[Podcast] From Vision to Impact: How Wendy Scherer is Leading the Charge in Social Intelligence and Business Collaboration

Jackie Cuyvers:
Welcome to the women in social listening and insights podcast, where we showcase the incredible work of women working in the field of social intelligence. My name is Jackie Kivers, and I’ll be your host for this journey. In this podcast, we’ll be speaking with women from enterprise, agencies, and academia who are leading the charge in the world of social listening and insights. Together, we’ll be exploring their careers and the challenges they’ve faced and overcome and the innovative solutions they’ve developed. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and advice to our listeners who are passionate about this field and committed to advancing their careers. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, you’ll find inspiration and guidance in these conversations. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn from the women who are shaping the future of social intelligence. Let’s get started.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Today, I’m joined by Wendy Scherer. Wendy, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Wendy Scherer:
Yes. Again, my name is Wendy Scherer. I’m the founder and managing partner of The Social Studies Group. I founded the company in 1995 when I saw the need for distilling information, and it really merged into a way to look at the digital world along with the print world to help people get smarter faster. That’s where it started. I was an advertising executive, and there was a huge need for good information.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Wow. That’s quite a bit of time in this industry. So how do you see your current role and how you use social intelligence? How has it evolved since when you got started?

Wendy Scherer:
Oh, it’s evolved so much. One of the first projects we ever did was looking for Bonnie rate fans in Usenet groups and AOL groups. So things have changed a lot since then. Now most of our clients use us to really dig into deep issues and to understand a marketplace or a set of circumstances in a really deep and under and So they can use it to really do some smart planning and thinking. What’s So they can use it to really do some smart planning and thinking.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you walk us through a recent project that you worked on and what you learned from it?

Wendy Scherer:
Sure. Recently, we did a project for a big association and in a therapy type of project. And I need to be a little bit vague, but I can give you a lot of good information. What they wanted to know is, was the consumer sentiment about the work that they do spreading in a negative way that would affect their business? And the challenge really was that there was tons being written, and it looked like there was so much. But so many of the items out there had absolutely no reach and no real value out there. So it looked really scary when you were in the business and looking at it all the time. But what we did learn was that there was only a handful of people out there who were writing negative information and that they could actually go talk to them and work on them and provide better information, help them understand that it was really a small problem that looked like a huge problem. And the other thing that was really interesting that helped them move forward was how these articles are being shared and knowing that Facebook is the biggest culprit in the mental health field that we saw where articles were being shared very regularly and commented on. And it looked like a lot more of a threat than it actually is.

Impact of online conversations on offline activity

Jackie Cuyvers:
Do you see that a lot? The online conversations or the research and and social listening and insights that you’re doing, kind of bridging into the offline?

Wendy Scherer:
Yes. We often see a crossover. I mean, there are definitely challenges with the written word and conversation. But I also think that these days when you look at creators, some of them are professionals, but an awful lot of them are just individuals. So being able to parse out what is of substance and what is most important. I mean, are you looking for consumer attitudes? Are you really looking to see what the a really big part of that too, because they’re not important for any of them. But it can look intimidating if you are not practiced in this kind of work. It can look like there’s an awful lot out there when some of it really is very, very useless.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So it sounds like clean data is important, understanding the platforms or data sources, but also the audiences or segments that you’re trying to understand and potentially communicate with are all important. So how do you measure the success of a social listening or insights projects, and what metrics might you use?

Wendy Scherer:
So my father would always say, it depends. There are lots of ways to do it. It depends what we’re working on. In some circumstances, we look at metrics such as improvement of reach of the good content that they’re creating. So we can see before and after research what is better, what has improved as far as understanding and comments and engagement? Sometimes the success can be sales. If it’s, you know, product development, is it being used well? Or sometimes there’s actually primary research that can support the changes before and after. So we can video tracking studies to be able to see what’s changing over time. But it depends. I I’ve been so fortunate to have clients that are trying to do so many different things and are trusting us to use social intelligence to to do some creative research. So the metrics are really gonna be set out the very beginning just to decide what are we really trying to accomplish with this work.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So setting up those metrics and what success looks like, it sounds like, are critical components for a successful project for you?

