How did you get into social intelligence? What was your career path to your current position?
Honestly, I got into Social Listening by accident! Prior to social listening I was working in consumer insights and during my time at Kraft Canada, the senior leadership started discussing social media listening. There was some knowledge and subscription to Radian6 but no one has actively explored the capability of this source of data. Luckily during that time, the Director of Consumer Insights at Kraft HQ in Chicago started showing interest in social listening, exploring different vendors and capabilities and working on incorporating the insights with other data sources. And they needed someone at the Canada office to do the same. I put my hand up and the journey began. I flew to Chicago, met various vendors, understood the capabilities, attended multiple trainings and brought back all the learnings to Canada to kickstart formal integration and uptake of social listening within the organisation. During that I realized how much I enjoyed this field and have stuck to it since!
What's your proudest achievement of your career to date?
The proudest achievement to date is building a Social Media listening strategy and framework for the organisation I am currently working with. When I joined the organisation 4 years ago, there was nothing with respect to social media listening - no strategy, no reporting, no uptake, and even no knowledge of what it is and how can it contribute to the company vision. I built the entire framework from ground up, right from onboarding a vendor, creating an appetite for this by doing demos and trainings across the organisation, building a strategy, reporting, dashboards etc.
How is your organisation using social data to support business decision-making?
There has been a lot of interest and improvement in the uptake of social data in the past couple of years. And now, social media data and insights are not an after thought to any new campaign, product ideas, product launches, etc. but I get a set at the table during the initial brainstorming sessions. From exploratory research on understanding consumer to building product strategies for coming year, social data is actively consumed.
Looking into 2022, what are your expectations for how social intelligence is going to support your organisation?
I am hoping that social data will be utilized for exploratory research during the year. There was some appetite for that in the previous year, though not at a level where I would like to see it being used and I am actively working on educating the stakeholders on the same. Similarly, one of the areas I am working on is inclusion of social data in various primary studies/ research that my organisation does on a quarterly and annual basis. The idea is to incorporate another viewpoint on consumer perception using social data
What's your view on how to develop social intelligence and get organisational buy-in?
Education and training! Being proactive with educating stakeholders on how social data can enhance their knowledge and how can it help them is the key. Organise as many informational sessions as possible and showcase 'what is in it for you'.
What piece of advice would you give to others working within organisations doing social intelligence?
• Be proactive, and reach out to as many people as you can. A lot people don't know about it, so be the educator.
• Talk about soicla intelligence and the advances it brings to the company at each step of the way. Your competitor did something cool on social, quickly showcase it to the relevant stakeholders.
• Build visual dashboards which showcase data and insights.
• Build a cadence of sharing social media nuggets with your stakeholders.
• Go Above and beyond with data insights sharing.
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Where would you like to see the discipline of social intelligence going in the future?
I would like it to be at a place where 'Primary Research' is within various organisations. With increasing emphasis on data and insights, it will be great if organisations think of social intelligence as a key source of data similar to other sources.
I would also like it to a forethought rather than afterthought, similar to what McDonalds is doing with their social intelligence.
What would you say to business leaders about why they should be incorporating social intelligence into their growth strategies?
This is where future is! The stats on the amount of time spent and engagement on social media speaks for itself.
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