THE WORLD'S FIRST CERTIFICATE IN SOCIAL MEDIA INTELLIGENCE

Social Intelligence Growth Certification

The Social Intelligence Lab is the first professional academy and community for social data practices. The Social Intelligence Growth Certification is our live, actionable 8 module learn-by-doing course.

Register your interest today to be placed on our waiting list for cohort two in August 2021.

The Only Certification for Social Intelligence Practitioners

Whether you're new to social data or work in an existing function, by the end of this course you'll have the knowledge and skills to commission, run, and implement successful social intelligence programmes that generate actionable insights from social data.

25

Student Places

8

Modules

16

Teaching Weeks

24

Live Support Sessions
expert approved

Built and delivered with the world's social intelligence experts

The SILab certification has been created by Dr Jillian Ney and is approved by the global leaders of social intelligence. We have partnered with industry masterminds from companies like Ipsos, Converseon, Listen&Learn Research, and Audiense. 
Dr Jillian Ney: UK's First Dr of Social Media & Digital Behavioural Scientist

The Entire Social Intelligence Journey

The SILab certification covers the entire social intelligence journey; from defining use cases, briefing, building your tool stack, sourcing data and analysis to segmentation and storytelling. 

What You'll Learn...

You’ll come away with the tools, knowledge and skills to run social intelligence projects that answer product questions, explain user behaviour and transform businesses. You’ll have worked through your own business examples within a practical lab setting. We look at the most popular use cases for social data, including:
  • Brand Health Tracking 
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Understanding Consumer Behaviour

Learn Through Doing

Our certification has the perfect blend of self-service content to learn at your own pace and timings, and live sessions to maximise your learning and skills. Get guidance, feedback, and more from experts who are dedicated to supporting your learning and career goals. Each module includes Q&A sessions and lab feedback during office hours to offer real-time support and help you turn ideas into action.

Access to bite-size 15 Minute Lectures

Each module has 4x 15-minute lecture videos. Watch them at your own pace and get access for life.

A Personal Implementation Project

Simultaneously implement on your own personal project. You'll also get feedback and support.

Office Hours

Office hours happen on a Friday - attend live or send in your questions ahead of time.

Live Lab Workshops

Each module has a 1-1.5 hour live live to apply and hone your skills in a safe, judge-free environment to experiment and learn.

Expert Guest Speakers

A handpicked expert speaker to provide you with real-life stories, alternative view-points and experience to bring theory to life.

Exclusive Self-Service Content

Access our exclusive content vault with interviews, bespoke reports, tear-downs, and cheatsheets.

Join the waiting list for cohort two in August 2021.

Protect Your Brand Online, Build Customer Driven Marketing & Develop Customer-Driven Products with Social Data

Use social data in reality, not theory. This is a practical course to hone your skills, build your social intelligence function, and help your organisation benefit from social data. 

Topics Covered:

  • Use Cases
  • Data Integration
  • Blending Humans & Machines
  • Tools & Tech
  • Brand Health Tracking
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Customer Behaviour: The Emotional Side of Social Data
  • Data Driven Storytelling

Learnt via these Projects:

  • Setting Up Your Social Intelligence Function 
  • Assessing Data Fit & Quality
  • Developing Robust Processes
  • Assessing Tech for Your Needs
  • Online Reputation Management
  • Campaign & Content Strategy
  • Developing Remarkable Experiences & Products
  • Getting Traction & Actionably
Learn how to use social data to reach your business goals

A Learn-By-Doing Course for Professionals

Develop Your Function

Understand how to set-up and maintain a social intelligence function that keeps producing value. 

Create Winning Briefs

Improve your own skill in assessing project briefs and research questions. 

Latest Approaches

Become familiar with the latest methodologies, technologies and their contexts. 

Case Studies

See examples of social intelligence projects across industries. 

Understand Audiences

Take your business to the next level of customer research.

Build Relationships

Build relationships with global social intelligence experts and other practitioners in the industry.

Join the waiting list for August 2021 cohort.

Certification Modules

Each module is designed to build upon the skills from the previous modules. The modules will run over two weeks, one contact week and one implementation week to fit in around your work responsibilities. 

Module 1:

Mapping Your Organisations Social Intelligence Capabilities & Future Use Cases

This module is all about mapping your current capabilities, finding out where you want to be, and giving you the foundations of good research design to get there. You’ll get everything you need to plot where you are on your social intelligence journey, the resources you need to help get you more buy-in, how to create good research design, and inspiration of where you can use social data in future.

We’ll start by finding out where your activities sit on our social intelligence maturity model and giving you the information you need to get more buy-in from stakeholders and leadership. We’ll dive into what good research design looks like, how to ask the right questions, and prepare the best research briefs (to help your colleagues say more than “can we do some social listing?”. In this foundation module, we’ll get to know each other and what you’re hoping to achieve to set you up for social intelligence success.  By the end of the module you will be able to:

  Map your current social intelligence capabilities and have a path to plan future opportunities, international projects and rolling out your social intelligence capabilities globally. 