Wendy Scherer:
Yes. Setting up what we’re trying to accomplish, what the goals are, what the metrics are, and how we’re gonna be judged whether it’s successful. And a useful piece of research work is definitely set up in the very beginning in the proposal stage. You know, we wanna say, here’s what you’re trying to do. Here’s why you’re trying to do it. Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish, and here’s how we’re gonna know if we’ve been it. So success is everything. Excellent.

Collaboration and teamwork in social insights projects

Jackie Cuyvers:
So how do you approach collaboration and teamwork in social insights projects? And what skills do you think are essential for success in this field?

Wendy Scherer:
So I’m gonna answer that backwards and say the skills that I think are essential in this field are to be so driven to know the truth and to get through, to not assume anything too quickly, to really be someone who is tenacious, to me, is one of the skills that I admire the very most in this industry because the first answer and the most obvious answers are often hiding a lot of deeper insights. And so I think it’s really important that that people are willing to be persistent. Collaboration and teamwork is so awesome. I was actually just speaking to a colleague of mine about this the other day. Even if you’re the one of the best in the world in this kind of work, having somebody else aligned and looking at the data and talking about what the categories look like, what the results look like, and to be able to parse out and see what is rising in the data is so much more effective with a team member and with someone else who can look at it also because we all have our biases that we come into this world with. And we work so hard to get bias out of our work, and it’s not possible. So having other people to work with that you trust is social, and for us, definitely makes better work. We also like to collaborate with other agencies, and some of a lot of our clients are agencies and consultants and policy folks, and they want to be a part of it at different pieces along the way. And it’s really helpful. It makes the work better.

Challenging conventional wisdom in the work or research

Jackie Cuyvers:
I think that the collaborative and integrated approach that that you’ve mapped out, it it absolutely makes sense. And I think that having that feedback, especially if you’re working independently, can be invaluable. Can you talk about a time perhaps when you may have had to challenge the conventional wisdom in the work or the research and what you may have learned from that intelligence.

Wendy Scherer:
So I think that there have been times when there are folks out there who think that you can just kind of plug in a query or ask a question and come out with answers that are gonna be useful and drive some sort of business decision, strategy or products or whatever it is, service additions, that’s what they’re doing. And the simplicity more time you spend with with a body of data, the better you can understand what the important segments are. And what I learned is that pushing back helps, because the times where I have allowed myself to say, yes, I know that you wanna get this done in a day and that you only have this budget. We’ll do the best we can. Normally, it’s disappointing. They’re disappointed. I’m disappointed, and it’s not really worthwhile. It doesn’t help anybody to be pressured into rushing through something that could use a little bit more thought.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you talk about a time when you had to pivot or change direction perhaps in a project either due to unexpected findings in your data or or anything else that made you change your pivot?

Wendy Scherer:
Every project has a pivot. Sometimes they’re a little pivot, sometimes they’re a huge pivot. But I’m thinking about one that I that we did recently that was about reproductive health. And we went in with a query and a theory, a query and a theory. I like that. And had a huge we had already segmented the data. We knew exactly what it meant, and it 100% agreed with what we already thought going into it. And come to realize when we collectively discussed this further that there were missing pieces. That there just wasn’t that we had to take other things into account, and we actually totally started from scratch in order to broaden the project and then slice it from a much bigger universe of data. Because what we had done inadvertently was use the terminology that really suggested the answer. And these things happen. Understanding a new industry in, you know, a day or a week or a month isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do. So it reinforces to me the need to understand the breadth of what you’re trying to accomplish before you start out.

Collaboration and communication with stakeholders and partners

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you approach collaboration and communication with stakeholders and partners? And what skills do you think are essential for that successful communication?

Wendy Scherer:
I actually approach it differently for most everybody I work with because my style has always been I wanna communicate and collaborate the way you want to communicate and collaborate because I find that my partners and my colleagues already have a preference, and I’m pretty flexible. But we do use a lot of tools, a lot of collaboration tools, and that to me is really helpful. I’m a Trello fan. It’s super easy. It connects to everything I care about, all the technology. And for communication, the reason I really like to use a collaboration tool is to be able to outline everything that needs to happen, watch the deadlines, have everybody together, have all the exact same expectations and all of the same written notes of what’s happened so far and what’s happening next. And that’s really helped me in a little bit particular about details. I think they’re really important, and I just always want to make sure that the communication is super open. But when a project starts out and if we’re talking about stakeholders and partners at the very beginning, setting out the expectations is paramount. I mean, we just wanna know the what they know. What do they think? What are their expectations? And I think the skills that are essential for this kind of success is being open minded and listening. Listening. Lots and lots of listening. I know that our business is sometimes called listening, but listening is really important.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Was Trello the kind of first tool you decided on, or did you try some tools that then led to Trello being your favourite?

