In Benchmark, you can use Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter) channels indexed via the public APIs in order to create brands, or collections of branded social channels. Benchmark brands allow you to analyze your channels against competitors’ channels from a cross-network perspective, offering you detailed insight about their social media strategies. Learn how to manage your brand channels effectively to get the most out of your Benchmark experience.

Channel slot usage

In the Social Media Management Settings > Brands menu, you will see Channel Slots Available in the top-right corner of the menu indicating how many Benchmark channel slots you have used and how many you have available.

If you have channel slots available, you can add channels to your brands. If your Channel Slots Available is 0, you have used up all of your channel slots, but you can delete a channel from a brand to free up a slot at any time.

Selecting a brand will display a channels panel showing all of the channels associated with that brand. You will see the Network, Fan count, Username/handle, Indexing Status, and Data Availability for each added channel. At any time, you can add or delete channels to or from a brand via this menu.

Channel indexing

In Benchmark, channel data is continuously collected, or “indexed,” and backfilled for two years from the current calendar date. The Indexing Status of a channel indicates the current indexing progress of the channel data. The Indexing Status for a channel will display as one of the following:

• Not Indexed: Indicates a new channel that has yet to be indexed.
• Indexed: Data indexing has been completed for the channel and the data will be available in Benchmark.
• Indexing: The data indexing is in progress for the channel.
• Indexing Failure: An error has occurred during the data indexing process.

The Indexing Failure status can be caused by a variety of errors. If your Benchmark channels fail to index, please contact our Support team for assistance in resolving the issue.

Adding and removing channels from brands

At any time, you can add or delete channels to or from your existing Benchmark brands. For full steps on how to set up a brand from scratch, visit our Creating Benchmark Brands article.

To delete a channel from an existing brand:

From your Social Media Management Settings > Brands menu, select a brand. You will see the channels currently added to the brand. Select the Delete button next to the desired channel, and then confirm to delete.

To add a channel to an existing brand:

From your Social Media Management Settings > Brands menu, select a brand. Select the Add Channels button at the top of the panel. In the following pop-up menu, toggle between networks using the corresponding icons, and search for the channel you would like to add using the text box. When the search results appear, select the channel you would like to add, and click the Add Channel button to confirm.