Table of Contents

1 What to track

2 How to track

2.1. Inviting colleagues and sharing folders

Inviting colleagues

Sharing folders with colleagues

2.2. Setting up queries

Creating your first query

Fine-tuning search parameters

Editing queries

Deleting, moving & adding a new query

2.3. Boolean operators explained

Basic options

Advanced options

2.4. Setting up global filters & sources

Filtering while setting up a query

Editing filters

Setting up sources

2.5. Feed filters

2.6. Understanding feed & mention data

2.7. Removing & blocking mentions

2.8. Mention overview & Collections

2.9. Reports: All charts explained

Basic report dashboard

Advanced report dashboard

Competitive analysis dashboard

2.10. Custom dashboards & charts

Creating a custom dashboard

Custom charts

Editing & deleting custom charts

2.11. Exporting reports

2.12. Alerts & Digests

Setting up

Mobile alerts

Slack integration

Turning off alerts

1 What to Track

When it comes to monitoring all the relevant information surrounding a business, there are a few key aspects to keep in mind and consider tracking:

• Your company name
• Your brand(s)
• Your product(s) and/or service(s)
• Key people
• Your industry
• Your competitors

Tracking these six queries will ensure you get all the necessary data to be fully informed about the performance of your business, your competitor’s performance and stay on top of news and trends in your industry.

Of course, depending on the topic or subject in focus, you might want to add more queries or specify existing ones.

How to make more complex search queries will be described in the following chapters.

2 How to Track

2.1. Inviting colleagues and sharing folders

The number on the left of the avatar icon represents the number of people with whom you’re already sharing your organisation (in this example, that is 3 people).

When you click on it, a new window will open:

To invite your colleagues, simply type their email address in the bar that says Add email address (1). On the right of that bar is a drop-down menu. In it you can assign each of your colleagues a role: view, edit, analyze, admin (2). Click here to see more on each role.

When you type in the email address, and assign a role to that person – click on the blue Add on the far right to add that person to your organization (3).

Once you click Add, a new bar will automatically appear above the added colleague.

You can repeat this process to add however many colleagues you want in your organization.

To finally invite them to your organization, click on the green Invite button.

Roles

A new window will pop up:

In this window, you can:

1) Change roles: under Role, click on the drop-down menu and then click on the new role you want to assign to your colleague

2) Remove members from your organization: under Actions, click on the little X.

When you click on the X, a new window will pop up, asking if you are sure you want to remove that member from your organization:

If you do want to remove the selected member, just click on the green Yes button.

3) Invite members to your organization

Organization settings is just another way you can invite members to your organization. To do it, click on Invite your colleagues:

When you click on it, this window will pop up:

It’s the same window as before, so the process is the same, too. Just enter your colleagues’ emails, choose their role, and click Invite.

2.1.2. Sharing folders with colleagues

2.2. Setting up queries

2.2.2. Fine-tuning search parameters

1) Refine your search

The next step will be refining your search (if you wish to do so). Here you can add words you want the tool to track (number 1 in the picture below), or the ones you want to exclude from the search results (number 2). 

You might have noticed the Advanced settings option at the bottom. The advanced settings enable you to further specify your keywords and phrases by using Boolean operators, more on which you can read in the next chapter: “Boolean operators explained”.

On the right of the picture above, you can see a guide for the Boolean operators available while typing in your keywords. Scroll down to find all of them, as well as examples of their use. Here’s how the process of using Boolean operators to refine your results could look like:

This ensures you only get results related to Blueberry the phone, and not blueberry the fruit, as you’ve excluded the fruit using the AND NOT operator (more on this later, though).

If you don’t want to use Advanced options, simply click on Back to basic options to return to the prior step:

Click on Next to proceed to Global filters.

2) Specify Global filters

Here’s where you can choose to specify numerous settings such as the preferred language, location, author, influence score or sentiment of your mentions.

