How to Use Intelligence

CrowdTangle Guide - Intelligence gives media publishers a quick way to see the performance of a social channel over time...

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Written by Tess
Updated over a week ago

This is the primary Intelligence overview article.  If you need help troubleshooting, check out the Intelligence FAQ here.

Update July 2023:

  • Twitter announced the deprecation of their API to certain access tiers, which resulted in CrowdTangle losing access and the ability to serve Twitter data. You can find more information here.

  • Reddit announced changes to their API, which resulted in CrowdTangle losing access and the ability to serve Reddit data. You can find more information here and here.


What is Intelligence?

Intelligence lets you study up to 20 Lists or individual social accounts Pages, accounts to see overall performance trends over time with easy to understand graphs and charts. You can also quickly compare the Lists or accounts to each other and export everything as either a PDF or CSV. 

Note: Twitter analytics are no longer available in Intelligence as of September, 2019.

Why Would I Use Intelligence?

  • If you want to compare the performance of pages or accounts over different points in time (i.e. Comparing post-release performance for movie-themed pages that were released in different months)

 

Recent Updates


September 2019: Added 'Pages Breakdown' for lists. See exactly what accounts are in a list within in Intelligence and compare up to 20.  

April 2019: Added filters for Branded Content.  

March 2019: You can now see video views and video count by video length.

December 2018: You no longer need to include Pages/Accounts in a Dashboard's Lists in order to pull it into an Intelligence graph.  Note- FB Verified Profiles still need to be added to a List first before they will show up in Intelligence.

June 2018: Intelligence now allows you to add entire Lists to the Intelligence graph to study the collective performance of the accounts, Groups or Pages on the List

February 2018: Intelligence can now export multiple graphs at once

January 2018: Intelligence now allows you to compare the performance of pages or accounts over multiple points in time

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How Do I Use Intelligence?

Getting to Intelligence

You can access Intelligence by clicking on "Go to Intelligence" under the "Intelligence" dropdown at the top of your CrowdTangle account.

Adding Pages, Groups, accounts to the Intelligence graph

It doesn't matter from which dashboard you enter, Intelligence can pull in data from Facebook, Instagram.  

Your Intelligence graph can give you information about up to 20 Lists, Pages, Groups, accounts, but you can only pull data from one platform at a time.  i.e. You can't view data from a Facebook Page and an Instagram account on the same graph.

You can add any Page, Account, Group directly into the Intelligence graph, but if you want to look at data for a Facebook Verified Profile, you will first need to make sure that Profile has been added to one of the Lists in any of your Dashboards.

Note that if you are adding a Page, Group, or Account that wasn't previously in the CrowdTangle database, the system will need some time to pull in historical data.  You should see some recent data immediately, but it can take up to an hour to pull in the rest.  CrowdTangle is also unable to pull in historical data on Follower count or Page Likes.  CrowdTangle will be able to show Page Likes/Follower count growth from the first day it was added to the database onward, however.

 
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What Intelligence Tracks: Overview

Intelligence can show you Page/account information about specific interactions, video views, interaction rate, post count, and Page likes/account followers.  Alternately, you can get the same information about the performance of entire Lists.

*Note that the interactions tab tracks interactions based on when the Post was made, not when the interaction was made. To track information on when the interaction was made, view the chart in a List Leaderboard.

Clicking on a particular point on an Intelligence graph will also bring up the posts that earned the largest number of interactions.

There are several filters on the right side of the Intelligence graph that you can use to hone in on specific things:

  • Post Type:  This allows you to narrow your data to specific types of posts

  • Interaction Type: This allows you to focus on trends among key types of interactions

  • Date Range: You can select a single date range, or you can use the date comparison tool to select multiple date ranges

  • Group By: This allows you to view the data by specific time intervals

  • Video Length: You can look at all owned and shared video by count and length.
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Exporting, Sharing, and Saving Intelligence Data

You can export Intelligence graphs as PDFs or CSVs to easily present the data to others.

Using the share report feature will generate a URL that will allow anyone with access to your dashboard to view a specific report.  Reports can also be saved to return to at a later time.

You can also choose to save a report to come back to at a later date- which is useful for monthly reporting or operations reviews.  To do so, you can click on the bookmark icon on the Intelligence graph bar at the top of the page.

To create a new report one, create a name for it in the "Search or Create Report" text bar, and then click on "Create".  In the future you can access your saved reports either from the bookmark icon or the Intelligence drop down menu at the top of the page.
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Date Comparisons

Intelligence graphs can be set to compare the performance of either entire Lists or a specific page, group, account, over two (or more) points in time.  If a single List, Page, account, is on the Intelligence graph, clicking on Compare Dates will open up three options:

  • Previous 3 Months: This option will compare the last three months starting from today against the three months prior to that period.  

  • Previous Year: This will compare the last three months against the last three months one year ago.

  • Custom: This option will bring up additional options as noted below.

Note: If multiple Lists, Pages, accounts, are on the Intelligence graph, you will only have access to the Custom option (below)

  • Select Timeframe:  This will allow you to select the duration of time that will be represented on the Intelligence graph.  You can choose: 7 days, 30 days, 3 months, 6 months, and one year.

  • Select Dates:  This will allow you to choose whether you want Intelligence to look forward or look back from the specific date(s) you choose below.

  • Date/Time:  Here you can select a specific date you want to look forward from or look back from.  You may choose multiple timeframes for the same Page, account, if you'd like.  If you have selected multiple Pages, accounts, you can select a different date for each.

 

Grouping the Data

You can choose whether the timeframe between any two dots on an Intelligence graph represents a day, a week, or a month by using the "Group By" filters.

'Pages Breakdown' for Lists

'Pages Breakdown' shows you a breakdown of every single account from a list and allows you to select up to 20 you’d like to compare. 

You can then compare accounts against each other using a line graph, or you can compare them in a stacked graph, letting you see how the selected accounts relate to the list as a whole.  

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Can I add an entire List to the graph instead of individual Pages, Groups or accounts?

A: Yes- as long as the List has 10k or fewer Pages or accounts in it.

Q: Why is it that sometimes when I'm trying to find a specific Page, Group, account, it's not coming up in the Intelligence search bar?

A: The Intelligence search bar searches through all of the Pages, Groups, accounts in all of the Lists you have access to (in all of your dashboards).  If a specific one isn't showing up, add it to a List in one of your dashboards.  Intelligence should be able to find it then.

Q: How does CrowdTangle determine what time it is?

A: CrowdTangle will base the time off of the time zone selected in your account profile.

Q: Does intelligence track interactions based on when the interactions were made?

A: No. Intelligence tracks interactions based on when the Post was made. To track interactions over time based on when the interactions were made, please use the List Leaderboard and look at the graph.

 

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