Social intelligence, run by AI analysts

Social intelligence is the work of turning public social evidence into decisions: what your competitors post and pay to advertise, what consumers say in the comments, and what the market says about your brand. Scolto does that work with AI analysts that collect the evidence, surface the insights and build the reports, so the monitoring comes off your plate and your team can focus on the decisions.

Social intelligence vs social listening

Social listening is a monitoring job: pick keywords, count the mentions, chart the sentiment. Social intelligence is an analysis job: start from a question - who is winning consideration, why did the launch stall, what are a rival's customers angry about - and answer it from the evidence. Listening tools stop at the feed and leave the answer to you. Scolto puts the analyst inside the product, so the output is the answer, with every claim linked to the posts behind it.

What it reads

• What competitors say - their social pages, the formats and claims they publish, and the ads they keep paying for on Meta and Google. See social media competitor analysis and competitor ad tracking.
• What consumers say - the comment threads under posts and the discussion in communities like Reddit, where people compare, complain and say what they chose. See social media research.
• What is said about your brand - your share of the conversation, the themes around it, and how you compare in the reviews of your app and your rivals' apps. See app review analysis.
• What AI says about you - how often ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI name you and your competitors when buyers ask about your category, and which sources they cite. See AI visibility tracking.

Three timings

• Ongoing - weekly and monthly reports on your category, plus an alert when something breaks pattern, delivered to Slack, WhatsApp, email or the app. This is competitive intelligence as a standing function, and trend detection for what is starting to move.
• Campaigns - a baseline before launch, a daily read during the flight, a wrap brief after. See social media campaign tracking.
• Research - a one-off question before a decision: a new feature, a new market, or a new competitor about to enter yours. The analyst builds the plan around the question and answers it.

Why teams call it the Similarweb for social

Similarweb gave every team a way to size up a competitor's website. Nothing did the same for social, where the competitor's real audience, claims and complaints live. That is the gap Scolto fills - see the Similarweb for social media for the side by side comparison.

What to look for in a social intelligence platform

• It reads the comments - posts are what brands claim; the replies underneath are what the market decides. A platform that only counts posts misses the verdict.
• It sees paid next to organic - ads show what a competitor is betting money on, which is a stronger signal than what it posts.
• It reads video and images - most of what is said on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube is said on screen or out loud, not in the caption.
• It covers reviews - app store reviews are the most specific complaint data a rival publishes.
• It does the analysis - a dashboard needs someone to operate it. An analyst in the product delivers the answer, with the evidence linked so you can check it.
• You can start without a sales call - published pricing and self-serve setup, so you can test it on a real question this week.

For how the main social intelligence tools score against that list, with pricing, see social listening and competitor analysis tools compared.

Sources

• Social posts and comment threads - Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.
• Paid creative - the Meta Ad Library (Facebook and Instagram ads) and the Google Ads Transparency Center (Search, YouTube and Display ads).
• Reviews - Google Play and the App Store for apps, and Google Maps for any business location, yours and your competitors'. See competitor review analysis.
• AI answers - ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews.
• News - Google News articles.

Everything Scolto analyzes is public content.

What is social intelligence?

Social intelligence is the analysis of public social evidence - competitor posts and ads, consumer comments, app reviews - to answer business questions: who is winning, why, and what to do about it. It goes past monitoring, which only collects and counts mentions.

Is social intelligence the same as social listening?

No. Social listening collects mentions of keywords and charts them. Social intelligence starts from a question and answers it from the evidence, across competitors, ads and reviews as well as mentions. Scolto does the listening as a step and delivers the intelligence as a written brief.

What sources does Scolto use?

Posts and comment threads on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn; competitor creative in the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center; reviews on Google Play, the App Store and Google Maps; answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI; and Google News articles.

What are the best social intelligence tools?

Enterprise suites like Brandwatch, Talkwalker (now part of Hootsuite) and Sprinklr suit large teams with analysts to operate them. Benchmarking tools like Socialinsider compare account metrics. Scolto suits teams that want the analysis done for them across social posts, comments, ads and app reviews, self-serve from $49/month.

Who is a social intelligence platform for?

Brand, marketing, insights and competitive-intelligence teams, and the agencies that serve them - anyone who has to explain what just happened in their category and does not have an analyst free to read the evidence.

How much does Scolto cost?

Plans start at $49/month (Solo) and $149/month (Studio), self-serve with no annual contract. Larger teams can get a quoted Scale plan.