Setting Up Searches

Use Searches to listen to online conversations in Fathom.

A Search allows you to follow conversations in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other social tools by using keywords and phrases that you define. For example, say you just launched a marketing campaign for your soft drink company's new flavor. You might set up a Search named "LemonFizzy Campaign" to listen to and analyze online conversations about your new product. Alternatively, say your HR team wants to research current best practices for hiring technical experts. You might set up a Search named "Best Practices for Hiring Experts."

To create a Search:

Click the Add Search icon.
Enter your search keywords using the Search Tips below.
If you want to filter the Search by sentiment and/or source, (for example, only monitoring things in Facebook and Twitter), select those options.
If you want to share this Search with your team members, click Yes under Viewing Preferences.
Select how you want to be notified of Search results (in real-time or in a daily email; for more information, see the full description of notification preferences below). These settings will not be shared with your team members if you shared the Search.
Name the Search before saving it.

Search Tips

Use phrases or single words.
Do not use commas or periods to separate words or phrases.
Use quotation marks around phrases to return exact matches. "LemonFizzy" will not return results for "Lemon Fizzy".
Wildcards are not supported.

Understanding Notification Preferences

The notification preferences settings control whether or not you will receive an email and/or stream item every time your Search returns a result. These settings are for you only. If you have a noisy or busy Search, you'll likely want to set these to No.

Enable real-time alerts - If you set this to Yes, you will receive a summary email every five minutes that contains the Search results returned (if there are results to report).
Enable real-time stream alerts - If you set this to Yes, you will see a summary item in your What Matters: Activity stream every five minutes (if there are results to report). Only you will see these summary items in your stream, not other users.

Change the Time Period

Searches can look for results up to 30 days in the past. You can set the period of time you want to search by using the calendar in the upper right corner.

Filter by Sentiment and Source

You can filter search results by clicking Source and then selecting Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and so on. You can also filter by Sentiment (positive, negative, and so on), as well as by date with the calendar filter. You can also filter by source and sentiment when you are setting up the Search .

Control Search Noise

The horizontal histogram visually indicates the "noisiness" of your Search. The higher the bar, the more results were found that day. If a Search is too noisy, try adding another search keyword or limiting the sources. For example, if you have a "Jive Software" Search, add another term, such as "collaboration." Typically, more search keywords will return fewer search results.