The Ultimate Guide to Social Listening with Brand24 [1]

Taking first steps with a new tool might be complicated. Especially that, as a marketer, or manager, or sales rep, you probably use plenty of them at the same time and each differs significantly from the other. I often encounter similar problems when I try to get used to specific software.

If you want to take the most of a tool, you should get to know all the functionalities and learn how to leverage them. Brand24, a social listening tool is no exception. In the last entry, I’ve explained how to create a project and start monitoring your brand or any other topic, in this post I’ll walk you through the features and possibilities that Brand24 offers.

Sit comfortable and continue reading.

First Steps in Brand24

You have got your project created so now it is high time you started analyzing mentions that Brand24 collected for you. The image below shows Brand24 dashboard when you open a specific project. You can easily switch between projects (if you have more than one), by clicking on them on the left sidebar.

Each project has 6 tabs with different features:

• Mentions,
• Analysis,
• Sources,
• Quotes,
• Comparison,
• Project settings.

Let’s walk through each tab.

Analyzing Mentions

The first tab in your project – Mentions enables you to analyze content collected by our tool and apply various filters on results.

At the top of the page, you can find a chart presenting the number of mentions and social media reach on particular days. This depiction helps you quickly detect a sudden increase in the volume of discussion about specific topic. Such a peak may result from a potential crisis situation concerning a brand or quite the opposite – from increased positive feedback from clients. Naturally, there are many more reasons, so it is good to look into it and find out.

Very often, you can notice a rise in social media reach with unchanged level of buzz volume. It happens when a popular profile with wide group of followers or large website mentions your brand. It is also worth looking into it, as your brand might be featured in an article on Forbes or any other big portal.

You can easily click on the specific date on the chart and check out mentions on this particular day.

It is also possible to show sentiment chart by clicking “Show sentiment” and compare it to the graph above. It may help you distinguish whether an increase in the buzz was related to positive or negative comments.

However, you should remember that sentiment specified by the tool is not totally accurate. It cannot distinguish irony for instance. Therefore, I recommend to always read results and check the sentiment on your own.

The Power of Filters

Brand24 has a well-developed set of various filters that help you narrow your results and pick only these that are relevant to you.

Period of analysis – in the top right corner (just above the buzz chart) you can specify a period that you want to analyze. You can pick last week, month, year or your own. After choosing dates range, you will see results from specified time.

Sources – right below the chart, you can find source categories. You can browse all mentions, only from one source or from any other combination you want (e.g. only Facebook & Twitter).

Phrase filter – this filter is located right below sources and lets you narrow results down to those which do (not) include defined words/phrases. It is a perfect way to analyze sub-brands or specific products. When you enter any  word/phrase, the tool will show you only these mentions that include a given phrase.

If you use {NOT} before a phrase you’ll get only mentions that DO NOT include a given phrase. You can also add {OR} between phrases and you’ll get results that include ANY of given phrases. {AND} let’s you get results that include ALL given phrases in a mention.

Sentiment – you can also choose only positive or only negative mentions. The filter of sentiment is located next to the sources. Scroll it to the right if you want to browse only positive comments and to the left – if negative ones.

SPAM – Brand24 estimates the value of each website basing on distinct variables and assign each source one category (out of three): SPAM, normal sites and high-quality sites. If you set this filter to low, you’ll get all the results that Brand24 collects. Average filter is default and lets you browse sources valuable to you. However, if you want to check out only websites of the highest quality, change filter to high.

Influence score – this is Brand24 authorial algorithm that assigns the influence value to each social media author and each domain, depending on the number of followers (in the case of authors) and on the number of unique view (for websites). You can set this filter to any value from 1 up to 10 and browse results from authors/sources that has been given influence score greater than picked value. When it’s set to zero you will see all the mentions.

Visits – filter of visits lets you show results from websites with a defined number of visits. You can pick a specific value and browse mentions that were found on domains with a monthly number of visits greater, smaller or exact as the specified value.

Set an alert – Except for regular notification alerts that you can set up during project configuration (or in project settings), Brand24 also lets you to create an e-mail notification basing on current filters. After setting up an alert for specified address you will get emails (once a day by default) with mentions that meet all the filters you created. You can edit this filter (e.g. change frequency) in Project Settings, tab Notifications.

My filters – you can also save and manage your filters. Any combination of distinct filters can be saved so you do not have to configure them every time you enter a project. You can give a filter a unique name so you’ll not confuse it with the other one. When you do not need a saved filter anymore, you can delete it.

There are many more filters you can apply – just click on “Show additional filters”.
Filter by domain – this one narrows your results down to only those that include a given word in a domain name. For instance, if you enter here: “forbes.com”, you get results only from Forbes official website. However, if you  put “news” you’ll get all the results from domains that include this word in address (e.g. newsweek.com, news.google.com etc.).

