STV042013
SnapTrends v2.6
User Guide
www.SnapTrends.com
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this document is to share best practices & describe the
process for using the SnapTrends Location Based Social Listening Service
User Guide
SnapTrends delivers Location Based Social Listening
We deliver our product as software-as-a-service also known as SaaS, so there is no
software to load and maintain on your computers. Start by opening your web browser to:
http://www.SnapTrends.net
User login screen: Role based user administration. User-name and password initially
provided by SnapTrends. Organizational Administrators can add/subtract/manage users.
SnapTrends Dashboard
>> Key Dashboard elements - SnapTrends user name
o Can be linked to twitter account for in app engagement - Number of records written to active profiles in the last 24 hours - Number of records written to active groups in the last 24 hours - Word-Cloud of the most common words returned in the last 24 hours - Graph of profile and group activity over the last 24 hours
Location Based Social Monitoring / SnapTrends.com 3
Dashboard Mapping
- Uses Familiar Google maps interface - Slider to zoom in and out of locations
- “Find a location” box to quickly move to anywhere on the globe - “Use a saved location” to drop a pin on a previous saved location - Choose between Map & Satellite views
>> Placing a Lens - A ‘Lens’ is a geo-fence defined by the user - Select the “circle” icon on the map
- Move your mouse to the center point location, click to place center point - Move mouse outward to size the lens
- A lens can be as small as an individual building or as large as a country - Once placed, a lens can be moved by grabbing the center point
- Once placed, a lens can be resized by grabbing one of the outside or ‘cardinal’ points
- As soon as a lens is placed, SnapTrends connects to the twitter data-feed (commonly referred to as the “at-rest twitter API”) to deliver results that fall inside the newly paced lens location
- Unfiltered results - Limited to max to first 600 results on the “mapping interface live view”
- Twitter results
o Twitter handle, date/time, post content o Twitter bird icon opens twitter profile page
o Green pin indicates that location services were enabled
§ Pin points the location the post originated from
§ Street view function – uses Google street view images for an on-the-ground view of any location – drag and drop the icon shown below and place on any blue highlighted street for ‘street view’
Social Media services currently available via SnapTrends:
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, FourSquare
>> Creating Keyword Filters
- Placing and saving lenses without keywords is generally not recommended due to volume throttle and storage requirements
- Best to use keywords or phrases to filter results via the “Include in results” and “Exclude from results” dialog boxes
- By default, retweets (-RT) are excluded from search results - Hashtag (#) and handles (@) are not required
o Example: filtering on white house will return all results that have the words “white” AND “house” in the post or link
- Use the Boolean operators AND & OR to refine search results - Use “quotation marks” to return exact order and characters - Filter search strings can match partial word spellings
- Filtering a search string without a placed lens will return world-wide results - Using “FROM:” or “TO:” will return results to or from a specific twitter handle
For more detailed results on search operators for Twitter results, please reference:
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/using-‐search
>> Using ‘Options’ in Mapping
- Auto Refresh – on by default and can be disabled by deselecting
- Strict GEO – excludes results outside of the immediate lens area or Mesh (premium upgrade)
- Inc. ReTweets – Includes retweets in results
- Mesh Tools (Premium upgrade) – shows options for adjusting Mesh area. When selected too
- Word Cloud – Provides context to the lens area
o List begins with hashtags followed by user handles and then keywords o By clicking on a word in the ‘word cloud’ you can filter for that keyword - Zoom Filter – Allows you to focus on a specific area within the lens (in live
Location Based Social Monitoring / SnapTrends.com 5
>>>> Layers - Map Overlays
- Heat layer - Visual representation of activity inside a search area - Cluster layer - Numeric representation of activity inside search area
o Best Practice – It is recommended to toggle off “cluster layer” when you need to move a lens
- Dark Theme – darkens map
- Watches – tornado, severe thunder storms, flash-floods - Radar – weather systems
- Earthquakes – shows seismic activity - Stream Flow Rates
- Air Now – depicts air quality - Weather – sunshine & temps
- Transit – shows metro rail, bus lines, etc - Traffic – Shows levels of traffic congestion >> Lenses
- Use the “Lenses” button (right of layers) to toggle Lens off and on (note this does not clear the lens)
o Lens is still active
o Heat & cluster overlays still work
>> ‘Save Your Search’ Profile – Please Note: A Profile is a saved “Lens” collecting data - Collection of ongoing searches and results
o A lens actively collects even if logged off and remains collecting until inactivated by User/Admin
- A Profile can be defined as a folder containing searches and keyword/phrase data-sets
- A single profile can contain multiple lens / search combinations
- Saving a Profile dialog box
o Assign to Search Profile – Create your Profile Name - tip: For simple organization use topical names & creation date
§ If you use an existing profile name, the lens/word combo will be added to the existing profile
o Name this Location - Create your Location Name Reusable points on map
- tip: Be Specific when Naming
§ Stored Locations may be used to set the Default location when Mapping
§ Important: Saved location names do not also include or save the radius (size of the lens)
§ Tip – If using [Finding a Location] – Once you’ve found your location, Click on the map point to open dialog box with standardized lens radius choices (5, 10, 15 mile radius)
o Smart Group Users: Setting up a Smart Group or “Auto Grouping” your results may be done on-the-fly when Saving Your Search allowing you to group individual posters - tip: Think Tweeters not Tweets. Also, please refer to Premium Methodology Training – start with Groups, Keywords & then set Profiles
§ Yes or No
• Yes - will sort the results into the Smart Groups you Choose • No – Profile will store results without sorting into groups
§ Smart Group - settings for a profile will propagate down to all the
individual searches contained inside that profile unless otherwise modified
§ Smart Group Assignment - Select a pre-saved Smart Group or
Create a new Smart Group on the fly by selecting “new”
§ Existing or New – Select a pre-saved Smart Group or Create a new
Smart Group on the Fly
• Best Practice: If not set up initially while setting your search -Smart Group settings are best modified at the individual search level
• Editing the auto group settings of a profile will change the auto group settings for all the individual searches in that profile; however, individual searches may be modified after
• Very important when you expect to perform anything more than basic data analysis
• Very important when setting up complex searches or Multi-factor inclusion lists
o Notifications: Allows you to be notified when results reach a specified
threshold
• Notifications are sent via email to the user and/or admin depending on account(s) set up
• Under “If Results Reach#” - Enter a numeric value of 1 or greater depending on user preference
Location Based Social Monitoring / SnapTrends.com 7
-
o Active Networks:
Selection of Profile collected social media service Ranked in terms of best location-based results:
p Twitter - provides the best location based social listening data
o Twitter acts as a “funnel” for other social media platforms
§ This is due to social media companies allows their users to automatically upload messages to Twitter form their platform
p Instagram - is also a good source of location specific data
o Searches can also be run with keywords and without o Tip: when searching in small areas 1km or greater use a
keyword in your search
§ * FourSquare – Our usage of FourSquare’s API only allows us to
view and query for data in Live Mapping View.
