Brandwatch Tutorial – Session 1: Social Media Monitoring 101

Let me introduce you to a series of posts on how to use Brandwatch for Social Media Monitoring and Reporting.

This series should explain how to get the most out of Brandwatch, in very practical terms. Each post will describe one particular use-case, starting from the simplest all the way to more advanced uses.

The series will be split in two halves. First we will cover snapshot reporting: how to find out what was said online over the last few weeks or months. Then we will focus on ongoing monitoring: how to track, day by day, what is being said online.

The only requirements for this tutorial are that you have access to Brandwatch, and use a modern browser (IE 8+, Firefox3+ or Chrome5+).

Hopefully you will find these posts interesting. We hope you enjoy them!

What are people saying about …
For this first session, we will start from the beginning. You want to know what people are saying about a particular brand, or product, or person, or topic. For now, let’s say that you are interested in Superdry (the clothing company). Before finding out what people are saying about Superdry, you should ask yourself: are people talking about it at all? Here is how to find out in four easy steps.

Create the query
First of all go to Brandwatch and log in, using your username and password.

Then click on ‘Setup’ (top-right of the screen) and then ‘Create a New Query’. You will see a form where you can define what you want to track – it is quite similar to doing a search in Google. Under ‘Enter search query’ type Superdry. Click on the ‘Test search’ button, and you will get a sample of mentions of Superdry, taken from our archive. You can quickly scan through the sample mentions, and check that all are very relevant, then click on ‘Save as query’. You will be prompted for a name (type Superdry again) and an industry (select ‘Retail’), finally click on ‘Save query now’.

Creating the Superdry query

You have now created your first Brandwatch query. More advanced options are available when creating queries, but we will cover these in a later instalment of this tutorial (and you can also have a look at Bryan’s post). Creating a good, precise query is a key element of a successful monitoring exercise, but for now we will stick to the basics.

What happens next is that the Brandwatch crawlers will start looking for new mentions of Superdry, on a 24/7 basis. Brandwatch will also look for mentions from the last couple of months, within its archive of the Web. This should take 30 to 45 minutes, and you will receive an email once that process is complete. For now, click on ‘Close’ in the small window, and then on ‘X’ in the Setup window, and wait for the notification email.

Create a workspace
Brandwatch is based on the concept of workspaces. Each workspace is one area where you can compare, analyse and find insights about one or several queries. To some extent, they can also be seen as reports.

Each workspace comprises of one or more pages, and each page can contain one or more components. There are different types of components which provide different types of information about one or more queries.

Once you have received the notification email, type Superdry in the text field underneath ‘Create a new workspace for’ (top-left of the screen). A drop-down list will appear – click on ‘Create a new workspace’ underneath Superdry. This will create a pre-configured workspace for your Superdry query. It may take a few seconds for the workspace to load. Click on the ‘X’ of the Controls pop-up, as we will not use it for now.

Use the summary component
Your new workspace will have 4 tabs. For now we will only look at the first one, called ‘Summary’. This tab contains just one component, also called ‘Summary’.

Summary component for Superdry

The Summary component provides a quick overview of data related to your Superdry query, from the last week:

• at the top, the total number of mentions, and a breakdown of positive, neutral and negative ones
• below, a small bar chart shows the breakdown by type of website: news, blog, forum, twitter, etc
• next, a list of the sites with the most mentions of Superdry
• on the right, a pie chart of the sentiment breakdown
• at the bottom, a line chart shows how the number of mentions of Superdry has changed over the last week, with separate lines for positive, neutral and negative mentions

All of this information will give you a first idea of:

• how much online buzz there is around Superdry: at time of writing, about 500 mentions per week, which is reasonable
• from which sites and type of sites: mostly Twitter, but also various blogs and forums
• with which sentiment: overwhelmingly positive

Save it all for later!
Now that you have created your first workspace, it is a good idea to save it for later. To do this, on the left-hand side column of the window, look for a Superdry link – note that Superdry there is the name of the workspace. You can rename the workspace by clicking on ‘V’ button and then on ‘Rename’; type a new name (for example ‘First workspace’) and click on ‘OK’.

To actually save the workspace, click on the ‘V’ icon again and then on ‘Save’. The light next to the workspace name will turn green, meaning that it has been saved successfully.

You can now log out if you wish, using the ‘Logout’ link at the top-right of the screen. Next time you log in, your workspace will still be there.

That is all for the first part of this tutorial! We hope it was clear enough, if you have any questions please do Contact Us.