Once again, you can include or exclude languages, for example. Mediatoolkit tracks mentions in any language in the world, so your feed might get crowded if you don’t specify any. It all depends on what your media monitoring needs are – covering all the mentions across the globe, or being more specific with the aforementioned filters. 

By clicking on the arrow next to the filter, you get the option to include or exclude something. We could say we want the tool to track mentions in English specifically, and not in French. The same principle can be applied for Locations and Authors filters as well. Then, let’s say we want the tool to track mentions with an Influence score from 7 to 10. This is extremely useful when you track industry news, for example, and want to get updates only from the most relevant sources. We could also set whether we want only positive or negative mentions in our feed, or combine a few so that more categories are included.

A more detailed look into these filters is available in a later chapter: “Setting up filters”.

3) Select sources to track

Following up on Global filters are the Sources category:

By scrolling down this window, you can see all available sources and choose any source/channel you wish to track or exclude one (or more) sources. For example, you might want to track mentions of your brand from Twitter and TripAdvisor only.

4) Preview the results

When you have decided which sources you want the tool to track, simply click on Preview resultsto see how the settings you’ve chosen will affect the results you’d get.

To confirm your set-up query, click on the green Next button at the bottom right corner of the Preview window.

5) Naming your query

The last step in setting up your query is naming it and choosing a folder in which you want your query to be organized. This can be an already existing folder, or you can create a new one:

To create a new folder, click on +New Group in the drop-down menu, as shown in the picture above. When you click there, a new option will appear – Choose new group name:

To save your query, click on the green Save button at the bottom right corner:

2.2.3. Editing queries

If you find you’re not getting the results you hoped for, you might want to edit your query. It’s quite simple – click on the Edit query next to the query title on top of your feed:

The other option is to go to the list of folders and queries on the left side, click on the Settings button () and choose Edit query:

More on this in a later chapter: “Setting up filters”.

2.2.4 Deleting, moving and adding a new query

To delete a query, go to the list of folders and queries on the left side, click on the Settings button () and choose Delete:

To add a new query, click on +Add new query located underneath your existing queries:

To move a query, i.e. relocate a query from one folder to another, click on the Settings button next to your query and choose the Move keyword option:

That will open a new window, in which you can choose the exact folder to which you want to move your query:

You can either type in the folder you want to move it to, or choose one from a drop-down menu (drop-down menu pictured above).

To conclude

Creating and editing your queries should be a very easy and straightforward process if you follow these directions. If you’re still not managing to get relevant results or need any help at all, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Customer Service team. 

You can click on the chat button in the lower-right part of your screen, or click on Help on your upper-right while using the tool, and then on Help me filter results:

You can choose to have someone from our team contact you in the way that suits you best (phone, email, etc.):

2.3. Boolean operators explained

Boolean operators are simple words that, when combined with your keywords, extend or narrow your search and thus refine the results of a query.

Why use them, you might ask? Boolean operators can help you focus a search and connect various pieces of information to find exactly what you’re looking for. They might seem intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be advancing your searches in no time!

In this tutorial, we’ll go through all of them to help you define what exactly you’re searching for and get the most relevant results possible.

2.3.1. Basic options

The first time you’ll encounter Boolean operators is while on the second step of setting up a query. Here’s a list of all basic boolean operators:

• OR
• AND
• AND NOT

Unbeknownst, you’ve actually already been using the OR operator when adding multiple keywords without explicitly entering the operator itself. So, let’s start with that one.

OR

When you add multiple keywords, you basically tell the tool to track either one of those in order to get the desired results. So, for example, you can track ‘marketing news’, ‘marketing updates’ and ‘marketing trends’ to be in the loop with the latest events in the marketing world:

The tool sees this as “marketing news” or “marketing updates” or “marketing trends”. Hence, the OR operator is usually used when we want the tool to match any of the given keywords.

Then, while refining your search on the following step, you might notice there are options to give context to keywords or phrases (number 1 on picture below) and exclude keywords (number 2):

This is where AND and AND NOT operators come into play.

