In addition to the many sources for Listen mentions, you can add both owned and non-owned content sources to Listen to track conversations on different networks. In order to remain compliant with each network's policies, you will need to authenticate your social accounts before you can add content sources to Listen. Once you have authenticated your accounts, you can pick and choose which content sources to start tracking to get the best insights for your organization.

What Content Sources Are Available in Listen?

In Listen, it’s possible to track several different sources for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn:

Owned Facebook Page

A Facebook Page your organization owns. Tracking your own Facebook Page gives you access to the page’s posts and ads along with all comments.

Owned Instagram account

An Instagram Business or Creator account your organization owns. Tracking your own Instagram account gives you access to all media published by the account, all comments on the account’s media, and all tags and mentions of the account.

Owned LinkedIn Company Page

A LinkedIn Company Page your organization owns. Tracking your own LinkedIn Company Page gives you access to the page's posts, sponsored posts, and post comments.

Note:

When you add a LinkedIn Company Page to your Saved Search, it pulls in all posts and comments from the selected date range, regardless of your search's query string. For example, if your query is apples NOT oranges, you will still see LinkedIn mentions that include the word oranges. This is a result of LinkedIn's strict privacy policy, which does not allow for more granular tracking.

As a workaround, you can copy your query string into Listen's Key Word filter, which supports up to 600 characters. This will filter your LinkedIn mentions so they are consistent with the rest of your content sources.   

Non-owned Facebook Page

A Facebook Page that is not owned by your organization, such as a competitor's Facebook Page. Tracking a non-owned Facebook Page manually will give you access to the page’s posts and comments.

Tip:

You can search Facebook Page posts from ~200,000 public, non-owned Facebook Pages from select industries by using the Facebook (public) platform filter when filtering your Listen search. To learn more about what public data is available, visit our Sources for Listen Mentions article.

Non-owned Instagram account

An Instagram Business or Creator account that is not owned by your organization, such as a competitor's Instagram account. Tracking a non-owned Instagram account gives you access to the account’s posts.

Instagram hashtag

Any existing Instagram hashtag. Selecting any Instagram hashtag allows you to track all public posts and media shared using the hashtag. Stories are not included.

Content Source Limits

In Listen, your organization can add and track up to 1,000 content sources. This means that each time you choose to add a new content source (e.g. an owned Facebook Page, an owned Instagram Business or Creator account, an owned LinkedIn Company Page, a non-owned Facebook Page, a non-owned Instagram account, or an Instagram hashtag), you will contribute to your total count of content sources used.

You can see a count of your content source usage from the Content Source Settings menu, which displays how many content source slots you have used and how many you still have available:

Instagram hashtag limits

In Listen, you can track up to 30 Instagram hashtags per connected Instagram channel as content sources. When adding hashtags to track, you will see an acknowledgment box warning you that the hashtags you add will count towards your hashtag quota, and that any added hashtags cannot be deleted for at least seven days. Any added hashtags will also count towards your total content source limit.

Adding Content Sources to Listen

To track content sources in Listen, whether owned or non-owned, you will be asked to authenticate your owned social accounts. When adding a new content source, you may be asked to enter your Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn account login details for authentication if you haven’t connected the channel with Social Media Management yet. See our articles on Connecting Facebook Channels, Connecting Instagram Channels, or Connecting LinkedIn Channels for full authentication steps required for each network.

Check out the video below for a quick tutorial on adding content sources:

In Listen, click on the Content Source Settings cog icon in the top-right corner:

The Content Source Settings menu will display all of the content sources you have currently connected to Listen, along with the name, username, ownership, tracking start date, and status of each source. Use the tabs for Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts, Instagram hashtags, and LinkedIn Pages to filter by the type of content source. The Facebook Connections and LinkedIn Connections tabs will display which users from your organization have authenticated content sources.

Track a new content source by clicking on the Add Data Sources button in the top-right corner:

Adding an owned Facebook Page or Instagram account

1. After clicking to add a content source, select Owned Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts and click Next.
   
2. Click Connect with Facebook and complete the authentication steps.
   
3. After authentication, select the pages you want to track and click Track.
   
4. A green pop-up notification will appear for any new sources that were successfully added to Listen.
   

Adding an owned LinkedIn Company Page

1. After clicking to add a content source, select Owned LinkedIn Page and click Next.
   
2. Type in the name of the LinkedIn Company Page you wish to track. If you haven’t authenticated a LinkedIn account with Social Media Management yet, you will be asked to log in at this point.
   
3. If desired, edit the page name for Listen and select a team to have access to the content source. If a team is specified, only that team will be able to use this content source for searches. When finished, click Confirm and Start Tracking.
   

Adding a non-owned Facebook Page

1. After clicking to add a content source, select Other Facebook Pages and click Next.
   
2. Enter the Facebook Page(s) you would like to track in the text box, or upload a CSV file, and then click the Track button. You can bulk enter/upload multiple Facebook Pages to track at a time.
   

   Tip:

   If using the text box, you can enter multiple Facebook Page URLs, usernames, or Facebook Page IDs separated by a comma or space and pressing the Enter key. If uploading a CSV, click the question mark icon next to the Upload CSV to get guidance on formatting your CSV.

   

Adding a non-owned Instagram account

1. After clicking to add a content source, select Other Instagram Pages and click Next.
   
2. Enter the Instagram account(s) you would like to track in the text box, or upload a CSV file, and then click the Track button. You can bulk enter/upload multiple accounts to track at a time.
   