  Identify the tangible use cases for social intelligence in your organisation and how they blend or compliment other data and research sources.

  Have a process for getting buy-in and the right stakeholders involved in your social intelligence projects.

  Know what questions can be asked and answered with social data and how to adapt questions for social intelligence projects.

  Develop an effective social intelligence brief for an external agency or know how to help colleagues write the briefs to get the most from your social intelligence research.


Apply To: Everything brand, marketing, product, and customer insights related.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures include social intelligence use cases; what a good social intelligence brief looks like. 

  Live Lab Workshop: Getting to know you.

  Implement at the Office: Developing your social intelligence capabilities and priorities. 

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support for mapping your social intelligence capabilities and priorities. 

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 2:

Identifying and Integrating Data Sources

As with all information, social data typically brings most commercial value when it is integrated and triangulated with our sources. These sources may range from survey data to internal commercial metrics and from huge quantitative databases to individual customer quotes or observations. How should insight professionals best navigate this evolving data landscape? What should we reasonably expect to do? What is sensible and how should I best go about it?

By the end of the module you will be able to:

  Understand the importance of storytelling through data integration – what you’ll be missing without it.

  Identify key data sources to consider in any project, and how to run a data audit to determine their suitability for your use case.

  Explore different practical approaches for data integration – from synchronizing quantitative data to qualitatively analysing in parallel.

  Devise an action plan to collate, structure and integrate Social Data with other data – what this looks like in practice.

Apply To: Everything brand, marketing, product, and customer insights related.

  Lecture Content: 5x 15-minute video lectures including the importance of data integration, data auditing, data integration approaches, and data visualisation.

  Live Lab Workshop: Campaign evaluation incorporating owned, earned, interactions, search, webpage visits, and more.

  Implement at the Office: Analysing data to decide which new product should be developed.

  Guest Speaker: Combining search and social data with Answer the Public and Combining visual data with text analysis with Dr Rachel Lawes.

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on identifying additional data sources, and measuring campaigns with multiple data streams.

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 3:

Humans versus Machines

Social data analysis is often synonymous with technology but does it have to be that way? Will AI take over the role of social data analysts? Will social insights be automated? This module explores the balance between humans and machines in social intelligence. You’ll get the knowledge you need to know when tech or smart people are the solution, how to understand the role of machine learning and call BS on bogus claims, as well as a view on alternative ways to generate insight from social data. You’ll even get to build and train your very own AI model. By the end of the module you will be able to:

  Understand the different approaches to social media intelligence - from unsupervised AI to fully qualitative analysis. 

  Identify what kinds of text analytics are available and where they can be applied in your work.

  Better understand today’s social intelligence landscape and know when to call BS when it comes to claims that you get insight at the push of a button.

  Develop and train your own (partially supervised) AI model.

Apply To: Everything brand, marketing, product, and customer insights related.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on social data analytics, listening and insight; the role of the social data analyst; AI-powered text analytics; rolling out social intelligence across the organisation.

  Live Lab Workshop: Develop your own AI-powered text analytics module with Coverseon.

  Implement at the Office: Train your AI-powered text analytics module and report key findings.

  Guest Speaker: Jeremy Hollow, Listen+Learn Research on the need for humans in social insight.

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support in training your AI-powered text analytics module.

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 4:

Developing Your Social Intelligence System

Social listening is the use of technology to monitor the social web for key phrases, topics, brand and competitor mentions. It gives marketers insights into segmented conversations in the news media, blogs, forums and social media. Social listening platforms are innovating to keep with the demand for better technology by integrating audience analytics, natural language processing (NLP), AI, machine learning and linguistic analysis to decode social media conversations from various sources. The emergence of social intelligence is disrupting the industry by taking a different approach at analyzing social media conversations and behaviour. New platforms are taking it one step further and dissecting audience conversations, and identifying unique affinities, characteristics and media consumption to give a more in-depth and accurate view of the data. This module explores social intelligence at a high level and also delivers actionable takeaways to help you develop your social intelligence system. By the end of this module you will be able to:

  Distinguish between the different types of tech and tools that help you analyze social data and know when you need one tool over another.

  Learn how to to identify the right goals and objectives based on your social intelligence strategy.

  Understand the differences between social intelligence and audience intelligence, and identify use cases for each.

  Have a proven approach to assessing which tool is right for your needs with an RFP assessment framework developed by our experts.

Apply To: Everything brand, marketing, product, and customer insights related.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on the social intelligence landscape, deep-dives into tool categories; tool stacking; running RFP processes.

  Live Lab Workshop: RFP processes & assessing tech for your needs.