Wendy Scherer:
So it’s a good question. I actually used Basecamp for, I’m gonna say, 10 years or longer, maybe even longer. But when I first started in this business, there were no tools, and we were virtual even then in the nineties. So we were just doing notes and, you know, and kinda keeping outlines together. And we didn’t even have I mean, imagine not having Google Docs for shared notes. It was a long time ago, but it was a lot harder then. But Basecamp was really great for us for a very long time. I just became a Trello fan. I also work in the collaboration tools of a lot of my clients. So I had clients who have Sprinklr, and their work is all in there. And I have clients who use all sorts of Asana and other tools. And I’m like I said before, I’m happy. I wanna work the way people want to work. I would like make their life easier. I think that that my job in social intelligence and partnering with anybody is to make their life easier and have them end up with answers and work that’s gonna help them do their job better.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I think it’s it’s really interesting that you’ve identified that part of the the skills for success in this role are are listening and and being empathic and meeting people where they are, whether it’s doing the research or communicating that research to your to your clients and stakeholders. So it’s kind of a a 360 view there of that. So I think that’s really neat. How do you stay motivated and inspired in your work? You’ve been doing this for for, you know, a couple years now. How do you stay, you know, as excited about it today as you were last week or, you know, in the nineties as you said?

Wendy Scherer:
Yeah. You know, I just love it. I love the work. I love teaching. I’ve done tons of clave classes at universities and at ad agencies and all over the place, helping people learn how to do some of this work for themselves and be smarter and better. And it’s just so much fun. I get up every day and sit at my desk and can’t wait to to do what I’m doing. But the other thing that keeps me motivated and inspired as we’re watching this industry grow is people other people are doing really cool work, and so I like to read about theirs. I like to see all of the changes in technology and what the possibilities are and really stay up on that. And it it just is I I you know as well as I do. There’s people out there doing incredible things, and I wanna know about all of that. And I wanna understand it and learn from it. So it’s just a constant improvement cycle. I just wanna keep growing.

Mixed-methods research and cross-functional collaborations

Jackie Cuyvers:
And you speak to the importance of cross-functional collaboration and social listening or insights projects. And how do you work with other disciplines?

Wendy Scherer:
So that’s really interesting. I work with a lot of people who do primary research, so that there’s a perfect fit in that social listening can help in form primary research, and primary research can help inform social listening. And so that combination and the talking about goals and working together is very important. I work with a lot of teams where there’s people who are in sales versus marketing versus distribution, for instance. And having input from a lot of different people about what they’re trying to accomplish, there’s a lot more overlap than they often think. And so for me, it’s really a lot of fun and a great challenge to get people together who have different jobs and different endpoints to see what where the crossovers are so that we can do good work that will help inform lots of different things within a company. And I feel like my clients, at least, I feel very fortunate. They’re starting to catch on to that too and they’re starting to talk more to each other and be a little less siloed. So I think that that’s the wave of the future, and I think companies who are doing that are winning.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Just as an aside to that, are there any departments or parts of the organisation that you’ve worked with that people might not assume would use social listening or insights?

Wendy Scherer:
I have. My favourite one ever is working with people in flavour intelligence. And, I mean, what’s more fun than food and flavours? And to look at and track the trending of flavours within different products, one of them I did was for yogurt, which was really fun. But I’ve done lots of different flavour profiles and changes in spices, in sugar substitutes, and it’s really interesting. And the change can be so dramatic or it can be so slow. And those are just really fun things to do. So flavours is a really fun role to work with. I mean, often, many of my clients are in marketing, and that feels like the baseline to me. But I love working with people at the executive level who are thinking really big about future planning because that’s always interesting. But when you get into the nitty gritty, sometimes people just have questions. Another really interesting one was working for a company that was a pharmaceutical, and they had a drug that is only for one specific malady one disease. And they wanted to understand what was missing in the communication to the parents of kids with this disease to try to find the gap. And so, like, that’s a really interesting thing to think about and not somebody who you would think would come to social listening for a solution. So it was really neat. And it actually helped develop the website and some listening, potential impact of your work. I mean, the last thing anybody wants is you you share reports and insights and it’s, just sits on someone’s desk or in a file cabinet.

