The CrowdTangle Optimization Playbook

A Q U I C K F Y I O N C R O W D TA N G L E M E T R I C S

Public Pages & Public groups

Interactions (Reactions, Comments, Shares)

Both on the Page/ Group and Post level.

Page Likes The number of fans your Page has.

Video Views (Owned, Crossposted, Shared)

First, all CrowdTangle data is public data and does not include clicks or reach.

METRICS WE TRACK METRICS WE DON’T TRACK

Page Reach CrowdTangle will not track the reach of Pages or Posts.

Traffic & Clicks CrowdTangle only tracks engagement on individual Posts. We've seen evidence that higher engagement

leads to more clicks on the Post and Page level.

Private posts & profiles CrowdTangle doesn't track private Pages, or Pages that

are being gated to a specific audience. CrowdTangle also doesn't track private Profiles.

Paid or Boosted Posts CrowdTangle can't tell if a post was boosted, or

differentiate between organic and paid engagement.

C R O W D TA N G L E F E AT U R E S T O K N O W

Intelligence Um, if you're not using this, you're missing the party. Used to build reports showing performance of individual accounts over time.

crowdtangle.com/resources/video/210520477/crowdtangle-intelligence

Interaction Rate With the newsfeed changes, this proxy metric for community engagement has become a valuable KPI for newsrooms.

help.crowdtangle.com/faqs-and-troubleshooting/metrics/how-is-interaction-rate-calculated

Over- and Underperforming Check Post-level performance with over- and underperforming over time. Weigh by interactions and filter by Post type.

help.crowdtangle.com/faqs-and-troubleshooting/metrics/how-is-overperforming-calculated

Leaderboards Compare top-line metrics across pages and for individual pages.

help.crowdtangle.com/faqs-and-troubleshooting/metrics/what-is-the-leaderboard

Chrome Extension An easy way to identify your influencers by tracking how often a link has been shared, who shared it and what they said. 

https://apps.crowdtangle.com/chrome-extension

Once you have access to the CrowdTangle dashboard, focus

on these core features.

HERE ARE THE FEATURES YOU'LL USE… AND HOW THEY WORK

• When the News Feed changes, it's important to evaluate your post frequency and post type mix — and how you're doing against your competition.

• Check the Leaderboard and Intelligence to see what social strategies work, both on your page and competitor pages.

• Adjust your posting strategy accordingly. Experiment with different frequencies. See what strategies drive up engagement.

#1 MONITOR YOUR OVERALL POSTING STRATEGY

HERE'S HOW TO USE CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE

YOUR PERFORMANCE

Intelligence/Leaderboards

Leaderboard

Intelligence ->

• They tracked their page performance by Interaction Rate

• Interaction Rate is a metric used to determine how well your community is engaging with your audience.

• They began optimizing for Interaction Rate and found it led to higher audience engagement, reach, video views, and new followers.

• "In three months our U.S. page grew from 220k fans to 650k, from 30M Monthly video views to 135M." - Guillaume Lacroix, CEO

CASE STUDY TIME: HOW BRUT DID IT

HERE'S HOW TO USE CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE

YOUR PERFORMANCE

Intelligence

Intelligence

• Major News Feed changes can impact which post types get more engagement.

• Experiment with different formats. Use Intelligence to see if you neglect a certain Post type or over-optimize on one. A healthy mix of Post types is generally recommended, but your audience may respond best to one over another. Monitor what competitors do. Note any changes or trends.

• Note: You can click on the peaks in the graph to see exactly which post drove engagement on a page. Pretty cool.

#2 CHECK YOUR CONTENT WITH INTELLIGENCE

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Intelligence

PRO TIPS You can download all this data into a CSV to illustrate metrics via a pivot table.You can also use our Historical Data section (under the setting dropdown on the top right), which allows you to dive into post-level data from the pages you're following.

