If you're using TRAC's Content Insights subpage to analyse social data, you'll likely be interested in understanding the most commonly used topics within your dataset. Thankfully, TRAC provides several visualisations to help you do just that.

The first visualisation you'll likely encounter is the "Topics Treemap by Data Source". This visualisation provides a graphical representation of the most common topics in your dataset. Each topic is represented by a rectangle, with the size of the rectangle proportional to the frequency or importance of the topic. The rectangles are segmented based on the data sources present within your search. This visualisation can be particularly useful for identifying which topics are most prevalent across different data sources.

A Word Cloud is a graphical representation of textual data, where the size of each topic signifies its frequency or significance within the text, and the colour of the topic denotes the sentiment associated with it.

By examining the dimensions of these topics in the word cloud, you can discern that posts with positive and neutral mentions appear more frequently than those with negative mentions. This offers valuable insights into the overall sentiment associated with the topic under investigation.

Another useful visualisation is the "Topics Emotion Word Cloud". This word cloud functions similarly to a traditional word cloud, with the size of each topic corresponding to its frequency or importance within the text. However, the colouration of the topic indicates the emotional tone attached to it. This can be helpful for understanding the emotional context of the most commonly used topics within your dataset.

"Topic Segments" cluster topics that are being commonly used together in posts within your search. These segments can help to provide content recommendations, such as direction on creating content centred around the primary subject areas recognised in the visual.

The "Topics Stream" is another visualisation that can be helpful for understanding the usage of specific topics over a given period of time. This visualisation displays a graph of topics usage, allowing you to identify trends and patterns in topic usage over time.

Finally, the "Topics Bundle" is a visualisation that helps you understand the relationships between specific topics within your dataset. This visualisation works by identifying the frequency and proximity of topics that appear together and visualising these connections. By clicking on a particular topic, you can see the connections between that topic and other topics within your dataset.

By using these visualisations, you can gain a deeper understanding of the most commonly used topics within your dataset and how they relate to each other. This information can be particularly useful for identifying trends and patterns in topic usage, as well as understanding the emotional tone of conversations around specific topics. So next time you're analysing social data with TRAC's Content Insights, make sure to take advantage of these powerful topics visualisations.