Author Segments is Meltwater's new audience discovery tool.
This article will cover:
Overview
Author Segments is a social listening segmentation or audience discovery tool that separates social authors into meaningful segments. It helps marketers deepen their understanding of existing audiences and identify new ones. Importantly, Author Segments complements how you currently use Explore for Social Listening.
Explore offers conversational analytics on what people are talking about. It also offers Channel analytics to understand where they're talking about topics. Author Segments completes the circle and provides audience Analytics to deepen the understanding of who is talking.
Watch the instructional video below
Data Collection
Author Segments uses Radarly author's database to return information about each segment (Radarly is a separate Meltwater product). Each influential X (formerly Twitter) author has a variety of attributes assigned to them, that we then use to aggregate the overall analytics in Author Segments. These attributes include demographics (ex. age, gender, location), and interests (ex. topics, professions). Influential X authors are defined as those with over 250 followers.
Radarly extracts and infers this information by looking at the authors' X bios and recent tweets.
Creating an Author Segments Dashboard
You can create an Author Segments Dashboard two ways.
Via the Navigation
Click Author Segments in the left-hand navigation bar.
This will open the Author Segments landing page, where you will see a list of all existing Author Segments dashboards and the ability to create a new Input or Compare dashboard.
Click Input dashboard to start a new author segment dashboard.
Enter a name for this dashboard
Select dashboard type (saved search, X handle, or X post via URL)
Select a saved search, enter an X handle, or copy and paste the X post URL
Select a date range to generate your Author Segments dashboard.
Click Save
In Explore
Select Explore in the left-hand navigation bar
Click the Authors tab. At the top you will find a banner that reads Find and understand relevant X (formerly Twitter) communities and authors. Create Community Dashboard.
Click Create Author Segments Dashboard.
Enter a name for this report
Select a saved search
Select a date range to generate your Author Segments dashboard.
To view the results of your newly created author segments dashboard, or any previously saved author segments dashboards, click on the name of the author segments dashboard in the table.
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Creating a Compare Dashboard
Compare in Author Segments features the ability to directly compare up to five (5) saved Author Segments dashboards side-by-side or uncover shared and differing aspects between two dashboards with Overlap and Difference.
Click Author Segments
Navigate to Compare dashboard
Click Create
Select your Compare type in the pop-up.
Options:
Side-by-side: Compare up to five saved Author Segments dashboards (Explore search or X Follower analysis dashboards) in a side-by-side view
Overlap and Difference: Uncover shared and different aspects between two dashboards featuring three columns:
Overlap: showing what is common between the two audiences
Difference 1: shows what is in dashboard 1, that is not present in dashboard 2
Difference 2: shows what is in dashboard 2, that is not present in dashboard 1
5. Select up to five dashboards and compare previously saved dashboards with baselines for countries and segments
Country baseline
Select up to 5 countries for Side-by-side and 2 for overlap and difference.
Segment baseline
Select up to 5 segments for Side-by-side and 2 for overlap and difference.
6. Select Compare to create your report
Side-by-side
Compare up to five saved Author Segments dashboards (Explore search or X Follower analysis dashboards) in a side-by-side view, across all four tabs in Author Segments.
Overlap and Difference
Uncover shared and different aspects between two dashboards; featuring three columns:
Difference 1: shows what is in dashboard 1, that is not present in dashboard 2
Difference 2: shows what is in dashboard 2, that is not present in dashboard 1
Overlap: showing what is common between the two audiences
X (formerly Twitter) Follower Analysis
X Follower Analysis makes Author Segments more accessible and usable to you, by allowing you to launch a dashboard just by punching in a X handle, with no need for boolean, to analyze a handle’s followers.
From the Author Segments homepage:
Select Create Dashboard
Under Dashboard type select X followers
The dashboard functions the same way as saved searches.
Understanding Your Author Segments Dashboard
The Communities Report consists of four tabs: Overview, Segments, Authors, and Ad Targeting.
Overview
The Overview tab displays high-level metrics pertaining to the makeup of your author segments. The number of available topics is1072. Topics are presented in the Relevance Rank, Author Segments, and Top Topics widgets.
Metrics include:
Relevance rank - Ranking of author segments and sub-segments based on their relevance to your results. This widget features two drill-down options:
Click the topic wheel icon to update the topic wheel to zoom into this segment
Click the segment name to open the tweets from this segment in the slide-out
Author Segments Topic Wheel Categories - Groups influential authors (greater than 250 followers) into top-level and sub-level communities. Hover and click to drill in.
