The Microsoft Social Listening team has just recently added new features to the service, including

1. Location analysis - please see this blog post
2. News publications as a source to collect posts
   In addition to the existing sources (Twitter, Facebook, blogs and videos), you can now add news to your search topics and collect posts from news publications in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German
3. Sentiment analysis is now available for posts in Italian
   Posts in the Italian language can now be analyzed for positive, neutral, or negative mentions

The easiest way for you to benefit from #2 and #3 in new search topics is to edit your existing Solution Defaults to include "News" and "Italian". You must also edit existing Search Topics to include "News" and "Italian" if applicable.

Editing Solution Defaults

Click Settings and then Solution Defaults

Scroll down to "Search Languages" and click Add to display the "Select Search Languages" dialog

Check the box next to "Italian" and then click Save

Scroll down to "Languages" and check the box next to "Italian" (now added to the list of optional languages), then check the box next to "News" in the "Sources" column and finally click Apply

Editing existing Search Topics

Click Settings and then Search Topics

In the list of existing Search Topics edit the applicable ones. In this example lets edit my exisiting "CRM Online" search topic:

I click the Edit icon to show the "Edit [Search Topic]" dialig

For each of the queries in the search topic I click the expand query icon

I check the checkboxes next to "News" and/or "Italian", click Test Seach Query and then click Close Query

I repeat for each query in Search Topic if applicable and then click Save

My seach topic now has the "News" source added and can start accumulate posts in the languages I've specified, including Italian (in my screenshot below there are no posts from "News" yet, but they will be there soon)

See also

• Microsoft Social Listening User Guide - link
• Microsoft Social Listening Help and Training - link
• The "News" source is availiable as an app in Windows 8 too. To learn about which sources are available in what categories and languages open the app (FAQ)
  
  
  

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• How to Configure Social Listening in CRM Online - link
• New in Microsoft Social Listening - Location Analysis - link
  

Now you can analyze posts from specific countries, regions, or location groups in Microsoft Social Listening and filter your data to see where the posts are coming from.

You can access location analysis by navigating to Microsoft Social Listening > Analytics > Location.

On the Location page, only posts that contain location data (author location or post location) are analyzed. In the page title, you’ll find information on the percentage of the posts that contain location data.

In addition to Trend, Languages, and Sentiment, you’ll see the following visuals:

• Location buzz: Shows the number of posts that contain location data.
• Location type: Shows the ratio of author location and post location from posts that contain location data. If a post contains information on both location types, the post location is taken into account over the author location.
• Locations: Provides a quick overview over the five locations that were most often found in posts of your current data set
  .

If you scroll down you see a nice map, showing you your posts with location data in your current data set as bubbles on a map.

• The bigger a bubble appears, the more posts were found from a specific location.
• For your reference, the legend in the lower left-hand corner of the map shows the size of the bubbles based on the number of posts.
• To see different visualizations, select a map type from the controls below the map.
  • BUZZ counts the total number of posts with location data to draw the bubble on the map.
  • TREND/BUZZ additionally highlights the trend in a specific location in a bubble’s color.
  • SENTIMENT/BUZZ. This map type counts the number of posts with sentiment value and location data. The color of the bubble indicates the sentiment index for this location.

In this example I'm initally showing a group of search topics called "Products". Since I'm showing more than one search topic the sentiments option (SENTIMENT/BUZZ) isnt enabled for my map (sentiments is only served for a specific search topic)

My map is showing the number of posts (BUZZ) for the last week across the globe

If I'm interested in a specific product (e.g. Social Listening) I can filter the map using the dropdown

Now my map shows only post for that specific search topic and and the SENTIMENT/BUZZ option is now added at the bottom of the chart

Clicking SENTIMENT/BUZZ I see that in the UK there is one positive posts on the topic

To see a tool tip with more details on a location, I can hover over the bubble on the map and see there is one (1) post. I can click the bubble

Now I have the details for the author and the location of the post (Windsor), and I can click "Posts" to see the content of the post

The author is kind enough to share with us a link to a site where you can find (free) eBooks, videos and more about Microsoft Social Listening (its here if you'd like to see more)

In the Microsoft Social Listening User Guide you can read more about the nice things you can do with the new Location Analysis in Microsoft Social Listening

See also

• Microsoft Social Listening User Guide - link
• Microsoft Social Listening Help and Training - link

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• How to Configure Social Listening in CRM Online - link