What does social intelligence mean to you?
To me, social intelligence means letting curiosity drive how we form communications strategies so that they are truly aligned with what our key audiences care about – thus ultimately generating impactful insights. We must genuinely listen to and respect our audience communities while at the same time keep in mind the broader context in which people communicate with each other online as well as the media environment. While I may have my client’s goals in mind when I leverage social listening towards a particular objective, my job as a social intelligence expert is to figure out what my client and their audiences plus the wider media landscape have in common and identify how we can align our messaging in a way that is simple and resonant.
What are you doing that no-one else is to drive the social intelligence industry forward?
While I don’t come to social & media intelligence with a more ‘traditional’ background in data science or PR/marketing work, after 10 years in measurement & listening, I’m uniquely placed to be able to approach the work as someone who thrives on finding connections between different narratives, data sets, and objectives. In university I studied literature and remain deeply passionate about it. What do Shakespeare and social intelligence have in common? An understanding that what you see at first glance might give you one impression, but on digging deeper you can identify unexpected connections to other areas and come out with a more complex understanding of how to understand people and ultimately change hearts and minds.
It's the year 2030: What does the practice of social listening look like?
As people continue to diversify their online footprint – moving away from just Twitter and Facebook, for example, to now a very large roster of social media apps – and as the social media landscape becomes increasingly unstable, social intelligence professionals will also need to adapt. Five years from now, I think we’ll increasingly be looking towards qualitative analysis that digs deeply into niche online communities rather than big-data sources that try to quantitatively pull everyone under the same umbrella. We’ll need to be nimble in where we get our insights from and more sceptical of how much we can trust platform metrics to show us what is truly trending.
What is the most common question you are helping your clients answer?
“What is my share of voice? How much do my audiences know about me relative to my competitors?”
I think the fundamental error we make with this question sometimes is thinking that number of mentions is everything – while in reality what influences audiences is much more nuanced. Today, audiences get their information from a much broader array of sources rather than primarily traditional media and maybe a social media post or two. Nobody online today is sitting there totting up how often they’ve seen a company mentioned and then using this as a way to evaluate what they think of that company; quality of coverage, sentiment of mentions, change over time, and other metrics measuring how much a brand resonates with audiences is so much more impactful than just a straight counting of a brand name. While measuring and identifying these factors is more difficult than a quick share of voice analysis, it is so much more rewarding in terms of genuine insights.
Have you got a favourite social intelligence use case or case study from the last year?
It’s a bit of an usual case study, but in the last year we had a really interesting opportunity to look at the conversation around prevention of human trafficking. It was fascinating to see the wide array of discussions on the issue and upon further digging we ultimately came to the realisation that most of those bringing up the issue didn’t actually understand what it involved or what it meant on a practical level. So while there was a lot of polarised terminology being thrown around, there was a fundamental lack of understanding among general audiences and therefore a big opportunity for education on this important issue, which was a huge learning for us and the client.
They say to be great you need to read around your subject – what are you currently reading or your favourite book and what insights have you been able to apply to your work?
I’m a huge fan and follower of some forward-looking culture and tech writers, which help me to think creatively about how online communities form, how cultural movements start (or stop), and what is up and coming in the online media environment. I regularly read newsletters from: Ryan Broderick, Charlie Warzel, Casey Newton, Taylor Lorenz, Anne Helen Petersen. I also closely follow just about everything 404 Media publishes. They all reinforce in me a desire to be open to online culture – no matter how opaque and strange – and a willingness to think critically about the future of what the internet looks like, from the ongoing acceleration of AI to how influencers are preparing for the potential US shutdown of TikTok.
If you had to share three emojis that summed up social intelligence, what would they be?
If:
🌱 = my core audience community
⛅ = the media and cultural environment
🏆= client objectives
Then:
(🌱+ ⛅) / 🏆 = social intelligence
What advice would you give to a brand who wanted to create an internal social intelligence team?
Consider a diverse team who can have a strong perspective across qualitative and quantitative insights as well as those who come from different backgrounds. Hire not just social-media gurus or intensive researchers, but those who can work between those spaces to translate the number crunching and deep internet speak towards clear insights that make a difference. Having an understanding of a wide array of cultures, perspectives, and voices means that your social intelligence team can really pay attention and listen to audiences – and that will make a bigger difference than you think to your bottom line!
What are you looking forward to in social listening for 2025?
I feel like we are very much in the midst of a huge change to how social media works and what role it plays in personal lives, wider culture, and politics. I’m extremely curious to see where this all goes and what things look like once the dust settles. I have some predictions myself, of course, but at the rate of change we are experiencing today I’m sure we’ll find ourselves in a very different place than expected at the beginning of 2026.
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