• Tip: in many cases you will find that FourSquare 'check-ins'
have been linked to Twitter accounts and appear in Twitter saved results.
• FourSquare’s API does not allow us to save data
p YouTube – When searching YouTube keyword search terms apply
to video title, description and all comments made on original video. This said, results may also include users from outside of the lens area with relevance to keyword in search
p Facebook – When searching the Facebook API a keyword search
term is required.
o If no results are found inside a lens radius; Facebook’s API arbitrarily expands the search outside the pre-set lens until relevant results are found
o Best Practice:Facebook searches are recommended to
-
Dashboard: Vault
The SnapTrends Vault is the location we store reusable data Profiles / Groups / Locations >> Vault: Profile
- When a lens/search is saved to a “Profile” it is active, collecting and writing results to the SnapTrends database
- Profiles can be made inactive by “editing” (middle gear w/Pencil) and changing search status to “inactive”
- Active profiles have a Blue border at top of profile box - In-Active profiles a Grey border at top of profile box
- A Yellow border at top of profile box show that you have both on & off searches within a “Profile”
- Click on “more” under (gear w/green arrow)
o Shows drop-down of keywords & phrases being collected
§ Blue shading - keywords & phrases are Active
§ Grey shading - keywords & phrases are Inactive >> Profile: Results
- Click on (gear w/green arrow) to “View Profile” -
o Displays results from searches contained in the Profile
- Default date range – goes back to 12:00 a.m. of current day viewed - Change date range to recall and review relevant records.
o Tip: Remember to add a date in the Profile Name o Best practice: review profile results in small slices of time - Filter profile results by clicking on “funnel” icon
- Clone profile with “clone” icon - Map profile with “map” icon
- Edit profile with “cylinder & pencil” icon
- View and select individual searches with “nested folder” icon - Export results to different file types
[Upper Right Blue Boxes – Volume, Mood & Trends]
- Volume: number of records written to a profile over time
- Mood: natural language analysis of posted records mood & sentiment over time - Trends: word cloud of most common used words in dataset
[Header display] – (under date range & above “Export Options”) - User: Most active posters in dataset
- Source: Most common sources for writing to dataset - Location: Most common profile declared locations - Hide: hide header display module
Location Based Social Monitoring / SnapTrends.com 9
>> Vault: Groups
- A group is a collection of individual users - Vital for large data-set organization
- Members can be added manually or by smart-grouping a profile or search - Cloned Profiles & Searches carry forward the parent smart-group settings - Groups can be populated by:
o A poster that uses specific words or phrases o A poster that posts from inside a lens location o A combination of both
- Groups are required for building complex “multi-factor” inclusion lists
- Groups are measured for Mood (Happy or Upset) and Sentiment (Positive or Negative)
- Groups can be sorted by the # of followers, # of posts, or date of posts to determine key influencers in a given topical area
>>>> Individual Group members
- Basic information displayed is the data written to the SnapTrends database - Extended Profile information displays twitter profile data we are not allowed to
write to our database
- Map User Network creates a “hyper-tree” social-network-diagram of the first 20 followers
o Network can be extended out six levels
o Handles listed on the left are linked to twitter profile page - Individuals can be members of multiple groups.
Dashboard: Reporting
SnapTrends currently has two basic report types: Profile Results & Group Members >> Profile Results report
- Individual records from specific date range and written to an existing profile - Exportable to multiple data formats:
>> Group Member report
- Lists individual members (think tweeters not tweets) of a group
- Multi-factor inclusion: If multiple groups are selected, resulting group member list will be limited to only those individuals that have membership in all selected groups
- Exportable to multiple data formats:
New Feature – Mobile View (In Development)
Please note that there is a NEW FEATURE on the system. There is a now a mobile-friendly version of SnapTrends that can be accessed from any cell phone, iPad or computer if you wish. The Display is different but is optimized for mobile.
As you Log In, (On the Login Screen), click on "Mobile Site", just under "Forgot Password" and it will take you to the Mobile Friendly version. Once you pull up a profile and see results, click on any of the individual posts to see that displayed on a map.
