What is social intelligence?
Social intelligence is the practice of gathering and analysing online data to understand audiences through both their words and actions. By monitoring social media, forums, and blogs, it captures conversations and sentiments—what people say—and combines this with behavioural data, like clicks, shares, and engagement metrics—what people do. Additionally, by leveraging big data, social intelligence helps discover and measure emerging trends, providing early indicators of shifts in audience behaviour and preferences.
This approach goes beyond understanding demographics; it helps reveal motivations, preferences, and the underlying behaviour of your audience, providing actionable insights that can shape your strategies more effectively.
Why should I care about Social Intelligence?
If growth is your priority, understanding your audience is key. Traditional research provides valuable insights, but to truly uncover your audience's evolving needs and tap into emerging trends, a social intelligence approach is often needed. Social intelligence provides real-time, actionable insights that can deepen your understanding of who your audience is and what they want, complementing traditional research methods.
How does this differ from traditional audience research?
Social intelligence and traditional research each have unique strengths, but they differ significantly in approach and the type of insights they offer:
Source of Data: Traditional research relies on structured methods like surveys and focus groups, while social intelligence captures real-time, organic data from social platforms, websites, and forums.
Real-Time Insights: Social intelligence offers immediate insights into shifting audience attitudes and actions. Traditional research can be slower, often presenting insights that may become outdated before they can be fully utilised.
Behavioural vs Reported Data: Social intelligence incorporates behavioural data—clicks, shares, likes—reflecting actual audience behaviour. Traditional research often relies on self-reported information, which can sometimes be incomplete or influenced by biases.
Discovering Niche Insights: With its vast unstructured datasets, social intelligence can discover unexpected trends and niche audience segments that traditional surveys may overlook.
Ultimately, social intelligence provides a broader, more dynamic picture of your audience, while traditional research offers a structured, in-depth focus. I use both methods and can choose the right approach—whether social intelligence or traditional research—depending on what best suits your needs, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of your audience.
What Data Sources Do You Work With?
Almost any.
Recent projects have drawn insights from Meta, TikTok, Substack, Email lists, X, Bluesky, and Pinterest, but I’m building new use cases and data sources constantly.
While some brands have access to first-party data, this is rarely necessary. Most of my work focuses on defining an audience based on interests and behaviours without relying on owned data.
I Don’t Have a Platform or an Email List—Can I Still Get Insights?
Absolutely. You don’t need your own data to gain valuable audience insights. My approach leverages broader publicly available interest data to shape meaningful insights and identify opportunities.
What Matters Most?
The real focus should be on your business challenge. Rather than worrying about data sources upfront, bring your key question to our briefing session. I’ll help you identify the most relevant data and design a project that delivers clear, actionable insights.
Integrating Social Intelligence with Traditional Research
Social intelligence doesn't replace traditional methods like industry or survey data—it complements them. While I often lean towards a social intelligence methodology, I recognise the value of traditional methods when appropriate. For example, survey data is ideal when we need structured answers or an in-depth exploration of a particular audience segment, especially if those segments are well-represented in the sample.
The future of impactful audience insights lies in hybrid research, an exciting development made possible by advances in big data. Hybrid research blends social intelligence with survey insights, first-party consumer data, and industry reports, leveraging the strengths of each method: real-time behavioural data from social intelligence and structured insights from surveys. This evolving approach is opening up new opportunities for richer, more nuanced insights into motivations, preferences, behaviour, and emerging trends.
As these hybrid methods evolve, they present exciting opportunities for deeper and more actionable insights. I'm actively looking for teams interested in launching a project in this space. With my experience in software and data project management, I am well-positioned to run a pilot project—so if you're keen to explore this, get in touch.
Can I just buy a tool that does this?
The short answer: no. Social intelligence tools are powerful, but they require expertise in data analysis and statistics to extract valuable insights from the raw data—not just from dashboards. Many teams often look at dashboards and focus on the wrong metrics, missing the deeper, more relevant insights that lie beneath the surface. Technical skills are essential to manipulate and structure the raw data effectively and apply the appropriate statistical analysis, which will vary for each project. Without these skills, even the best tool will only provide surface-level information—not true audience insights.
Finally, real insights come from thoughtful analysis and interpretation. You need an experienced professional who can refine the data, extract key insights, and translate them into meaningful business actions.
Let’s talk about your audience
If you're curious about how social intelligence could enhance your next campaign, unlock an audience-led brand strategy, support product development, or identify emerging trends, get in touch. Whether you have a specific challenge or are just exploring opportunities, together we can uncover the insights that will help you grow and adapt to your audience's ever-changing needs.
The Social Intelligence Insider 50: Insightful Innovator
In 2024, I was honoured to be recognised as one of the most influential figures in social intelligence worldwide. This recognition was awarded for my pioneering work in audience insights within the publishing sector, making me the first recipient from publishing to be included on this prestigious list.
Being nominated and winning alongside industry leaders from global brands like Ogilvy, Diageo, Mattel, and L'Oréal was truly career-defining for me. To learn more about the Social Intelligence Lab and hear my thoughts on the future of social intelligence, you can read my winner's interview here.