Jackie Cuyvers:
And so in communicating those findings and insights and recommendations to your clients, can you speak a little bit about the data visualization or how you present that? How do you how do you effectively communicate these insights that drive this decision making or or implementation?

Wendy Scherer:
Well, I think data visualization is everything these days. I do have a couple of clients who like lots and lots of words. But most of them would much prefer to be shown what the answer is and then talk about it. So visualizations are really important. There were times when I used a lot of the data viz, but from the tools that I licensed. I don’t do that that much any longer. Mostly, I create all of our own visualizations, in a format that allows me to use cross tools and have everything look really the same because it’s I I it’s crazy. But if it looks pretty, people do like it better. So I try to make it pretty. And when I present, my goal is to get interrupted. I am the kind of presenter who says, here’s what you have. Do you do we wanna talk about this or should I move on? Because I think sometimes it drives not only additional work possibly or additional analysis, but as you’re going through a big project, I think it really helps to know what they’re thinking at the onset. So it’s been a lot of fun. So for presentation, my style is very very open.

The role of social intelligence in shaping business strategy and driving growth

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you see the role of social intelligence in shaping business strategy and driving growth? And what impact do you think your work could potentially have on the bottom line?

Wendy Scherer:
Well, I know that social intelligence shapes business strategy. I see it all the time. And I do believe that the world is getting more accepting of our discipline to do that because I I believe that businesses want to understand what is real and what is happening and to be able to make decisions based on that because for so long, everything’s been theoretical. So I do see driving growth through understanding what people want, and people aren’t shy about what they want, or what they’re looking for or what they’re missing. So I think that’s really important. But my work for the bottom line, I mean, I’ve my hope is that the work that we do helps all of our businesses do better, whether it’s making more money or being more efficient or whatever it is, or selling more widgets or or providing services to more folks. I think it does in a lot of instances, but going all the way back to what we talked about before, setting that up at the beginning for what you’re trying to accomplish and sticking to and understanding what the goals are is so important for that because just providing information, it doesn’t often lead to great change.

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you ensure that your insights and recommendations are relevant and applicable across different market segments or communities or different audiences?

Wendy Scherer:
So we really work hard to segment our data and look at how that how that breaks out. I mean, there are tools out there that can help us understand different marketplaces and to understand the different target audiences a little bit more. One way to do that is to partner and do primary research to double check and follow-up on some of the work listening on how big the decisions are. You know, we’d like to joke that if the decision if you’re if you’re gonna make $10, you shouldn’t spend $11 to test it. But some of the decisions that are being made are huge. And then, of course, doing additional testing can be a really valid a valid direction. Another way that we really do try to see if our recognitions are relevant is to talk to other people. So a lot of times, there are other people who do the kind of work we do or other businesses, and I wanna run it past, like disaster proof it. Does this make sense to you? You’re in this business. Does this make sense to you? Often, and, you know, we used to say this to our kids when they did their math homework. Like, is that reasonable? Does that pass the reasonable test? Like, is 10 times 10 cannot be 6,000,000? It just can’t be. Right? So, you know, it’s not a reasonable thing. So by having people in your life and in your business relationships who can be there to bounce work off of, it can be really helpful for us. And we’re not a, you know, we’re a small firm.

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you stay current with the latest developments in social listening and insights? And are there any particular resources or communities that you rely on?

Wendy Scherer:
Yes. There are. Well, like everybody else in social intelligence, I read a lot. I think that’s kind of our disease. We just are we’re all kind of interested, curious people. So I read a ton, and that’s definitely one of one of the ways to stay up on it. The social intelligence lab is doing amazing work of bringing the group together, and I think that’s really nice. I try to read what all of those people in the group are saying and talking about, so that’s a wonderful resource. But the rest of it is I read a lot of tech, and I try to really understand what the developments are, what is coming as far as technology solutions. I also try to read a lot of sociology to understand human behaviours and what’s going on with consumer preferences. So kind of across the board.

AI, tech and the future of social intelligence

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you see the field of social intelligence evolving in the next 5 to 10 years? I mean, we have different data sources, different social media platforms. We have AI. So much is listening. Like, what’s important? And and what, you know, what do you see happening here?

