Reporting on Topics
Reporting on Topics is a suite of AI-powered features within Muck Rack designed to help users understand the topics most relevant to their brand or organization. It allows users to react to news, monitor industry changes, and inspire outreach based on media coverage.
This feature suite provides insights into overarching topics and specific subtopics within articles, enhancing the ability to strategically manage brand communications.
Watch the video below or continue reading to learn more:
This feature is exclusive to our Premier subscription; please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to upgrade your subscription.
Definition of Topics
Topics refer to specific subjects identified within the content of an article. Topics represent the overarching themes or issues being discussed and do not need to include the actual topic word written out.
Topics often have subcategories, with increasing levels of specificity. For example, ‘Health’ might be a topic, and underneath, you’d have a subtopic of ‘Medical Profession.’ Underneath ‘Medical Profession,’ you’d have ‘Medical Specialization.’ And finally, under Medical Specialization, you might have ‘Dentistry’ and ‘Eye Care.’
Topics in Coverage Reports
Within Coverage Reports, you’ll notice two Topics widgets on the Overview tab of your report: Top Topics and Topics Breakdown. These provide you with a quick view of which topics are most prominently associated with your coverage.
You’ll also find Topics as an available column and filter within the Articles tab of your Coverage Reports. Here, you can leverage sorting and filters to quickly surface the most relevant coverage based on a given topic.
This feature is exclusive to our Premier subscription; please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to upgrade your subscription.
Topics in Dashboards
A handful of new, Topics-focused widgets can now be found within the Widget Library and added to any custom Dashboard on a Premier plan.
Dashboard Widgets
Widget | Description |
Top Topics | This widget surfaces the top 10 topics for a set of coverage and the number of articles for each, sorted by the topics with the most coverage.
NOTE: When using a single data source, topic links can be selected to view the article data. However, if multiple data sources are used for this widget, then topics will not link out.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Breakdown
 | This widget is a pie chart that defaults to showing the breakdown of all topics for the coverage based on the number of articles where that topic is mentioned.
The chart defaults to the most general topics. Clicking into each general topic (e.g. one pie slice represents Health) will automatically reload the pie chart and show the breakdown of subtopics within that topic (e.g. one pie slice for Healthcare and one for Medical Profession).
You can select wedges to see articles attached to that specific topic or subtopic.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Treemap
 | This widget provides a visualization of the most prevalent topics that make up a user’s coverage.
The treemap shows the most prevalent topics by relative size, and allows users to rollover the topics to see the total article count. Rolling over topics also showcases how many ‘levels’ deep for a given subtopic. Color is used to group topics that are related to one another.
Recommended Use: |
Topics Over Time | This widget surfaces the top 5 topics for a set of coverage and provides a graph that shows how each one increases or decreases over a given time period.
NOTE: The widget defaults to the top 5 topics, but allows users to edit the widget to specifically analyze the topics most relevant to them.
Recommended Use: |
Trends in Topics
 | This widget shows the top 10 topics in a table view and the number of articles for each topic as well as how the volume compares to a previous time period.
Selecting the Comparison column will allow you to sort your topics by those trending the most, whether up or down.
Recommended Use: |
Learn More About Dashboards
To learn more about how to create, edit, and leverage Dashboards in Muck Rack, we encourage you to explore our Help Center articles or the Dashboards course in Muck Rack Academy.
This feature is exclusive to our Premier subscription; please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to upgrade your subscription.
Widget Limitations
⚠️ Please note the following limitations of Topics widgets:
Like all widgets today, if a Topics widget has multiple Searches or Coverage Reports powering it, click-through is not available. This is because we do not yet have an experience that combines multiple data sources.
Just like widget functionality today, clicking into any Topic Widgets will bring you to the underlying article data in either Search or Coverage Reports.
(E.g. if I click a slice that says ‘Health,’ I’ll be brought to a screen that shows all the articles with the ‘Health’ topic.)
When editing widgets that allow you to select specific Topics to measure, you will only be able to select up to 30 Topics (as opposed to all possible Topics in the coverage).
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Question | Answer |
How many topics can be associated with a single article? | There is a maximum of six topics that can be associated with a single article, but the majority have only 1-4 topics. |
Can I make changes to the given topic assigned to an article in a Coverage Report? | Manually adjusting topics is not supported at this time. |
Will I be able to filter People by Topics, if I want to connect a Topic widget to the journalists writing about it? | From People Search, you can use the Most Covered Topics filter to view journalists writing about a specific topic.
TIP: If you'd like to surface the journalists who write about a specific topic the most, we recommend running an Article Search, applying the Article Topics filter, saving the search, then using that Saved Search as the data source for a Most Frequent Authors widget in your dashboard. |
Where can I find more details about Artificial Intelligence (AI) features? | Please see An Overview of AI in Muck Rack. |
Where can I find more details about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data privacy? | If you have questions about data privacy, see our Muck Rack AI Trust and Safety FAQs and AI Terms and Conditions |
Get Help
For additional help, contact support by choosing the chat icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and selecting Messages > Send us a message.
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