A word about 'social listening'
Our Insight team uses ‘social listening’ as a tool for research. Put simply, it’s about gathering data on specific topics from online conversations to allow us to capture first-hand insight from visitors and potential visitors to Scotland. Understanding their interests and expectations, and their experiences and feedback, on topics such as ‘where to stay’, ‘what to do’ and ‘how to get there’. This helps us to see how Scotland is viewed as a destination and to spot tourism trends too.
We use public-facing sites, such as Twitter and Instagram, as well as articles and comments in blogs, forums and review sites, to gather our social listening data. We don’t use Facebook, as it’s a private platform, and since we’re looking for unique visitor conversations, we also exclude news sites and retweets. If you’d like more information on social listening and how we use it, check out our guide to social listening.