• Download a CSV file with all your posts to analyze data by post type, see what posts drove the most interactions by interaction type and evaluate best time of day to post

• You can also look at all your link posts and sort by site section in the URL to see which section is driving the most interactions from your audience

#3 IDENTIFY TOP CONTENT WITH HISTORICAL DATA

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Historical Data

FIND IT: You can find Historical Data under the setting dropdown on the top right of your dashboard

• Compare interactions with your peers via the Intelligence tool. Is your Page following the same trends as your benchmark peers? If not, dig into their Post strategy to understand what they are doing differently and what you can learn from them.

• This could include mixing up content variety, posting frequency or covering different stories.

• Intelligence will also point to seasonal news trends that might be affecting your Page and your peers (i.e. a "Trump Bump”).

• For video, make sure to leverage the video views data, and identify spikes in Comments and Shares on videos.

#4 CHECK IN ON YOUR RIVALS

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Intelligence

Use Weights to see which Posts are overperforming by shares and comments — two metrics that favor meaningful interaction on your content. Identify what type of content users are engaging with.

#5 ANALYZE WHAT CONTENT IS RESONATING

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Post Performance

Use Viral Alerts to easily track your best content and your competitors' best posts. Subscribe other folks from your team. Use advanced options to zero in on video, or find posts that are generating a high # of comments. You can then jump in to that conversation, which counts towards MSI.

• They tracked overperforming content in local U.S. news list they built.

• These lists were tied to viral alerts which their social team monitored. They'd send overperforming story ideas to reporters.

• They optimized their viral alerts through Advanced Options to only show native Facebook videos that were overperforming by shares + comments.

• One of the videos they sourced through this process netted over 2M views.

• It wasn't just viral — the engagement was incredible.

• "It was maybe the most thoughtful debate we've ever seen." - Emmanuelle Saliba, social strategy editor.

CASE STUDY TIME: HOW NBC NEWS DID IT

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Post Performance

PRO TIPS You can do the same thing and follow public Facebook groups, politician pages, and influencers. Get scrappy to discover original stories.

• Use daily and weekly digests ranked by interaction rate to spot best practices over a longer period of time. Look for patterns. Is it video? Is it a certain content that resonates with your audience (for example sports, or breaking news etc.)?

• Do the same checks for underperforming Posts. What are the patterns of these Posts (i.e. is the content not driving comments or shares)?

• Make sure to also track the best and worst posts for your competitive set, by vertical/ topic. See what they are winning and losing on. Use the stream or digests to spot trends in types of content, framing, headlines, video and images.

#5 TIPS FOR DIGESTS

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Post Performance

• They set up viral alerts for Reddit, for Facebook Groups, and for niche topics.

• These viral alerts were tied to Slack and sent to different teams across the newsroom.

• Their social team mined these alerts to find original content no other outlet had covered.

• One of the original stories sourced this way went viral: "It was a gigantic hit for us. A story that was talked about in a small community." - Allison Rockey, executive editor.

CASE STUDY TIME: HOW VOX DID IT

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Post Performance

• Use our new advanced leaderboards to dig deeper into specific interactions. Sort by comments or shares.

• Who's getting the best interactions p/video? What are they doing? Who's generating the most comments p/post? How are they doing that? Who has the highest percentages?

#6 BENCHMARK AGAINST SPECIFIC INTERACTIONS

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Leaderboards

• Download our Chrome Extension to easily identify for any URL, who has shared that link on FB, Twitter & Reddit, what they said and how many interactions those posts have

• https://apps.crowdtangle.com/chrome-extension

• Set up a Referral Leaderboard to see what pages are frequently linking to your content. Then, dive into those pages and posts and start to have meaningful interactions with their audience in the comments.

• To set up a Referral Leaderboard, first set up a Saved Search with your URL and then select "Leaderboard" and choose a timeframe.

#7 ENGAGE OFF YOUR PAGE

USING CROWDTANGLE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR

PERFORMANCE

Chrome Extension + Leaderboards

R E S O U R C E S

General Resources live here: crowdtangle.com/resources

Which include ... Case studies

Glossary Feature overviews

Webinars Recorded trainings