  Implement at the Office: Assess your current tech based on your needs.

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on running successful RFP processes. 

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 5:

Social Intelligence Brand Health Tracking

One of the most common use cases for social intelligence is to track brand mentions to manage brand reputation. In fact, we find that the organisations that have heavily invested in social intelligence have done so because it has helped them move through a brand crisis. This module looks at social intelligence brand tracking, the different approaches, how they can be standalone or integrate with other brand reputation management efforts, and what the path to social intelligence maturity looks like. By the end of this module you will be able to:

  Learn different approaches to query building based on your specific objectives, such as simple brand listening or ‘intelligent’ queries that link back to established brand attributes or values.

  Understand different social and search metrics that you may consider when analysing brand health.

  Consider the distinct roles of earned vs owned content

  Learn when it may be appropriate to look beyond just brand mentions, and explore wider category conversations for added context and richer insights.

  Explore how your query setup and analysis approach will vary depending on whether you are running an ad-hoc analysis or ongoing tracking.

  Setup and run your own mini brand health project and report key findings.

Apply To: Reputation management, risk management, communications, PR, marketing.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on brand monitoring; brand tracking; social NPS; and online reputation management.

  Live Lab Workshop: Brand equity tracking including brand purpose with Rob Key from Converseon.

  Implement at the Office: Deep dive into what is driving your brand equity. 

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on brand reputation management with social data. 

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 6:

Social Intelligence in Marketing Strategy 

One of the most common use cases for social intelligence is for insights to inspire content, campaigns, and brand communications. Often referred to as data-driven storytelling, this module will explore different techniques, approaches and methodologies where data can be used to find market white space. From editorial, content strategy and narrative creation to building audience personas, paid segmentation and media relations, data can be extremely actionable and yield exponential results. By the end of this module you will be able to:

  Build real, data-driven audience personas.

Understand why those high impact publications are writing about your competitors on the daily and not you.

  How your narrative is being perceived by one audience versus another group against others.

  Identify white space in the market in case you need to pivot your narrative or change your engagement strategy.

  Identify industry influencers.

Apply To: Marketing strategy, content creation, social media, media planning, sales funnels, landing pages, website copy.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on audience intelligence; different approaches to audience intelligence; social data in content / campaign ideation; frameworks to measure social data for marketing strategy.

  Live Lab Workshop: Segmenting your social media audience.

  Implement at the Office: Report on who is in your audience and differences between groups.

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on analysing you social audience.

    Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 7:

Consumer Behaviour: The Emotional Side of Social Data

So far, this course has focused on the “who, what and when” of social data. Now it’s time to understand the “why”. Why people think, feel and act the way they do. Social data is pretty amazing. It’s a constant stream of people pouring their hearts out - sharing their lives, their feelings and actions. There’s a richness to it that goes way beyond the ability of the tools to capture.

This richness can be super powerful. It can give you deeper insights into what drives and motivates people. We’re going to show you how to use this to build a better strategy, innovate more effectively, and communicate with more impact.Getting to “why” needs a different set of skills. It won’t just jump out of a dashboard. In this module we’re going to give you the inspiration, knowledge and capabilities you need to add this more human side, to your Social Intelligence skill set. We’ll show you how to access it, what it means and how to use it to create value for your business. 

By the end of this module you will be able to:

  Understand the deeper, human side of social; why people think, feel and act the way they do. 

  Work across your organisation to improve strategy, product development, customer service and power their creative output. 

  Develop your capability to create human insight from social data. 

  Use powerful case studies to prove the ROI and secure stakeholder buy-in.

Apply To: Customer experience, marketing strategy, brand, product development, customer insights.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on asking the right questions; segmenting social data; customer journey analysis; netnography.

  Live Lab Workshop: Analysing social data with Jeremy Hollow from Listen+Learn Research.

  Implement at the Office: Mini social insights study.

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on your mini social insights study.

  Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Module 8:

Data-Driven Storytelling

he difference between reports that stick and spread throughout the organisation and just another interesting piece of information has rarely anything to do with the quality of the insight itself, but the quality of how it is communicated. That is why it is imperative as an insights professional that we build our capabilities in storytelling. Building effective stories from data that engage audiences, motivate decision makers and mobilise action takers is possible - with the right roadmap, ways of working and blueprints that this module provides.

By the end of this module you will be able to:

  Build processes and ways of working to tell compelling stories - you’ll get what you need to do differently to make it happen and gain efficiency.

  Turn thousands of data points and observations into a story using a narrative structure.

  Create stories from multiple sources for greater impact with stakeholders.

  Align insights to metrics that matter to create stories that gain traction because the story aligns to what your audience cares about.

  How to storyboard your presentations and reports to ensure the story doesn’t get lost in all the supplementary detail.

