Social Listening Glossary

Classification of social data analysis technology that allows users to gather and analyse data. AICI technologies can be distinguished from other social data analysis technologies by the ability to import additional data sources from outside and inside the business. AICI technologies offer an enhanced level of automated analysis based on machine learning models across various defined metrics.

A classification of technology that uses natural language processing (NLP) to create a structure that is suitable for analysis or to drive machine learning (ML) algorithms from language/voice-based data.

API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a software that allows two applications to talk to each other. Large social networking sites and other data sources use APIs for social listening technologies to gather relevant data.

Meaningful findings from analysing data that make it clear on what action needs to be taken. Actionable insight is more than reporting statistics, it involves the interpretation of the data to create meaning.

Data from non-traditional data sources. Social data is an example of alternative data. For social listening professionals, examples of alternative data sources may be interview transcripts, satellite data, and footfall data.

The computational analysis of data to create meaningful patterns in the data. Analytics produce a numerical value or statistical result.

In the process of analyzing data AI refers to the process of extracting information from the data.

A group of user accounts on social media (people, organizations, or other entities) that follow a specific brand, topic, interest, hashtag, or identify as being part of a specific group.

The use of niche audience analysis technologies to analyse social data in a bid to identify the characteristics and behaviours of a specific group of people (or audience) that make them unique and connected, and the sub-segments that make up the total audience.

An analysis process that collects all social media engagement from a group of social media users that qualify as being part of a specific audience under study (for example, parents, runners).

The automatic analysis and topic identification of social data by social data analysis technologies.

The creation of reports that collate analysis/information at relevant timings, without users having to seek out the information themselves.

The way in which a person conducts themselves or behaves. This includes the actual expression of feelings, action, or inaction.

‍

Connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results. There are three basic boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT and other more complex operations such as NEAR and *(WILDCARD).

To set an understanding of the project requirements and outputs in order to set a series of instructions and/or expectations of the social listening project. The briefing process helps to set projects up for success.

A graphical representation or visualization of numerical social data analysis findings.

A software application used to simulate conversations with human users over the internet.

An online area that allows users to communicate, usually dedicated to a particular topic.

The grouping of a set of objects (usually social media users or conversation drivers) based in groups that are more similar to each other than to those in other groups.

Shows how data has been converted into variables for the purpose of analysis. Codeframes help to create frameworks that help analysts to meaningfully analyse social data.

A room or other area that is designed to extract business insights by visually monitoring social media engagement through the use of multiple screens displaying findings from various social media sources. A command centre is also known as a war room.

An explanation of what is happening with the data or what can be read in a specific chart. Commentary helps novices understand what the data is trying to tell them. However, commentary is not an example of insight, it is an explanation of the findings of the analysis.

The software-as-a-service platforms that offer social data analysis capabilities.

A term created by technology companies offering AI-Enabled Consumer Intelligence solutions to encapsulate insight that can be found by using such technologies to analyse data. This may also be called Digital Consumer Intelligence. For more information on the professional practice of social data analysis, see the term Social Intelligence.

The information that is shared by publishing articles, images, videos, and other forms of communication in digital platforms. Social data analysts may also refer to content as social data or digital conversations.

A research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within social media data.

The people who publish content on social media platforms for commercial gain and who use creative framing or points of reference in the production of the content to make it unique.

The sub-topics of conversation or themes that make up a topic, hashtag, etc under analysis.

The number of conversations about a specific topic, hashtag, person, or other entity under analysis over a given period of time.

The process of searching and indexing information shared on the internet. Crawling is also used interchangeably with the term scraping.

The analysis of culture, specifically to understand the invisible cultural forces impacting the lives, perceptions, and choices of consumers.

The full experience a customer has with a brand during the whole customer journey. This can include cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral responses experienced by customers during the customer journey.

A map (or journey) that identifies the full experience a person has with a brand or other experience.

The parts of the internet that are only accessible by means of special software, allowing users to remain anonymous or untraceable.

The user interface of social data analysis technologies that display specifically chosen metrics.

An analytics-driven solution that allows organizations to not just predict the future but also understand the impact of potential actions on business outcomes before they do them.

The parts of the internet that are not discoverable by means of standard search engines. It concerns non-indexed and non-searchable content.

A term created by technology companies offering AI-Enabled Consumer Intelligence solutions to encapsulate insight that can be found by using such technologies to analyse data. This may also be called Consumer Intelligence. For more information on the professional practice of social data analysis, see the term Social Intelligence.

The content and other communication published on digital platforms and the responses to them. Social data analysts may also refer to digital conversations as social data or content.

A research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context. It seeks to understand how language is used in real-life situations.

An interface on social listening technologies that are programmed to help users write boolean queries with ease. Also known as a keyword wizard.

The process of identifying and analyzing the underlying emotions expressed in textual data.

A measurable interaction that a person has with content shared online.

The process of appending or enhancing data with relevant context obtained from additional data sources.

The information a company collects directory from its customers and owns.

The ability to see or plan for what will happen in the future. In terms of social data analysis, the data is analyzed to predict future outcomes like trends.

An online discussion site where people exchange information about a particular topic. Mumsnet and Reddit are examples of online forums.

A conceptual structure that is intended to serve as a support or guide to help analysts analyze social data in a way that creates insights that are meaningful.

A social networking site that is a smaller or niche platform that tends to attract non-mainstream users with a controversial or polarised voice. These networks have also been referred to as Alt-tech and have grown in popularity with users with political interests.

A research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of data. It involves the construction of hypotheses and theories through the analysis of data, the theories are constructed from the data analysis rather than using the data to confirm an already established theory.

The analysis of visual data to extract meaningful information from the images. Also, see visual listening and semiotics.

