ISO social media tracking tool for a given subset of accounts
July 10, 2019 9:03 PM Subscribe
I'm trying to find out whether a tool/software exists to track social media posts with a given hashtag - but not all social media posts, just ones from a particular group of users I will specify. In other words, I want to be able to track, say, #teapotlove but ONLY the posts from members of the Teapot Leadership Alliance (and I need to be able to tell the tool who the members are). It can cost money, possibly even significant money.
- Ideally, I'd want to be able to export the posts into a report of some kind (preferably a spreadsheet) that shows the actual content of the post and the account that posted it.
- I'm looking for Facebook and Twitter for sure; Instagram would be a welcome bonus.
- The tool must be user friendly.
- I need to be able to generate these reports quickly (maybe even in real time).
- It would be cool if I could specify more than one group (one report showing all posts tagged #teapotlove from members of the Teapot Leadership Alliance; another report showing all posts tagged #teapotlove from members of the Teaware Partnership) and, of course, more than one hashtag.
- Budget is currently open and I'm just trying to find out what it costs to get what I need. Can I do it for free? $200? $20,000??
Everything I'm turning up in my research seems to be geared toward general monitoring of everyone in the world who has posted about your thing, but I need this to be just particular users that I can specify.
Any recommendations? Thanks friends!
- Ideally, I'd want to be able to export the posts into a report of some kind (preferably a spreadsheet) that shows the actual content of the post and the account that posted it.
- I'm looking for Facebook and Twitter for sure; Instagram would be a welcome bonus.
- The tool must be user friendly.
- I need to be able to generate these reports quickly (maybe even in real time).
- It would be cool if I could specify more than one group (one report showing all posts tagged #teapotlove from members of the Teapot Leadership Alliance; another report showing all posts tagged #teapotlove from members of the Teaware Partnership) and, of course, more than one hashtag.
- Budget is currently open and I'm just trying to find out what it costs to get what I need. Can I do it for free? $200? $20,000??
Everything I'm turning up in my research seems to be geared toward general monitoring of everyone in the world who has posted about your thing, but I need this to be just particular users that I can specify.
Any recommendations? Thanks friends!
Response by poster: Yes, Twitter isn’t that difficult to track - Facebook is the real issue. If we’re paying for a tool, though, I’d ideally like everything to be in the same place. We’re doing this manually now and it’s a huge and annoying job that seems better suited to a computer than a human!
posted by hansbrough at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2019
posted by hansbrough at 7:34 AM on July 11, 2019
Yep, Facebook is the issue. For everyone, in fact; it's hard to get this kind of surveillance app (which is what you're asking for) approved by them, even on an opt-in basis. (Blame Cambridge Analytica.)
*Are* these users who have opted-in? Is there any benefit to them? Are these posts public? If "no" to any, manual might be your best bet, even if that means paying people to do this manual collection. Screen-scraping automatically might work, at least for a bit.
posted by supercres at 7:41 AM on July 11, 2019
*Are* these users who have opted-in? Is there any benefit to them? Are these posts public? If "no" to any, manual might be your best bet, even if that means paying people to do this manual collection. Screen-scraping automatically might work, at least for a bit.
posted by supercres at 7:41 AM on July 11, 2019
Response by poster: *Are* these users who have opted-in? Is there any benefit to them? Are these posts public? If "no" to any, manual might be your best bet, even if that means paying people to do this manual collection. Screen-scraping automatically might work, at least for a bit.
They would be public posts for sure by public servants and community organizations (so, pages - not personal accounts). For one group (the organizations), they would have opted in to be part of our project (but not specifically to have us track their social channels - they self-report that info now); the public officials need to be tracked because we are trying to measure whether our outreach to them results in them actually posting about our project (this is the group we currently track manually and we do have a paid person on staff doing it - but it's an extremely heavy lift requiring constant reporting by this staff person over a period of a couple days as the project reaches its peak).
There isn't really a direct benefit of us tracking to the organizations and public officials doing the posting. There's an indirect benefit to the orgs in that us being able to report our social media reach helps us secure funding for the program the following year and they do benefit from being part of the program. However, adding an opt-in to this whole procedure would be a huge logistical and bureaucratic nightmare that would probably outweigh the benefits of having the automated tracking.
I just feel like this data is already out there and there has to be a way to track it automatically and nab just the relevant data?!
posted by hansbrough at 9:43 AM on July 11, 2019
They would be public posts for sure by public servants and community organizations (so, pages - not personal accounts). For one group (the organizations), they would have opted in to be part of our project (but not specifically to have us track their social channels - they self-report that info now); the public officials need to be tracked because we are trying to measure whether our outreach to them results in them actually posting about our project (this is the group we currently track manually and we do have a paid person on staff doing it - but it's an extremely heavy lift requiring constant reporting by this staff person over a period of a couple days as the project reaches its peak).
There isn't really a direct benefit of us tracking to the organizations and public officials doing the posting. There's an indirect benefit to the orgs in that us being able to report our social media reach helps us secure funding for the program the following year and they do benefit from being part of the program. However, adding an opt-in to this whole procedure would be a huge logistical and bureaucratic nightmare that would probably outweigh the benefits of having the automated tracking.
I just feel like this data is already out there and there has to be a way to track it automatically and nab just the relevant data?!
posted by hansbrough at 9:43 AM on July 11, 2019
Response by poster: Addendum - even without there being a benefit to the people posting to us tracking, I don't think it's a negative for them - this is publicly available information/content that I'm just trying to get all into one place. It's neutral to them whether it's tracked or not. I think the fact that the posts are public negates the issue of opting in and providing a benefit to those being tracked. Also, they're being tracked already (manually) so we would just be automating something that 1. is possible to do by anyone due to the public nature of social media channels and 2. we're already doing, just not as efficiently as I believe we could. (But I'm open to the possibility that I'm not thinking about this correctly.)
posted by hansbrough at 9:47 AM on July 11, 2019
posted by hansbrough at 9:47 AM on July 11, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
Also, did you look at Twitter's Advanced Search? It allows you to select people and hashtags. I imagine there's a tool that could automate this for you, but in the meantime...
posted by slidell at 5:16 AM on July 11, 2019