While in the Basic options, you don’t need to enter them alongside your keywords. Simply click on the desired action, add your keywords and press Enter after each one. Let’s go through them in more detail.

AND

“Give context to your words/phrases” option would be equal to the Boolean operator AND. It will ensure that the tool tracks only those mentions where both (or more) of your keywords are present (so, not either one or the other keyword, as was the case with the OR operator – but both). 

For example, I might want to track mentions of Mediatoolkit’s blog. I’ll simply enter ‘blog’. You don’t need to repeat any of the keywords you’ve previously added, as you’ve already set them in the second step of setting up a query (in this case, it’s ‘Mediatoolkit’), as seen in the picture below:

So, we’re already tracking keyword “Mediatoolkit”, but now we want to expand on that using the “Give context to your keywords/phrases” option, i.e. the AND operator.

Simply enter your keyword in the text box shown above and press Enter:

Now, you’ll receive mentions that contain both the “Mediatoolkit” and “blog” keywords.

AND NOT

“Excluded keywords” option is the same as the Boolean operator AND NOT. By adding it, you are adding what is commonly known as negative words, i.e. words you don’t deem as relevant for your query. 

Let’s say I want to track Mediatoolkit, but not when it’s mentioned alongside football in this case. So, if we add ‘football’, we’ll get all the articles and posts mentioning Mediatoolkit, but not those in which Mediatoolkit appears with the word football.

2.3.2. Advanced options

You might have noticed there is an Advanced Settings option below the Basic options we’ve just talked about.

Advanced options section is a more complex one, but nonetheless, it can be easily mastered. It allows a very precise determination of your query, hence yielding even more relevant results. When you click on the Advanced options, this is the screen you’ll see next:

At any given moment, you can click on the Back to basic options to return to the previous step, or click on the Back button below:

On your left side is the area in which you’ll manually add all your keywords and operators:

On your right side, there is a little reminder of all the Boolean operators with examples of how they are used. Other than the aforementioned AND, OR, and AND NOT operators, there are quite a bit new options here:

Just scroll down or up this window to see all operators and their descriptions.

Let’s see what each of these does:

NEAR/N

NEAR/N operator enables you to track only mentions in which Keyword 2 appears a specified (N) number of words after Keyword 1. In order to do so, replace the N with the desired number of words between your keywords.

For example, you might want to track posts in which people look for suggestions of the best restaurant at a certain location. Typing out something like this…

…would result in tracking mentions that contain the phrase “best restaurant” near “Zagreb”, our location, in the text of the mention.

AT LEAST/N

AT LEAST/N operator allows you to set a minimum number of added keywords that have to be present in a mention in order to appear in your search results.

So, we could add a query such as the one below.

As a result, our feed would show articles and posts that contain at least four of the keywords. If there’s a post with, for example, “media monitoring”, “real-time” and “relevant information”, we would not get that mention in our feed in this case, as the minimum of keywords is set to 4.

ASTERISK

Asterisk (*) is an operator which replaces any number of signs. Use it to easily track different variations of the same word, without the need to write every single one down. 

Let’s say we want to track everything related to cooking. We could track the following:

Adding an asterisk after your keyword means your results will include mentions of everything that contains “cook” in the word. So, that would mean that you would receive “cook” in your mentions, but also mentions of cooks, cooking, cooker, and so on. You can always use negative words to refine your results if their scope is too wide.

QUESTION MARK

A question mark (?) is an operator that replaces one or no sign. If you put a question mark after your keyword, as a result, you would get mentions of all the posts that (might) contain exactly one letter more than your keyword. 

So, if we set tracking for the query below,

our results would contain mentions of “mediatoolki” or “mediatoolkit” or any other sign that could replace the question mark (but doesn’t have to).

FULL STOP

A full stop (.) is an operator that replaces exactly one sign that must appear. Let’s clarify it using an example such as this one:

For such a query, our results would include mentions of “books”, “cooks”, “looks”, etc. Basically, if a full stop can be replaced with a letter to form a meaningful word mentioned anywhere online, it will be present in your feed.