What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
My position is the Practice Lead for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) at NorthStar Solutions Group (NorthStar), a strategy realization firm comprised of six practices with EIM being one of them. EIM’s mission is to provide data-driven decisions and actions that lead to better strategy realization. Social intelligence, which includes social listening, plays a pivotal role in our mission. By integrating social intelligence with traditional qualitative and quantitative data, organizations can obtain holistic stories that allow them to make better decisions more confidently. Our suite of standard, customized, and bespoke data, analytics, and insights solutions includes social intelligence solutions such as Social Intelligence Staff Augmentation, Enterprise Social Intelligence Optimization, Social Media Ethnography, and the Marketability Scorecard. All of EIM’s solutions are designed to deliver the right solution at the right time at the best value.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
Since my first job at Deloitte right out of college, I’ve essentially been part of three emerging industries: cable, digital/”dot.com,” and social media. In the 1990’s, I spent several years in the cable industry when cable advertising and cable network distribution were in their earlier growth stages. In 2000, I joined the “dot.com” era by being an early employee at a venture-backed startup that introduced online sampling to the world. In 2007, I became fascinated with how social media was being seen as a source of organic insights to transform marketing research, which led to my co-founding a social intelligence company in 2008, GeeYee. Since GeeYee, every job I’ve had from IBM to Merkle to Ipsos and now NorthStar has been in a leadership role involving integrating social intelligence into business practices across multiple industries and diverse data points to help companies make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.
What’s been the project you’ve been most proud to work on?
There have been many projects in my career that I have been proud to work on but the one I’m most proud of thus far is the SportsPro 50 Most Marketable Athletes (50MM) project. Since joining NorthStar, our team has been applying social intelligence thought leadership to SportsPro’s annual 50 Most Marketable Athletes (50MM) list that has resulted in “the most extensive assessment of athlete marketability ever undertaken" and has “transformed 50 Most Marketable Athletes into a market-leading, data-rich resource for the global sports industry.” Our team did two things in 50MM this year for the first time in the list’s 14-year history: (1) Applied a market research approach of viewing brands in a product category to athlete brands in a sports category to ensure that the most comprehensive, holistic, and inclusive list of global athletes was considered; and (2) Integrated qualitative research in the form of a social media ethnography on four of the model’s 16 drivers which helped validate and articulate in a more in-depth, contextualized, and substantive manner as to how and why athletes were ranked higher or lower than others. These innovations not only enhanced the 50MM project but also led to the launch of the Sports Marketability Scorecard, that has enabled athletes, teams, and sports leagues to optimally tell their marketability stories, thus expanding their sponsorship opportunities.
What’s the biggest misconception about your work?
The biggest misconception I’ve encountered is the expectation that target audiences can be easily identified within social data. Many organizations do not initially realize that social data encompasses a wide range of audiences including comments from consumers, articles from journalists, and press releases from brands. Part of my role is to educate clients about the diverse nature of this 'marketplace' of conversations. I also guide them in deploying solutions that effectively pinpoint and discover their target audiences within the vast amount of social data. Doing so not only clarifies this misconception but also helps clients appreciate the significant value of integrating social intelligence into their decision-making processes.
Any nightmare clients? Why? (No names)
Throughout my career, I've been fortunate to work with a diverse array of clients, each bringing their own unique needs and challenges. Though I wouldn’t characterize any of my client experiences as a nightmare, I've learned that even with the best of intentions, client relationships can encounter difficulties if there's any ambiguity about what is and isn’t included in the project's Statement of Work. It's critical to ensure alignment on project scope right from the start. Moreover, maintaining strong communication throughout each phase of the project is crucial for keeping the client's satisfaction levels high. Even when a project appears to have been a resounding success, I've found immense value in soliciting client feedback at its conclusion. This practice can uncover areas for improvement, however minor, that can enhance client trust and lay an even stronger foundation for future project success.
Is there anything that you’re doing with social data that you don’t see others doing? Any missed opportunities?
In my collaboration with market researchers to integrate social intelligence with traditional qualitative and quantitative research, these key challenges have been identified. First, market researchers need to explore, visualize, and understand the organic insights from B2C or B2B target audiences discussing any topic in any time frame in social media to complement their question-led primary research. Second, they need to meet their data integrity requirements of having their audiences identified and their unfiltered behaviors, attitudes and characteristics analyzed at a near 100% level of accuracy. Third, there has to be a large enough audience identified and analyzed to be statistically representative. Finally the audience insights need to be synthesized and visualized in order to seamlessly integrate them with their quantitative and/or qualitative research findings. The Social Media Ethnography addresses these challenges so that market researchers can learn the lay of the land, understand target audiences, and optimize language for marketing messaging and content creation. Some of the ways market researchers are applying the Social Media Ethnography include developing more precise hypotheses; improving questionnaires for quantitative and qualitative research; problem detection research; market structure analyses; brand health tracking; product concept and use/name testing; and media planning.
Who has made a lasting impression on you? Any SI heroes?
Stephen (Steve) Rappaport has been the most significant influence on my career in social intelligence. Our paths first crossed in 2008-2009 when I was co-founder at my first social intelligence startup, which was honored with a “Great Mind Award” by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), where Steve served as the ARF’s Head of the Knowledge Center. Since then, he has been an invaluable mentor to me. Steve's trio of publications has served as a beacon for both my personal journey and the broader social intelligence community. His books, Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation, Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations Into Business Advantage, and The Digital Metrics Field Guide: The Definitive Reference for Brands Using the Web, Social Media, Mobile Media, or Email, have profoundly shaped our understanding and application of social intelligence in business. His work continues to inspire and guide professionals in our field, making him a true hero in the realm of social intelligence.
How do you think the social intelligence industry will evolve in the next few years?
Based on my experience, there are many organizations that have invested in social intelligence tools but feel overwhelmed in not knowing how to optimally use them, how to integrate the social intelligence data, and what to do with the insights obtained. In the next few years, I anticipate the social intelligence industry will evolve in two fundamental ways to meet these challenges:: (1) through applying best in class marketing research methodologies to holistically integrate social intelligence insights with traditional quantitative and qualitative data; and (2) through effectively integrating generative AI technologies into both the technology platforms as well as the best in class processes employed to integrate social intelligence with traditional research methods. These developments will increase the adoption and effective utilization of social intelligence platforms; facilitate the integration of social intelligence into the daily operations of most if not all departments in an organization; and help decision makers more effectively by improving their top and bottom lines and getting closer to their customers.
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