By using CrowdTangle’s Local Relevance filter, local media publishers are gaining fresh insights and working more efficiently to discover content on Facebook that is important to audiences in the geographies they cover.

“CrowdTangle has always been an invaluable tool to cut out the noise of social media and instead hone in on what it is you are looking for,” says Pete Grant, Newsquest Media Group's manager of social and audience.

“Having the ability to narrow a search to only relevant places makes that much, much easier to do. It’s gold dust to regional newsrooms.”

Tim Shore, founder and publisher of the Toronto-based blogTO, says that the filter allows his team to quickly and accurately spot high performing content on Facebook based in their local coverage area that they could have missed otherwise.

“The local relevance feature in CrowdTangle has been a game changer,” he said.

A recent win Tim shared was when his team used local relevance to sort their CrowdTangle searches during the 2021 awards show season. Thanks to the ability to geofilter by their coverage area, his team found this post in the South Etobicoke Community Group and reached out to the group member on Facebook.

“A recent search turned up Schitt’s Creek star Catherine O’Hara’s yearbook photo someone posted in a neighbourhood Facebook Group.” Tim says. “We reached out to the person who posted it for an interview and wrote an article, which generated a good amount of traffic.”

The well timed, awards season story with a local angle was the 6th top story of the week in terms of page views, according to BlogTO, and Overperformed 2x more than the average link post does for the BlogTO Facebook page.

Local Relevance is also benefiting the team at one of the largest regional newspaper groups in the UK, Reach PLC. Dan Russell, the head of social media and engagement for Reach, explains that local relevance is another mechanism for his team to do what they're most passionate about – connect with local communities across the UK.

“CrowdTangle allows us to search specific areas to find new content and communities with its local relevance filter,” Russell says.

“The tool also helps us track our own campaigns like a black business initiative we recently launched called #IAMBOB. We are also using the filter for a new website we are launching called Team Dogs to identify dog walking communities and content."