Nichole Held

What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?

Social listening is one of several essential data sets I manage as 3M’s Senior Media Intelligence Strategist for Corporate Brand and Communications. One thing I’m especially interested in doing with the insights I share is to tell a strong story with the data, and I find social listening is one of the more flexible data sources, allowing me to use it in unexpected ways to fill gaps and meet our organization’s unique and constantly evolving needs. 

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What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?

My background is in education - I studied creative writing, literature, and rhetoric, and spent time as a writing and literature instructor after graduate school. When looking for a change, social listening emerged as an exciting opportunity that would allow me to apply my storytelling and analytical skills in more practical ways.

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What has been your biggest achievement?

One of my biggest achievements was my ability to distribute frequent social intelligence insights to a broad set of stakeholders across our global organization during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. My reporting and insights helped shape aspects of our COVID-19 response strategy, allowing teams to react to the real-time needs and concerns of consumers and healthcare workers that emerged online - ultimately driving stronger brand sentiment and broader recognition of our social intelligence capabilities across the company.

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What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?

I once distributed a weekly social listening report to a wide group of stakeholders across our global organization. The report aimed to inform stakeholders about ongoing discussions surrounding our brand and to identify actionable insights while highlighting potential risks. 

In the end, the report failed because it was trying to do too much for too many people: by including such a broad audience across business groups and geographies, it became challenging to strike a balance: either the insights provided were too specific to resonate with the majority, or the report struggled to adequately cover the diverse interests of our large stakeholder group. I learned to be more purposeful in scoping out my reporting efforts and to be as simple and direct as possible with my objectives in order to drive the strongest outcomes.

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What would be your dream project to work on?

My dream social listening project would involve collaborating with a global humanitarian organization to analyze and understand the digital conversations surrounding a global humanitarian crisis or environmental disaster. By harnessing the power of social data to track and interpret real-time discussions, sentiment shifts, and emerging trends related to the crisis, we could uncover insights to inform targeted interventions, raise awareness, and mobilize support for meaningful action. 

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Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?

No… but yes. I’m in full support of employing wild and exciting new ways of using properly sourced social data - the best part of social listening data is its ability to be applied in innumerable ways. But I think it’s important to allow the data to speak for itself and lead you to a conclusion, rather than force-fitting the data into supporting your pre-existing point of view. 

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Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?

One of my favorite applications of social listening data is New Product Innovation and Research & Development. With so many unprompted opinions and experiences at our fingertips, it’s always fascinating to see what opportunities emerge when you ask the right questions (or craft the right queries!).

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What’s your favourite data source to use and why?

I think reddit is an often overlooked source that is so rich in insights - built-in communities that allow you to listen to unique audiences without defining the conversation, a variety of short and long-form content to fit a variety of use cases, and a really unique and engaged user base. 

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