Decoding Trends with YouScan: Expert Insights from Eric Michelson of Research Tree

We’re excited to share this article from our valued partner and YouScan Ambassador, Eric Michelson, Principal at Research Tree. Eric brings years of expertise in social media analysis and shares how Research Tree leverages YouScan’s trend tools to deliver impactful insights.

Enjoy the read!

How Research Tree leverages YouScan’s trend tool

YouScan provides an at-a-glance view of all trends through its filter options:

YouScan's AI automatically detects this detailed list of trends. Let's explore how the tool simplifies analyzing this volume of information.

YouScan has many useful features for insights analysts. One of our favorites at Research Tree is the Mentions Over Time widget in the Analytics Section.

At first glance, the time timeline looks ordinary, but the Trends toggle at the top right unlocks deeper insights.

This is what we like! When activated, this toggle reveals trend points that highlight significant conversations. Each of those points is an identified trend by YouScan.

Clicking on a point shows that over half of the discussion is labeled as a trend and also reveals key analytics:

• Sentiment (red is negative, natch!)

• The trend’s Engagement

• Unique Authors driving the trend

• Which social platform the discussion is mainly occurring

• What type of discussion it is: YouScan's Auto-Categories show this is 89% “Word of Mouth,” meaning mostly organic talk, not promotional or ads.

What's fascinating about this climate-related discussion (Research Tree loves all things Earthy!) is that YouScan identifies some trends worthy of a callout nearly daily. 

What this suggests is that even on days with relatively low volume much of the climate and weather discussion was driven by either 1) influential people or 2), a signal event that marked the day.

Pro tip: How to edit trends for clearer insights

YouScan has a Trends Column that calls out the major trends. It just so happens this one was the first on a list of the top 10 for the date range:

That pencil on the right of the selected trend allows us to edit the trend’s label and change its sentiment. 

Why is the editing function useful? Relabeling trends improves clarity and helps add relevant insights for future analysis. For example, consecutive conversation trends can be grouped under a unified label to highlight their relationships in reports.

Here's a closer look at the September 27 to October 4 trend line, where each date features a labeled trend.

This trend concerns Hurricane Helene and its impact on the Southern Appalachian mountain region.

 The identified trends were this:

• September 27: Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s acknowledgement of climate change and its effect on Helene’s development

• September 28: “Four ways climate change likely made Hurricane Helene Worse.”

• September 29: Trump, in Helene’s aftermath, called climate change a “great scam.”

• September 30: Al Gore’s viral tweet (the one in the picture above) stating that Helene was “a staggering and horrific reminder of  … the climate crisis …”  

• October 1: Asheville, North Carolina, devastated by Helene, was supposed to be a climate-safe city.

• October 2: President Biden called those denying climate change effects “brain dead.”

• October 3: Associate Press news: Helene “brings climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign.”

• October 4: “FEMA has faced criticism and praise during Helene.”

While these trends are useful on their own, relabeling them can more effectively demonstrate their relationships. For example, grouping them under “Helene’s Political Impact” with specific notations (e.g., “Sen. Rick Scott acknowledges climate change”) creates a clear, cohesive narrative for reports.

Uncovering trends with Insights Copilot

When you click on a trend in YouScan, Insights Copilot – an AI-powered assistant built on ChatGPT – automatically analyzes the data. 

It quickly identifies the dominant themes driving the discussion, helping you understand the bigger picture without sifting through countless mentions.

In this case, Insights Copilot summarized key narratives around the most popular trend:

Insights Copilot revealed that the trend focused on widespread criticism of Donald Trump’s comments about global warming. Key themes included disbelief, and frustration over scientific inaccuracies.

Trends in Conversation Insights

Conversation Insights is one of the latest YouScan’s features for faster, engaging and efficient social listening.

Looking at Insights in the left navigation pane we can select Conversation. Conversation brings up several data insight choices. For this article, we focus on Trends. This new Trends view offers alternative ways to understand trending narratives!

YouScan provides five ways to analyze trends, each suited for different needs:

1) All Trends: All Trends: Displays a comprehensive view of all identified trends, including those beyond the Analytics section.

a) Notice a tag in the top left corner of each mention pane. In the case above, they are all a “Viral” trend type label. You’ll see other data labels such as the post type, gender, if available, and data counts of Mentions, Authors, and Engagement. Also notice the default sort option is by Mentions count. You can choose Engagement, Author Count, or Date if you prefer. This follows through in all Trend pane selections. 

b) Clicking on these panes opens a Mentions window where each mention is presented. You can interact with the data here in various ways; either through text searches, filters, or by chatting with YouScan’s copilot AI. 

2) Viral Trends: This selects only the trends labelled as Viral, as you saw in the top left of each mention. If we left the sort order at Mentions alone, it would look the same as above. If we change it to engagement, the order would shift based on what were the most engaged mentions:

3) Popular Videos: YouScan automatically highlights videos with high mentions or engagement, saving you the effort of searching. This is where you’ll find trending YouTube content.

4) Popular Post: This looks at other Popular trending posts around specific trends that can come from one or more posting authors. They are not the most mentioned or the most engaged, but can help you drill down to deeper levels of understanding. 

5) Active Discussion: This highlights trends with the most activity, such as quoted reposts and comments. The posts in each pane are only one of the discussions in that trend but were the namesake for each trend.

Trends, whether you find it in the Analytics Genera Section or in the new Conversation are a very useful suite of tools! It speeds things up and helps us to give you the insights that really matter.

I hope this helps you understand a bit about how YouScan works and how we at Research Tree might approach a hypothetical analysis. 

Please let us know what you think. If you have questions about using trends in YouScan, ask them. They will have the latest information.

E.S. Michelson, Principal at Research Tree

YouScan Ambassador

www.research-tree.net

eric@research-tree.net