The power to cause a change in behavior, belief, or opinion, or to cause something to be changed.

A person with an online audience who has the ability to impact potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending them on social media.

The process of analyzing social data to find the people, media, organizations, or other entities that are popular with a specific audience or topic.

The data that is created from searching and interacting with search engines, content sites, and other content online.

The drawing of inferences from the facts collected after the analysis of data. It is the process of looking beyond the findings of analysis and applying a broader meaning to the findings, creating meaningful insights.

A quantifiable measure that gauges a company’s performance over time against a set of targets or objectives.

A word or group of words that are used in the narrative of digital conversations or what a user uses to perform a search in a search engine.

An interface on social listening technologies that are programmed to help users write boolean queries with ease. Also known as easy keyword entry.

To use the insight from social data analysis to influence a situation or make a decision in a bid to control what happens.

A technology that scans images and real-time video streams to identify company logos in the images.

A group of social network users (or audience) who are determined as sharing similar characteristics with another group of members.

A class of methods for automatically creating models from data. They are algorithms that turn a data set into a model. Machine learning can be supervised, partially supervised, or unsupervised. ML is related to the concepts of AI and NLP.

Data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data. For instance, it will not provide details about the content of the text or an image.

The analysis of social data to provide a quantitative measurement in relation to your focus of analysis. For example, you may wish to analyze the volume of conversation on a specific topic or compare that against other topics.

NLP is a program that enables computers to understand human language in written and verbal forms by analyzing sentence structure and grammar. NLP is linked to the concept of artificial intelligence.

‍

A form of analysis that helps users to understand the structure of a relationship across social networking site users (or audiences).

The description of what a study expects to achieve from analyzing social data.

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (overt and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence.

Individual social networking sites can often be referred to as platforms. Similarly, social data analysis technologies may be called platforms.

The use of data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data.

The subjective judgment of non-quantifiable data. It deals with intangible and inexact information like subjective characteristics and opinions. It tends to answer questions about the what, how, and why of a phenomenon.

The mathematical and statistical modeling of data. It deals with numerical analysis of data to understand behavior. The output of every analysis can be expressed as a number and is often believed to be ‘hard data’.

A script that uses boolean operators to connect individual keywords in a single query. Social media analysis write queries to retrieve relevant data from online sources that discuss the topic of their enquiry.

A document that presents the findings of a social media analysis to highlight the important information.

An online site where reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products or services.

The process of searching and indexing information shared on the internet. Crawling is also used interchangeably with the term crawling.

Data collected from search engines. For example the phrases, questions, and keywords users are searching for through search engines like Google.

The analysis of search data to understand people’s true needs, motivations, and behaviors by analyzing their search patterns.

The study of how an idea or object communicates meaning.

The analysis of opinions expressed in a piece of content in order to determine the writer's attitude towards the topic, product, or other objects under study. The output is the determination of positive, negative, or neutral sentiment.

Traditionally a measure of a brands advertising share compared to competitors. In social listening terms, the percentage of conversation your brand has generated in comparison to your competitors.

The analysis of social daa to identify patterns of engagement with online content. The output of social analytics is always quantitative, a number.

Content and information that social media users publically share on social networking sites. Social data is often used as a ‘catch-all’ term for data generated through digital platforms that allow two-way communication between users.

A collection of infrastructure, analysis, and applications used to capture and analyze social data.

The insights generated as a result of analyzing and interpreting the findings of social data analysis. For more information on the professional practice of social data analysis, see the term Social Intelligence.

The professional practice of analyzing social media data and other forms of digital conversations to generate a series of insights that can help businesses understand their brand, competitors, markets, people, and society in order to make decisions. The practice encompasses a multidisciplinary approach including hard skills in data analysis, and soft skills to interpret meaning from the data.

A visual tool that has been designed to help social listening professionals improve the development and communication of their social listening projects.

There can be two definitions of social listening: A category of technology that allows users to gather and analyze social media data and other forms of digital conversations with a focus on analyzing the content of the information shared in conversation. The practice of using social media data and other digital conversations to explore how people, organizations, and other entities discuss topics, themes, or other focuses of analysis to find facts and information. The analysis is typically quantitative and KPI-focused to quantify conversation. In a technological view, social listening technologies are closely related to AI-Enabled Consumer Intelligence Technologies. To better understand the professional practice of social listening, see the term Social Intelligence.

Interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing and creation of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.

A sub-branch of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) that focuses on the data collected from social media and online sources and represents the stack of technology solutions and methods used to monitor the data.

The analysis of social data to identify the conversations happening on a specific topic, hashtag, brand etc across social media sites.

The analysis of social media and other internet data as a source of insight comparative to other market research methods. Social Media Research is typically more qualitative and context focused in comparison to the social listening studies that focus on quantifying conversations.

The analysis and segmentation of audiences (or groups of consumers) based on their shared online behaviors and interests. Instead of segmenting on demographic profiles, social media segmentation groups audiences in terms of their distinct behaviors, interests, and affinities.

An interactive website that allows users to connect and communicate with each other through the publication of content, information, photos, videos etc.

A software-as-a-service technology suite that is designed to manage, monitor, and analyze information related to one of multiple social media accounts through a single product. The ability to post content to social media is often a critical component of this technology.

The activity that brings facts to life by creating meaning from the findings. The purpose is to create a story that aids in understanding the phenomenon under study rather than providing hard statistics.

The process of analyzing and extracting meaning from social data to uncover insights. Text analytics often produces quantitative outputs.

The process of exploring and analyzing large amounts of unstructured text aided by software to identify concepts, patterns etc. Is often used interchangeably with the term text analytics.

A method of identifying patterns or themes in data. It emphasizes identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning in data. This is a qualitative process for data analysis and is often used when analyzing context in social data.