Wendy Scherer:
Well, I’m I think about this all the time. The data sources changing is a wonderful reminder that this that we are thinkers and analysts and that the sources are only as good as what we do with them. And they’re gonna change, and we have to change with them. So there’s a lot of evolution of what data we’re gonna be using. And the same with the tools. I mean, AI is a wonderful, wonderful advancement, and it’s really cool to be able to summarize a million conversations in a couple of minutes. And it will never let me take it back. Maybe not never. No time soon will it take the place of human analysis and taking the work seriously and doing what we do with it already. So I feel like we can be assisted by a lot of that technology, and it’s wonderful. I don’t think it’s gonna take over our business. The other thing that I see in social intelligence is it’s growing like crazy. There are so many more incredible companies who have people in house or using firms to do really, really smart work. And as our field grows, what I see is that it’s just gonna get better and better because there’s a ton of people who want to collaborate and wanna talk to each other and learn from each other. And it’s almost like an explosion of opportunity to learn and grow. And I I think that we’re gonna see better tools, better questions, and a lot more collaboration over the next 5 to 10 years.

Jackie Cuyvers:
What books have shaped your career the most? And are there any books that you could recommend to other social listening and insights professionals?

Wendy Scherer:
Well, sure. When I first started, there were no books about any of this. And then we just kind of fly by night. My clients and I would find a problem. We’d try to figure out how to solve it. But I read a book called netnography many years ago. I actually don’t know what year it was published. And it’s by Robert Kosenitz, and it changed my entire thinking about what social intelligence can do because he uses it and talks about it. It’s very it’s somewhat academic. But how you can use this information to have a deep understanding of consumers and what’s going on in the world, it’s very cool. So that was definitely a big impact on me. I’d like to read trend books too. I’ll never forget the Faith Popcorn book was actually one of the books that really got me excited about trend spotting. But there are lots of books like that. And I actually think that that, to me, is an inspirational kind of book to read if you’re insights professionals, to understand the other side of it. Like, here are cool insights about the world. And then it, to me, just begs the question, how can you figure out how to get there? And so I like to look at it from, this is what can be done, and let’s all be creative about how to do it.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you share any advice you may have for individuals interested in pursuing a career in social intelligence and maybe what skills or qualities are essential for success in this field?

Wendy Scherer:
I think that you wanna pursue a field. It really helps to I mean, internships and things like that are always wonderful. Most of everybody that I know in the business is willing to talk to people who are looking to pursue a career, so I would talk to people and take advantage of their generosity to share what it’s like to do this work day in and day out. The qualities and skills, I think persistence is really important. I think math is important and I did, you know, just logic skills. But when I think math to me, building a really great query is a mathematical challenge. It’s, you know, all the same, whether it’s words or numbers. So I think those skills are really important, but the qualities most important to me, I think is curiosity. Curiosity and not taking an answer for granted, to really just be curious and wanna know more.

Advice for individuals pursuing a career in social intelligence

Jackie Cuyvers:
Knowing what you do now and and being where you are in your career, is there any advice you can give future women in social listening and insights and pursuing the optimal educational path for career opportunities?

Wendy Scherer:
Such a great question. I don’t think that I have a great answer. Marketing and research kinds of, you know, those kinds of career goals and educational goals, I think, are really helpful. I also think library science and information science can be really helpful. But to me, any good educational path that helps you really wanna dig in and understand more and that teaches a discipline of using either data or any kind of thinking in a very strategic way could be useful. And the actual job experience, I think, for me and just never giving up and not being so sure of yourself and trying new things, to me, is the best.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Thank you so much for sharing that advice and and all of the wealth of your experience. I appreciate you taking the time to kind of connect and share with the audience today.

Wendy Scherer:
Well, thank you so much, Jackie. This has been a lot of fun.

Jackie Cuyvers:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation and taken away some valuable insights and advice from today’s guest. If you like this episode, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Spotify so you never miss an episode. And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn for updates and additional resources. I’d like to take a minute to once again thank our interviewee for taking the time to join us on the show today and sharing her story and insights with us. Your contribution to the world of social intelligence is truly invaluable, and we’re so grateful for you sharing your time and expertise. And finally, if you listeners know of anyone else who would make a great guest on our show, please don’t hesitate to introduce us. We’re always on the lookout for new and inspiring stories. Until next time, I’m Jackie Cuyvers, and this is the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast. Thanks so much for listening.