I am the founder of an audience research consultancy - Convert Culture.

I’m an expert in social intelligence and consumer insights and have a background as an award-winning marketeer.

You can read about my experience at Penguin Random House, Universal, Domino Records and Amazon here.

I’m also a member of the Marketing Research Society and was named a Social Intelligence global Insider for 2024.

I help publishers understand reader audiences (fiction and non-fiction).

I can use traditional industry methods (surveys, industry sales data, etc.).

However, I have also developed my own social intelligence methodologies, which for many use cases can provide rich fascinating data on audiences at scale and quickly.

I also occasionally support or lead marketing campaigns and offer some team training.

Understanding your author's current audience or a new one you are trying to reach can result in a more effective campaign strategy. From positioning the book to finding the right places to advertise or promote - comms and editorial teams can unlock exactly how to reach these audiences.

By better understanding an audience (around an author, genre or topic), we can also discover new publishing opportunities we might have missed otherwise.

This is big data based on audiences’ social media interactions.

This method allows us to find large data sets for almost any audience, benchmarked against the entire population on a platform like Meta for over 6k preferences, interests, and behaviours. The data is incredibly rich and often we discover all sorts of relevant insights we were not even looking for.

Yes and no.

When discussing “social intelligence,” I often mean “behavioural data.”

This data is more focused on what people do online than their public posts, and I use it in my insight work (sometimes alongside other approaches where it is helpful). It is compelling because it is based on users’ actions, not what they say, and the enormous data sets.

Social listening is also an example of social intelligence. It's based on tracking public posts. Many brands use it to better understand vocal communities around their products, track sentiment, monitor brand health, and engage and discover influencers. Although it is called social listening, many tools track these conversations beyond social media - forums, news, and other internet sites are also often included in this data. It can become interesting when used to understand, track and discover trends. For publishers, I’ve often used this data within campaign strategies or to look at trend-focused acquisition strategies.

Whereas social listening can only analyse those who are vocal on a topic publicly and what they say, social, behavioural data looks at audiences’ preferences based on their online behaviours—where they click and what they “like”—but at a considerable scale.

There is a third example of social intelligence - influencer tools. These are a great way to assess potential talent (where their platform is a crucial part of the decision process, so not all books!) based on some key metrics I often teach teams. These tools were not designed for our use case - but for big brands looking for influencers to send products to. However, they are straightforward to use. They can often supply topline information about audiences - and help with a few other handy things - like tracking the gifting of books and the reach generated by that for reports.

No. It’s different.

Each approach has its place.

The speed at which the data can be turned around and the size of the data sets (rarely under 500k and usually at least 2m) make it an attractive proposition. Likewise, the ability to profile almost any audience (including international ones) also makes it attractive.

Many brands are starting to use this new method, and I’m enthusiastic about it—for the right audience question.

Sometimes, I use this work alone, sometimes, I supplement it with another piece of research, and sometimes, I use another piece entirely. I’m not tied to any specific approach or platform—just the right one for you.

Oof. How long is a piece of string?!

When working on an audience behavioural project, I analyse over 6k data lines. Often, as I organise the data, something completely unexpected might jump out and shift our perspective on the audience and campaign entirely.

However, to give you an idea of the sorts of things in there….

Dominant Demographics

Age, Gender, Location, Wealth (purchase power and price sensitivity), Kids (ages), Education level.

Reading Habits & Interests

• Format Preferences e.g audiobook, ebook

• Genres and subgenres they also like (in Fiction or Non-Fiction).

• Book Retailer Preferences e.g. Waterstones vs. Amazon or Audible vs Apple

• Other authors in the data they over-index for.

Entertainment Interests

• Gaming (which kinds, which consoles, which games)

• TV streaming channels - Apple+, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Fire TV, Netflix

• TV Shows (like The Witcher, Stranger Things or the bigger terrestrial ones)

• Whether they like Museums (and which, e.g., V&A), Art Galleries (and which, e.g., The Tate), and whether they prefer Modern Art or Traditional art.

Media Preferences

• Are they more engaged with newspapers, social media, VOD, radio, magazines or something else entirely we can use in our strategy?

Brands, Products & Food

• Most brands (food, drink, fashion, electronic etc.), ingredients, cuisines or dietary preferences, kitchen gadgets or appliances.

Attitudes, Politics, Interests & Tastes

• Any attitudes leaping out of the data, e.g., the environment, politics, traditional values, or LGBTQ+, that are key to them.

• How charitable are they, and which charities?

• How engaged are they with some key philosophies, e.g. Feminism?

• Any interests beyond books that might be useful to know - history, business or health, for example.

• Whether they prefer modern design or they love traditional design.

Retailer Preferences

• Supermarkets, Department Store, High Street and Online Retailers.

• Online, including not just Amazon but a host of others from Cult Beauty to Next, etc.

Life Style Interests & Hobbies

• Gym Brand preferences e.g. Fitness First.

• Yoga, Fitness Bootcamps, Beauty, Self-Development (and which kind)

• Sports e.g. Football, Football Clubs, Football Players

• Rock climbing, roller skating, fishing etc.

