You're in the middle of a game of Risk.
You've got a ton of troops, you're rolling dice like crazy, and you're taking over territories left and right without really knowing why.
Then—bam—you lose South America, your forces in Asia are stranded, and someone just hit you with a surprise attack from Kamchatka (yep, Kamchatka).
You weren’t paying attention to the strategy, the territories, the pieces, the dice—and now you're off the board.
That’s exactly what happens to a lot of brands when they analyze social media using only quantitative metrics.
Avoiding defeat is the mission here. Let’s break it down step by step:
What are qualitative insights?
Put simply, it’s the part of the analysis that tells you things like:
- What themes actually connect with your audience
- What formats or angles spark real engagement
- What your competitors are doing (and why it’s working for them)
It’s not “this post performed well,” it’s “this worked because it resonated emotionally.”
What’s the most common mistake when analyzing social media?
We’ve been trained to chase KPIs—and end up stuck in a numbers loop without really understanding the bigger picture:
- Likes, reach, impressions, engagement, CTRs...
And while those metrics do matter, they don’t explain the why behind what’s happening.
If you’re not seeing the context, it’s like rolling dice in Risk without knowing where to attack first.
How can you pull out qualitative insights without losing your mind?
Here’s the catch with qualitative: it takes time. (Or at least, it used to).
Manually scrolling through hundreds of accounts, spotting patterns, understanding tone, voice, context, the themes that really hit—it’s hours and hours of work.
But now we’ve got a new best friend for social analysis: Artificial Intelligence.
Let’s be real though—tech alone isn’t the answer. The key is using AI to see better. To build a foundation that lets you think smarter, ask better questions, and make sharper strategic decisions.
It’s not just about saving time (though that’s huge). It’s about seeing what others miss because they’re too focused on the numbers.
Back to Risk for a sec: no strategy = you get steamrolled and disappear.
Risk is all about strategy— just like social media.
You’ve got to read the full map, understand how territories connect, know which zones matter more, anticipate enemy movements, and figure out why they’d go one direction instead of another.
Same thing with social: if you're only looking at hard data, you're missing the whole map—and your results will fall short.
These are the pieces you need to move around the board:
- What’s happening in the world right now—cultural context, time of year
- Exploding trends
- The emotions that align with your brand
- Your competitors’ positioning
- Truly understanding your buyer persona and target audience
- How each platform’s formats actually work
If you don’t get your audience—or your competition—someone else will. And they’ll wipe you out before you even realize what’s happening.
A real case (and why qualitative analysis matters)
One brand was doing a purely quantitative analysis of their posts.
They had data everywhere—but couldn’t figure out why the same posts were crushing it on Instagram and tanking on Facebook.
After digging into the themes, they discovered:
Without that qualitative insight, they’d have kept pushing the same content across both platforms—and kept wondering why it wasn’t working.
That’s the same as leaving a single troop behind to defend all of Australia: 💥 classic Risk mistake.
The takeaway?
Having data isn’t enough.
What matters is interpreting it with strategy, thoughtfulness, and context.
And that only happens when you stop treating the numbers like the final answer...
Understand the map. Read it with intention. And put your audience at the center—not off in some forgotten corner.
And please—don’t leave a poor post all alone in Australia.