You can also apply {NOT}, {OR}, {AND} operators here. They work analogously to Phrase filter.

Filter by author – it enables you to browse results from a certain social media author. You can also narrow it down to only one platform (or search all of them). If you are interested in one specific person type an exact name. If you want to see mentions by all Johns, enter “john” and you’ll see mentions written by authors whose profile handle includes this word. Operators {NOT}, {OR}, {AND} work the same way here as well.

Filter by groups – you can add every mention to separate groups (I’ll explain how to do it later on). Click on Manage the groups and then you’ll have a possibility to add a new group and delete or edit existing ones. When you click on a specific group’s name you’ll see results that have previously been added to this group.

Filter by mark – you can mark (and unmark) every mention as important. Then you can view browse only marked, unmarked or all mentions.

Mentions order – Brand24 may collect mentions from some sources with a delay. Thus, you can decide whether you want to see results that has been recently created on an original platform at the very top or results that our tool has recently  found.

Filter by date – if you mark “Only new entries since my last visit” you will only see mentions that has been collected since your last visit.

Filter visited – when you click on a particular mention it is marked as “visited”. It means that you have already seen it on an original site. This filter enables you to see mentions that you have already visited (clicked on them) or these you haven’t yet.

Browsing Internet Mentions

Below the sources and phrase filter, you can find the list of all the mentions that appeared in a specified period and after applying various filters. You can browse them, check them on original domains, change the sentiment, delete and many more. Let’s now discuss all the features that you can find next to a separate mention.

Each mention includes:

• small avatar of an author (if a comment comes from social media platform),
• name of an author (or article if it is not social media platform) – 1,
• content or a part of it – 2,
• source & time a mention was posted – 6,
• influence score of an author/domain – 7,
• checkbox for bulk actions – 3,
• sentiment of a mention – 4,
• social media icon (only if a mention comes from social media) – 5,
• settings and features for each mention – 8 to 15.

If you want to open a specified mention in a separate window on an original domain, just click on a name of an author or of an article (number 1). After opening it the mention will be marked as “Visited”

If you click on a domain’s name (number 6), you will see statistics for a particular author and domain. You can check the number of followers of a chosen profile, open it in a separate window and show all author’s entries in Brand24’s dashboard. Below the stats about social media profile, you will see general stats about a particular domain (UU, pageviews, visits, etc.).

Options numbered from 8 to 15 enable a user to perform different tasks and actions:

• History – 8 – after clicking on this option, you’ll see all mentions by a particular author (in the case of social media) or domain (in the case of other sources than social media)
• Mark – 9 – you can mark important mentions or these that are related to a specific topic. (Un)marked comments can be then filtered.
• Source – 10 – shows you statistics for a particular author and domain (like in the case of number 6). You can check the number of followers of a chosen profile, open it in a separate window and show all author’s entries in Brand24’s dashboard. Below the stats about social media profile, you will see general stats about a particular domain (UU, pageviews, visits, etc.).
• Notify – 11 – you can send a notification about particular mention to any email address you want. After clicking on this option you will see a popup window where you can put an email address and a personalized message that will be attached to a mention.
• Group – 12 – you can add each mention to different groups.
• Delete – 13 – this enables you to delete particular mentions. When you click on this you’ll see a popup window with 4 options:
  • Cancel – cancels deleting,
  • Delete mention – you get rid of the particular mention,
  • Delete mention and block the domain/author – deletes this mention together with all other comments from this domain/author and Brand24 stops collecting mentions from this domain/author.
  • SPAM (only in the case of domain) – reports a domain as SPAM.

• Block – 14 – deletes this mention together with all other comments from this domain/author and Brand24 stops collecting mentions from this domain/author.
• Sentiment – 15 – you can manually change the sentiment of each mention if the tool did not assign it accurately.

If you block a domain or an author by accident or after some time you decide you still want to collect mentions from this source, you can easily unblock a domain or an author in project settings. Open the tab Sources and click on delete filter next to the source you want to remove from this list.

The options Mark (8), Group (12), Delete (13) and Sentiment (15) that were described above can be applied in bulk as well. Each mention has a select checkbox (top right corner). If you want to apply an option for more than one mention, just check mentions you want, scroll down to the bottom of your dashboard and choose one option out of four. You can also pick “Select all” and apply an action to all mentions on a given page.

I hope these guidelines will be helpful and make your adventure with Brand24 much easier. If you have any other questions don’t hesitate to ask! The other tabs in Brand24’s dashboard will be discussed in another entry.

More information about social listening you can also check in part 2 of these series.

What do you think about the tool? Leave us a comment!