The list goes on, to over 6k lines of interests…

Trends is an exciting area of audience research that is still in its infancy in publishing (and more widely). Depending on the topic or genre, I have several tools and approaches. I can access more than a hundred data sources (including, for example, TikTok and Pinterest or forums like Mumsnet) and analyse velocity by looking at trends over more than a year.

When I approach these projects, I always work closely with the stakeholders (usually the editorial team) as this tends to get the best relevant results. I would say this, of course, but the best work tends to come from those who understand something about book consumers in general. Get in touch if you would like to learn more.

Sure, here are a few examples of the sorts of questions I’ve answered recently for comms and editorial teams based on different social intelligence methodologies:

Campaigns

I’ve often analysed audiences around an author and a new target audience and developed a comms strategy to reach both. I presented all the info from the data and my thoughts on the strategy. Then, I led a brainstorming session (with editorial, PR, and marketing in the room), where we put together the campaign based on the audience.

Brand Author Strategy

I don’t need first-party access to an author’s social accounts to do the above research. However, when I do have this, I can do an even deeper dive. I’ve done this for bestselling authors where we wanted to explore long-term editorial strategy (topics for future books). In addition to all the useful information my research tends to turn up to help inform campaign work and positioning, it also revealed some useful insights the author team could leverage beyond their publishing.

Complex Genre Mapping

While there may be a clear dominant audience in a genre like “women’s historical fiction,” “cookery” has several different audiences who connect with different needs and communities that drive their purchases and preferences. Depending on your needs, I can take the granular or the bigger-picture approach. My recent award was based on a piece of research mapping cookery.

International Data

All my data is international. While my current projects focus on the UK, I can access data from numerous EU countries and the US, including relevant consumer interests, media preferences, attitudes and relevant brands. If you have a question about an international audience, get in touch.

Communities & Conversations

Often, I am asked to look at communities around a topic or author and what is important to them. This can help teams understand better the communities that might be driving their author’s success and how to support that.

Trends

I am often asked to examine trends within a genre. With the rise of platforms like TikTok or fast-moving lifestyle trends, being ahead of the curve is important for many editorial teams, and this research is often commissioned to support them.

These are just examples. I can profile any audience, and we can define it any way you like. Want to know what fans of a book prize, a brand, a retailer, a hobby, a personality, a music genre, or a sport look like? How about fans who are also readers? Or how about whether an author’s fans index highly for any of those things? The list is endless. Get in touch with the audience question you want to try to answer —and I’ll figure out the approach.

I have unique skills in data analysis, consumer insights, campaigns, and publishing. You won’t be presented with swathes of irrelevant data—only useful data for your publishing teams. I understand your needs well.

For teams acquiring platform books, where the social platform is a key part of their decision-making, I will train them on some basic tools and processes to assess this. I have also often trained teams on digital advertising, providing supporting tools (briefing and strategy forms) and help documents they can refer to.

I also often either run or support marketing campaigns for busy teams - sometimes with research included.

Lots. I can be hands-on in end-to-end campaign management, from making proofs, briefing agencies, recording radio ads and creating OOH to setting up and optimising social and digital ads. Alternatively, I can work more hands-off with a team, delivering the strategy (based on the audience research) and working on the creative elements and positioning.

I’ve recently run marketing campaigns for Sunday Times Bestsellers from Bloomsbury, Penguin Press, Transworld and Cornerstone.

The Waterstones BOM - Stolen Focus by Johann Hari is a recent standout (for which I won a BMS Adult Non-Fiction award).

Some of the campaigns I worked on personally at PRH included:

Marie Kondo, Steve Peters, Ottolenghi, River Cafe 20, Malala Yousafzai, James O'Brien, Michael Rosen, Adam Grant, Edith Eger, Rory Sutherland, Janina Ramirez, Michaela Coel, Caitlin Moran, John Bishop, Madness, Netflix: No Rules Rules, Brene Brown, Charlie Brooker, The Volunteer (Costa Winner), Chris Packham and Dara McAnulty.

I began my publishing career at Quercus, working on many translated literary and commercial fiction titles.

If you’ve not signed up, follow my substack for regular newsletters on data and audiences.

You can also drop me a line at caroline@convertculture.net.

I’ll share a briefing form for you to fill out and we can take it from there.

AI Policy

Some of the tools I use have AI technology incorporated to make sense of their primary data, but no primary data is itself sourced through AI. None of the research I source, nor campaign copy or similar, comes from AI (and has never been).

Occasionally, I will use AI-generated images in my presentations, for example, for personas. Whenever they appear I will make that clear.

GDPR

All research based on third-party data sources such as social (e.g. Meta) is via companies whose platforms are entirely GDPR compliant. The same applies to any survey or research conducted with consumer insight companies, e.g. YouGov. Their statements and policies about their data can be shared on request.

The Social Intelligence Lab has thousands of applications to be on their global insider 50 list.

I made the Insightful Innovators category for the pioneering projects I conducted throughout 2023.

You can read my winner's interview, where I discuss my current projects, upcoming plans for 2024, and thoughts on the direction of the industry at the link.

Try me. I’m agnostic when it comes to methods and tools. You might think I can’t see x data or figure out how to reach y audience - but I can usually find a way.