Top Topics - The most common topics identified in tweets and bios of community authors.
Top Authors - Top authors based on follower count.
Top Author Locations - Author locations most frequently appearing in results inferred from author bios.
Top Occupations - Breakdown of the author's occupations inferred from their bios.
Demographic overview - Breakdown of the most common demographic groups of the selected segment's author.
Bio keywords - The most frequent terms and hashtags in author bios.
Age/gender - Breakdown of inferred ages and genders of the selected segment's authors.
Use the Segments Filter at the top to update the results, drilling into specific segments and sub-segments. Changing your selection here will update the subsequent results in the report. Note you can also narrow in on segments based on Age, Gender, Location, and Tier.
Segments
This tab displays each segment at a high level for easy overview, exploration, and segmentation.
Use the Segments Filter at the top to update the results, drilling into specific segments and sub-segments. Changing your selection here will update the subsequent segments shown in the tab.
From each segment, you can add the list of all authors to an existing or new author list by clicking the silhouette in the top right-hand corner.
At the bottom of each segment, are buttons to View Authors and View Tweets.
Click View Tweets to open tweets in side panel.
Click View Authors to open the Authors tab.
Authors
The Authors tab displays each individual author of the select segment or sub-segment. Authors are ranked by authority score.
Use the Segments Filters at the top to update the results, drilling into specific segments and sub-segments. Changing your selection here will update the subsequent authors shown in the tab.
Each author card will display the name, handle name, bio, followers, following, and tweets count, as well as authority score. This allows you to see the individual people that make up the select segment or sub-segment.
Use the checkbox on each author card to select and add authors to a new or existing author list.
Ad Targeting
The Ad Targeting tab provides insight into the Top Countries, Age, Gender, and Top Interests for your select author segment. Click Download file for an Excel file that includes the tabs Countries, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Google Ads & DSPs. Use these to upload and target on social channels.
Media Preferences
The Media Preferences tab in Author Segments displays the percentage of users within your audience that follow other media accounts on X (formerly Twitter). This helps identify the affinities your audience might have towards other media outlets/accounts. Media accounts are defined as:
Radio
Newspaper
TV
Magazine
Event
Podcast
Person
Movie
The Media Preferences tab is available for all dashboard types:
Input Dashboards - Search dashboard, X (formerly Twitter) handle dashboard
Compare Dashboards - Side-by-side dashboard, Overlap and Difference dashboard
The Media Preferences tab features the following areas.
Current saved dashboard
Media Preferences tab
Saved dashboard date range
Preference Type dropdown (Radio, Newspaper, TV, Magazine, Event, Podcast, Person, Movie)
Media Preferences grid (list of X handles, automatically sorted by % of audience following)
Page pagination selection
Pagination click-thru
Find bar (search to find specific preferences)
Sorting options (Following, Name, Media Preference)
Actions (Share Dashboard)
CSV download file
Filters - Preference Type
Allows for filtering of the returned handle preferences.
Preferences
These are the X (formerly Twitter) handles that your audience also follows.
Each tile shows the name of the preference, the X handle (which is clickable), the percentage of the audience that follows that handle, and the preference Type.
Sorting allows users to order their preference handles by different options.
Search - searching allows users to find specific preferences.
FAQs
Are there any limits to the number of author segment dashboards that can be generated?
No, there aren't currently any limits.
How long does an author segment dashboard take to generate?
They typically generate in less than one minute but depending on the size and frequency of your reports, they may take a little longer.
Can I generate a shareable dashboard or export data to CSV from Author Segments?
Yes! For a shareable dashboard, all eight widgets from the Overview tab are included. A CSV download option is also been included for the Author Segments and Authors tabs.
Where do the topics and professions information come from?
The Radarly data model infers these insights from the content of the X (formerly Twitter) author bios and tweets from the individual authors.
Are authors limited to a single interest area?
No, authors may fall under multiple interests.
Do the results stay the same when I generate an author segment?
No, the author segment is dynamic. This means that if you reopen the author segment dashboard on a different day, we will refresh the data, so new author segments may be added and some may be removed.
How many author segment members do we analyze at one time?
We analyze up to 100,000 community members from your search, based on the ones with the most followers.
How many author segment members can we add to an author list at one time?
The limit is currently 500 members, however, we are planning to increase that limit soon.
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