What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I am a Research Executive at Strive Insight (aRadius company) in London.
At Strive, we have an in-house AI-powered netnography solution that blends the breadth and depth of social / online data and AI’s scalability. As part of this, I use aspects of social listening in the majority of the projects that I work on. I combine social listening with human research skills to offer help on all aspects of a project. It proves useful for proposal write-up as it allows us to gain a deeper background understanding of the topic / client at hand, and also as part of wider desk research, or to enrich the primary research we conduct.
What attracted you to social listening?
The possibilities of what you can learn about people online are endless - even if what they say is not a true reflection of them, that is an insight in itself. The potential to develop insights on real-time sentiments and behaviours seemed like a natural way to research even before I entered the industry. It is something I utilised at University, often writing my papers using social media data. The nature of unstructured social data and translating this into commercial insights fueled my interest in cementing the newer methods we use at Strive.
What’s the hardest thing you have learned or a challenge you’ve overcome? How did you do it?
The hardest challenge I have had to overcome is learning the ever-changing technology landscape i.e., trying to develop enough technical expertise alongside understanding social research methodologies, in a space where everything is constantly evolving. Getting to grips with coding to use our in-house tool, learning how to use other tools, as well ensuring the ethical use of data has been a challenge, but I think has helped me become an overall better researcher. This has all been overcome through experimentation, training and collaborating with my colleagues.
What’s your career highlight to date?
My career highlight to date is my involvement in the development and implementation of Strive’s in-house AI-powered netnography solution in which social listening plays a major role. This initiative has played a role in having our team speak at MRS events as well as offer a new, exciting research offer which has been a success with our clients so far.
What key skills do you need to get started in social listening?
Curiosity and an interest in how peoplec ommunicate - whether this be with each other or about certain things be it social opinions or about products. Over the last two years, I have developed an understanding of various tools that help source, scrape and translate social data. With the help of my colleagues, I have also developed skills that help me see the viability of data and
how best we can translate it into actionable insight.
Is working in social listening what you expected?
Yes definitely, and more. The work we have done in-house has allowed us to develop the capabilities to analyse 100,000s of comments or conversations, from various different sources, at once. The constant evolution of new technologies and methodologies make it a compelling area to work in. I think the ability to understand consumer behaviour and opinion through social data cannot be underestimated and I’m excited to continue developing my skills and my career within the space.
Is there anyone in the industry you look up to?
I think all my colleagues are inspiring butI’d like to give a special shout out to those I work with specifically in the AI and social listening spaces. From the very start of my career, they have supported my interests, given me space for experimentation and helped me build my skill set to succeed. They all have contributed to this space themselves -special shout out to Pat Collins, Giuseppe Tonolini, and Jenni Forbes.
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