Analyzing Social Echo

Understand the impact of your articles across social media

Cheyenne V. avatar
Written by Cheyenne V.
Updated this week

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Social Echo Overview

Social Echo helps you understand the virality of news coverage (i.e. the extent to which a story resonates with its audience). The metric is computed by adding the number of posts, shares, retweets, etc.

For that reason, Social Echo can be a very valuable metric when trying to determine the impact of a campaign. High Social Echo is a proxy for a successful campaign (a desirable outcome). Similarly, when trying to determine the impact of an issue you’re tracking, a high Social Echo would indicate a high impact (an undesirable outcome).


How Social Echo Works

Social Echo can be accessed by selecting Social Echo beneath each article in the Inbox or Search tabs.

The first update will happen 6 hours after the publish date. If the article received any engagement on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Reddit during that period, you will see a value higher than 0 for the first time.

Follow the below steps to understanding Social Echo in Explore:

  1. Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Open an existing search or create a new one

  3. Click on Social Echo

Once you click on Social Echo, you will see engagement metrics for X and Facebook.

Facebook: Total number of Posts, Likes, and Comments.

X (formerly Twitter): Amount of times content has been Posted or Reposted

Note: Since X does not provide access to all of their data, there might be slight differences between the metrics displayed in Meltwater and those on X. The X Search API is focused on relevance and not completeness, which means that X only sends us the data it deems to be most relevant. Therefore, some of the Post and Repost metrics may differ when displayed inside Meltwater.


Sorting by Social Echo

There are no limitations on sorting by Social Echo as values are burnt on each document. To sort by Social Echo, follow these steps:

  1. Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Open an existing search or create a new one

  3. Navigate to Sorted by

  4. Click the drop-down to the right of Date (the default way articles are sorted)

  5. Select Social Echo

  6. Your results will automatically refresh to be sorted by Social Echo


Troubleshooting

Unfortunately, some articles see less social engagement than you would hope and expect.

If an article has little or no social engagement, time would be better spent focusing on the content and/or publications that drive audience engagement. These metrics, or lack thereof, help you refine and improve your PR strategy.


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