   Tip:

   If using the text box, you can enter multiple Instagram usernames separated by a comma or space and pressing the Enter key. If uploading a CSV, click the question mark icon next to the Upload CSV to get guidance on formatting your CSV.

   

Adding Instagram hashtags

1. After clicking to add a content source, select Instagram Hashtags and click Next.
   
2. Select an existing Instagram account you have authenticated to track hashtags with. Enter the hashtags you would like to track in the text box. When finished, check the acknowledgement checkbox and then click the Add button to add your hashtags to Listen.
   

Tracking Non-owned Instagram Accounts in a Guided Search

For convenience, you can select non-owned Instagram accounts to track when using the Guided Search interface:

1. Click on the Search bar on the Quick Search tab, and select Search for a brand.
2. Scroll down to Social accounts and select Non-owned Instagram Business Accounts.
   
3. Select the accounts you want to track, click Add, and then click Search.
   

Comparing Owned Content Sources

Comparing LinkedIn data to another owned channel

1. In Content Source Settings, open a tab for either a Facebook or Instagram owned channel. Hover over the chosen content source and click the Explore (magnifying glass) icon.
2. The following page will open up a Quick Search for that channel using its Channel ID, a unique ID for that social page. To compare LinkedIn data to the current channel, you will need to save the search with the Save Search button on the top right.
   
3. As you are saving your search, you can add a LinkedIn Page as long as you’re working in the same team that the LinkedIn channel was added to. Check the box next to the LinkedIn Page you would like to add, then click Save.
   
4. You can now compare that Facebook Page or Instagram account to your LinkedIn Page in your Saved Search. For example, you can see which channel attracts more positive sentiment or gets more comments. You can also save more owned channels as separate Saved Searches and add them to this one with the Add Saved Search button.
   

Comparing LinkedIn data to multiple owned channels

1. On the Quick Search page, choose the Search for a social account option.
   
2. Choose which social channel you’d like to add (e.g. Owned Facebook Page) and check the boxes of the pages you would like to add. (If you haven’t authenticated your social account with Listen yet, you will be asked to at this stage).
   
3. Your search will create a Quick Search that combines those two channels. Click the Save Search button to add a LinkedIn Page to your search using the same steps above.
   
4. Now you’ll have a Saved Search where the LinkedIn data is being compared to an aggregate of all other social channels. Since LinkedIn is primarily the only business-to-business (B2B) social channel, you may be interested in seeing how it performs against your business-to-consumer (B2C) social channels.
   

Deleting Content Sources

From Content Source Settings, you can delete a content source at any time by clicking on the trash can icon to the right of the source.

Managing Content Sources After Channel Reconnection

From time to time, your channels (e.g. authenticated accounts) may get disconnected in Social Media Management. For accounts you have authenticated with Listen as owned content sources, your data will get paused if the authenticated channel disconnects from Social Media Management. However, there is a backfill in place and after you reconnect the channel, any gaps in data will be restored in Listen.

However, reconnecting an Instagram channel will not reactivate any Instagram hashtags you had previously set up as content sources, or backfill any data for the time the hashtag was disconnected. Any Instagram hashtags will need to be added again in Listen for tracking.

FAQ

LinkedIn

I am unable to authenticate the LinkedIn account in Listen.

Log into the LinkedIn account that you are using to authenticate the channel. Go to your LinkedIn Company Page. Next to the organization name, you should see a box indicating Admin view. This indicates you are an admin of the LinkedIn organization. If you don’t see this, then the account you are using to authenticate in Listen does not have the necessary permissions to create a channel. You can ask an admin of the LinkedIn organization to make you an admin too. The admin of the LinkedIn organization can make you an admin by going to the LinkedIn company page, clicking Admin tools and then Manage admins.

The LinkedIn Company Page did not come up when I tried to add it in Listen.

Please ensure that when entering the LinkedIn organization name, you don’t have any preceding or trailing spaces or any special characters (e.g “&”) in the name. Try using the organization’s LinkedIn URL instead.

Why don’t I see any LinkedIn data?

If you don’t see any data after waiting up to an hour for it to be collected in Listen, please contact our support team.

Why can’t I track other LinkedIn organizations, public pages, or individual pages?

LinkedIn doesn’t currently allow the tracking of other organizations, public pages, or individual pages. We collect data directly from LinkedIn’s API, which only allows the collection of data from a LinkedIn Company Page on behalf of an authenticated page administrator.

Why don’t I see my LinkedIn data anymore?

Your LinkedIn channel may have become unauthenticated. Please reauthenticate and reconnect the channel and your data will be collected again.

How often is LinkedIn data updated?

We update and fetch LinkedIn data every 2 hours.

How far can the data go back?

We can fetch the last 200 posts as far back as 1 year.

Can I track a LinkedIn Showcase Page?

At this time LinkedIn's API does not support Showcase Pages, so it is not possible to track them.

Can I delete my personal account which has been added as a content source under LinkedIn connections?

You can only delete a LinkedIn connection from your native LinkedIn account. In your LinkedIn account, go to Settings > Data Privacy > Permitted Services and you'll see the connection.

Can I add a LinkedIn Company Page without adding the personal account under LinkedIn connections?

Currently there is no way to add a LinkedIn Page without authenticating your account first. You can only add pages for which the connected LinkedIn account is an admin of.