What does social intelligence mean to you?
Social Intelligence is a bit of a swiss army knife. It can be difficult to define because it crosses paths with insights and analytics, digital marketing, strategy, and many other disciplines. Borrowing a well-known quote from Margaret Mead about anthropology, I believe that Social Intelligence is at its best when it is answering questions about “What people say, what people do, and what people say they do…” At its very core, Social Intelligence offers impactful research because its primary focus is on people.
Social Intelligence is about translating the weird and unhinged corners of the internet into something more "intelligible" for businesses and brands. From the Grimace Shake to Elmo’s wellness tweet, Social Intelligence matters because it makes sense of peoples’ behaviors in a time that is especially chaotic and culturally fragmented. It helps us understand how folks react to these cultural moments and cuts through the haze of algorithms that distort our view of the world. As a whole, it gives us the ability to zoom in and zoom out on a cultural landscape that is changing on a daily basis.
Why social intelligence? How did you find yourself working in social intelligence?
The first big step toward working in Social Intelligence was an unexpected one. In 2020, the pandemic disrupted my plans to do field work in rural mining communities in the Andes. The new reality shifted my research from rural villagers to the multinational mining company – creating a makeshift online ethnography that consisted of social media posts, sustainability reports, press releases, LinkedIn profiles, and anything else that I could unearth from the mine’s digital footprint.
The second step happened during my postdoc in 2022. While waiting for the main project to kick off, I started helping a team code Twitter data to understand how women were using social media to find help during their pregnancy with Alcohol Use Disorder. This side quest in public health splintered into similar projects on opioid, cannabis, and polysubstance addictions.
In 2023, when the opportunity to work in Social Intelligence eventually arrived, all the unexpected detours started to make sense. Even though my initial career plan outlined a very specific outcome, the actual process had been slowly building up for a seamless and much needed transition into Social Intelligence.
What do you love about working in social intelligence?
There are a bunch of reasons to love working in Social Intelligence. The first has to be how it makes me feel like a kid again. Social Intelligence shows how “big” the world really is and it makes me curious to learn more about it. Second, social listening gives us access to some uncomfortable truths for our brands. It's a challenge to get our stakeholders to take their medicine and hear what folks really think about them, but I enjoy finding ways to weave these findings into the work as warnings and/or opportunities. Third, the industry is still very young and we are fortunate to play a part in shaping what it means to work in Social Intelligence. And finally, much of my experience in Social Intelligence echoes the idea that “no man steps in the same river twice.” We are all well aware of how trends, platforms, and social listening tools are constantly changing. These factors continue to push me to look for answers in new ways and it's been rewarding to see how these dynamics have challenged me to become a more creative analyst over time.
What skills do you think you need to be successful in social intelligence?
There are three areas that – when paired with curiosity and creativity – that help create more successful outcomes for Social Intelligence. The first deals with transforming “it depends” into a more actionable answer. Social media offers messy data and different ideas that make it difficult to understand what is actually happening. To make it useful, we need to be critical of the data, weigh which narratives matter most, and be transparent about methods that influenced the ultimate decision.
The second area involves listening for silences in online chatter. Some parts of online conversations are loud and merit our consideration, but other equally important findings are some of the most quiet ones. In some instances, the silence in a category is so obvious that people don’t feel the need to mention it. In other instances, listening for the silences will reveal what the audience perceives as taboo or off-limits.
The last one centers on quantitative and qualitative analysis. Most folks probably lean in favor of one method over the other. In my case, it's been helpful to upskill in the one that I felt less comfortable with and to continually look for ways to incorporate it more often in my research.
What’s been your biggest win in your career so far?
Not all work is glorious or noteworthy, but it sure feels amazing to catch lightning in a bottle. Several years ago, I pulled together a wild report for some clients that were asking questions about photography. The open-nature of the assignment gave me space to explore. I had fun pulling together strange insights from astronomy and sporting events. Several years removed from doing this research, I still receive emails from the client asking for access to view the deck.
The slow and steady trickle of notifications has been a huge win for several reasons. First, while it may sound a little vain, it's always great to see your work have impact and staying power. Second, there’s satisfaction with being able to bring an insight to the “experts” attention – which in this case – was something that the clients didn’t know that they needed to know. And finally, each email request over the past couple of years has been a reminder to me that I should be creative and curious in my work. The internet is really weird and wild – and when possible – our research should be brave and bold enough to be no different.
What do you think needs to change in the social intelligence industry?
As a newcomer in 2023, I wanted to learn from other folks working in Social Intelligence. One of my early impressions was that there were a lot of social listening tools. At the time, this was difficult because I was less interested in the tools themselves and more interested in hearing from the people using them. After struggling to connect with digital marketing and data science communities, things began to fall into place when I crossed paths with Jillian Ney and The Social Intelligence Lab.
I think the industry will continue to change for the better as it shines a light on the leaders that are doing remarkable work. To be clear, Jill is already doing this with The Social Intelligence Lab and Observe Summit. It’s been impactful to me because folks like Danny Gardner, Matt Koppel, and others have been able to show how they are bringing innovative approaches to social media data. For newcomers and experienced social listening practitioners alike, the industry’s growth will depend on our ability to support each other.
How do you see the industry developing?
One of the next chapters for Social Intelligence will play out in a complicated dance with Generative AI. There are a lot of reasons to be excited for the ways in which AI will help us automate reporting tasks and process large amounts of data in a short amount of time. These factors give us a reason to be bullish, indicating the potential for additional time to dig deeper for insights and unpack culture. Meanwhile, as others have mentioned, it seems reasonable to anticipate more bots alongside a tidal wave of AI generated content. As a whole, these conflicting ideas might suggest that gen AI will change everything and nothing at the same time.
If any of this forecast is remotely correct, I do see the value of our industry deepening for our employers and clients. It is already a challenge to separate the signal from the noise – and if AI generated content makes it increasingly difficult to make sense of culture, brands, and everything in between – I believe that Social Intelligence will be one of the few ways available to understand what “real” people really think, say, and do in a world that is being reshaped by AI.
What are you looking forward to in social listening for 2025?
I am very interested in using social listening to explore podcasts and parasocial relationships. Podcasts like Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience, for example, received much attention during the recent US presidential election. While these recent events added to growing discussions about the influence of long-form audio, the actual impact of podcasts in politics and culture is still unclear.
Social Intelligence is one way to better understand podcasts. The Huberman Lab podcast, for example, helped popularize ice bathes in 2022. In particular, Dr Huberman highlights many health benefits from exposure to cold water. Social listening not only helps quantify the extent of the reach of this idea, it provides visual proof that people are actually doing the polar plunge through images and videos. At its core, the Huberman Lab highlights the degree of trust that folks are placing in parasocial relationships. If long-form audio content drastically can change behavior – enough that folks are choosing to start their day with an icy cold plunge – what else are podcasts capable of doing for your brand? For these reasons, I am looking forward to finding more ways to build podcasts and parasocial relationships into my research in 2025.
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