Social Analyst

The Social Analyst is one of the five Research analysts. It reads how people actually talk and behave on social and commerce platforms, then synthesizes the cross-channel picture into a single output. Where the Category and Consumer Analysts draw from published reports, this analyst works from platform-native material: posts, threads, review themes, creator content, and long-form cultural commentary.

What it does

The analyst reads how real audiences in your markets talk about, feel about, and use your brand and its category. That covers buying talk (the questions people ask before they buy, the recommendations they give and ask for, the alternatives they compare, praise and complaints after purchase, and why they switch or come back) and the occasions your brand comes up in: life events, seasons, gifting, and routines. It also covers the emotional triggers and sense of identity behind the talk, and where platforms agree or differ.

Each finding is a pattern seen across several posts, named in the section heading. Where the posts show it, the finding says who is saying it and where it concentrates (a platform, community, creator, or market), the trigger or barrier behind it, and the words people use, quoted. The report states what the posts show. The limits of the evidence (sample, coverage, what posts cannot establish) appear once, in the closing Risks & Evidence Gaps section.

Citations are platform-native. Each blockquote holds one person's words, traces back to an actual post, Reddit thread, Amazon review, or piece of creator content rather than a generic summary, and carries a platform tag so you can see which channel contributed which insight and where the same signal surfaces across multiple platforms.

Where to find it

Inside a brand or campaign, navigate to Research. After the Research run completes, the Social Analyst output appears as the fifth of five analyst tabs on the Research page.

How it works

When you start a Research run, all five analysts run in parallel. The Social Analyst reads the brand profile, the campaign brief if you're running campaign-scoped Research, and any attached documents. It then searches the platforms below one query at a time, starting with your brand and confirming the posts are about it rather than a namesake. From there it widens to the competitors people compare you with and to how people talk about the category itself, going broader where part of the brief has no posts yet and deeper where a finding needs more voices.

The analyst draws representative posts from three or more platforms, based on where the conversation is richest for your category. These five are the usual ones:

• Reddit: community discussion, critical discourse, price scrutiny, and category-specific subreddits.
• Instagram: lifestyle aesthetics, visual signals, creator content, and brand-positioning cues.
• TikTok: emotional storytelling, trends, creator culture, and how categories show up in short-form video.
• Amazon: review themes, purchase validation, complaint patterns, and gifting behaviors.
• Medium / Substack: reflective long-form analysis and cultural commentary on the category.

When the conversation for your market lives elsewhere, the analyst searches there too. Examples include YouTube, local forums, and review sites.

No single platform carries the analysis. The mix reflects where consumers in your category actually engage.

A Research run takes about 5-7 minutes. All five analysts run at once, so there is no separate time for each analyst.

What you can adjust

Document attachment: before starting a Research run, select documents from the Documents page (PDFs, Word files, Markdown, CSVs, Excel sheets) to attach. The analyst treats them as high-priority input alongside the platform queries. Prior social listening reports, audience research with quoted posts, or platform-specific audits are particularly useful here.

Refine: Use the Refine button after a run to submit feedback. Refining Social re-runs only this analyst. The other four carry forward unchanged. Prior versions stay in history. See Refine.

Limits and considerations

• Public posts only. The analyst sees what's publicly indexed on each platform. Private accounts, closed communities, and gated forum content are not readable.
• Platform indexing varies. Reddit and Amazon reviews are well-indexed for English-language content. TikTok's discoverability is shallower for niche categories. Instagram coverage depends heavily on hashtag and creator surfacing. The Risks & Evidence Gaps section notes where platform coverage was thin for your category.
• Snapshot, not real-time. The signals are read at run time and reflect what was visible then. Cultural moments that broke after the run may not appear. Re-run periodically for time-sensitive work.
• English-first source bias. The social listening leans English-language. For non-English markets, the platform mix typically shifts (less Medium/Substack, more region-specific platforms when available) but the bias remains.
• Beta software. Validate cited posts and the framing of any sensitive thread before briefing teams or committing budgets.