Apply To: Everything brand, marketing, product, and customer insights related.

  Lecture Content: 4x 15-minute video lectures on storytelling with data.

  Live Lab Workshop: Caroline Florence takes you through frameworks to tell better stories.

  Implement at the Office: Assess your mini-study and where you could tell a better story.

  Guest Speaker: TBC

  Office Hours: Ask questions and get support on assessing your mini-study and storytelling

  Self-Service Content: Interviews with experts, agencies, and brands. Cheatsheets and reports. 

Special offer

For a limited time!

Sign up in and get free access to our bonus content. For life.

Query Writing Course

Social intelligence projects are made and broken on the quality of the query you create but historically there's been no training in this area. Access our bespoke training and experienced instructors that will give you the skills and confidence to level-up your query writing. You will not find this level of training anywhere else.

How to Win Your Audience's Brain!

Perception, attention, engagement and decision making are all based on the inner-workings of the human brain. In order to excel in attracting the brain you need to gain an understanding of these inner-workings and how you can influence them. This neuroscience based workshop will help to supercharge your marketing strategy and identify what social media metrics are useful and just noise.

Join the waiting list for August 2021 cohort.

the social intelligence certification is created and led by

Dr Jillian Ney

Dr Jillian Ney is the UK's First Dr of Social Media & a Digital Behavioural Scientist. She is the founder of The Social Intelligence Lab, the largest community for social data practitioners. She is the social intelligence industry's spokesperson and biggest fan. Her aim is to see a thriving social intelligence function in every business.
Dr Jillian Ney: Course Leader
Our instructors

Meet Our Course Instructors & Special Guests

Felicity Edwards

Associate director social intelligence, Ipsos
Felicity is the Associate Director of Social Intelligence at Ipsos. 

Jeremy Hollow

CEO, Listen+learn research
Jeremy started Listen + Learn with a simple goal – to help brands connect with people. He works with brands to help them find and understand the people that matter to them. So that they can then create the right experiences, engage new audiences and appeal to people in the right way.

Rob Key

CEO, Converseon
Rob is founder & CEO of Converseon, a leading consumer intelligence technology and consulting firm that helps organisations process and analyse unstructured human generated language data for insights.

Caroline Florence

data storyteller Insight Narrator 
Caroline is a trainer, coach and consultant helping business professionals communicating with data. I help shift from information overload to compelling commercial stories that lead to action.

More guests to be announced...

By Taking This Course, You Will...

Harness the true power of social data as a source of business strategy and beyond.

Expert in Social Tools

You'll have experienced key tools on the market and understand the tool stacking and selection process.

Next level Customer Research

You'll bring transformative insights to the table and change the way your organisation views the customer.

Solve Business Problems

Answer real business challenges and become a go-to for insights around customer, landscape and industry.

Protect Your Brand

Be implementing the latest in predictive brand crisis methodology and brand health, beyond simple tracking.

Insights that Inspire 

Tell data-fuelled stories that deliver value, inspire change and test assumptions across the business from creative to product.

Dive into Customer Voice

You'll run projects that mean your customer experience is industry leading and your marketing strategy is bound for success.

Join the waiting list for August 2021 cohort.

the world's first social intelligence certificate 

Choose Your Plan

One-Off Payment

£1,800
A one time payment of £1,800. Save £200 with our one off payment option.

  • Access to lecture content
  • Access to labs and feedback sessions
  • Networking opportunities
  • Special guests
  • Practical development of your social intelligence function
  • Access private certificate group
  • Bonus query writing course
  • Bonus neuroscience and brain course

4 Month Payment Plan

£500 x4 payments
Split the cost over 4 monthly payments.


  • Access to lecture content
  • Access to labs and feedback sessions
  •  Networking opportunities
  • Special guests
  • Practical development of your social intelligence function
  • Access private certificate group
  • Bonus query writing course
  • Bonus neuroscience and brain course

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the course for?

Anyone who is using social data as all, or part of their job.  Including professionals from marketing, research, insights, product development and PR.

How long is the course? 

The course has 8 modules that run over 16 weeks. Most of the content live to ensure everyone gets a chance to work directly with the experts.

Each module has one contact week where you attend live sessions, and one implementation week.

The course will start on the 18th of January 2021. 

Do I need a social intelligence department to do this?

 No - the course will work for you if you are a professional using social data in your work.

Do I need a social intelligence project to work with?

No - there will be set tasks and places to insert your own business contexts to put your skills into practice but you can start from scratch. Then we get them to put it in practice in their company but they don’t need to have existing projects.

Will I be able to access the content after the course?

The course material is yours to keep so you can continue to revisit it as much as you like.

How many students will you take?

Each cohort will be comprised of no more than 25 companies. 

What’s the application process?

Places on the course are competitive. 

Join the waiting list for August 2021 cohort.

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