What is a topic?
A topic is a search query that contains a string of keywords (variations on the spelling and other common search terms that frequently appear together with your monitoring subject). YouScan will use these keywords to search for mentions on social media.
The monitoring subject can be a brand name, a company, a person, an ad campaign, an entire field (for example, to find out what people say about the dairy industry online), etc. Every monitoring topic will contain a separate mention stream, a collection of metrics and analytics, send email notifications, etc.
Different topics can be compared and contrasted with one another.
How to create a new topic
Select «Create topic» in the menu located above your list of topics.
2. In the window that appears:
Name your new topic.
In the Text query field, write a search query you would like to monitor.
We recommend that you use the hints, or write to us in the support chat so that we can check your option and tell you how to improve it.
When the search query is ready, select the Filters to monitor.
There are six of them available. Let's start with Language to understand how the filters work. (If you don't select any language, the system will find mentions in all available languages).
You can select the language you are interested in by clicking on the blue checkmark next to it. You can also exclude the language you don't need by clicking on the red minus.
Please note that next to each language you can see the number of mentions that the system has found in that language.
In the Geography section, you can select the countries, regions, and cities you need. You can also exclude those that you are not interested in.
☝️ Note: Some sources, like Instagram, Telegram, and Bluesky, do not share data about their users' locations. In such cases, you can use the "Unknown" filter in the Geography section to find mentions from these platforms.
In the Sources section, you can select not only the type of source you need but also select or exclude certain sources by name.
If you don't find the source you need in the list, use the search.
You can also select the author's gender, age, and number of followers.
If you have the Visual Insights module enabled, you can immediately filter authors by their interests in the Audience section.
And in the Visual section, you can choose the type of image and objects you want to see on it.
When all the filters are selected, click «Apply».
These filters will be applied to the entire search query. However, you can use Advanced Operators to apply certain filters to only a part of your search query. You can read more about operators and how to use them in this article " Search query language".
3. If you have the Visual Insights add-on, you can go down to the bottom and add text for recognition. The same rules apply here as when writing a search query.
You can read more about this feature in the article “How Text Recognition works in social media images”.
☝️ The same filters you selected above will be used for text recognition.
If you have logo recognition enabled, you can also add it to the search right away.
4. When you're ready, click «Show preview».
The system will show you the number of mentions found in the last 30 days. If you've exceeded the limit, you can narrow your search, use filters, or use Sampling.
If you see irrelevant mentions in the preview, use stop words.
5. When you're done and satisfied with the search results, click «Create topic».
🎉 Success! Your monitoring topic has been created. New mentions, as well as mentions published within the past 30 days, will be collected automatically.
If you need to collect older mentions, please feel free to launch historical data collection in the topic settings.
Start practicing, and soon you will master the art of query writing.
Happy monitoring with YouScan! 💚