can impact a business. Combatting the misconception that insights are ready at the press of a button is an ongoing challenge!
Who has made a lasting impression on you? Any SI heroes?
I owe nearly my entire social listening career to my very first social listening mentor, the late Don Bartholemew. He was a pioneer in social listening and digital research and intelligence during my time as an analyst in the early 2000s (hope I’m not dating myself!), and took time to teach me the fundamentals of social listening while helping me to realize my potential in this field. He was brilliant and innovative and I was really lucky to know and work with him.
How do you think the social intelligence industry will evolve in the next few years?
I think we will be able to analyze bigger social data sets, faster. Our team is already using Generative AI platforms to help synthesize information, understand themes and trends, and shortcut our time to insight. This can lead to the ability to identify trends quicker and democratize social intelligence more broadly - which I think is very exciting for the field.
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