Written By:
Team Contify
Understanding Custom Sourcing
In the context of Contify, Custom Sourcing refers to the capability of gathering data from unique and industry-specific sources that align with specific objectives. It allows users to tap into niche datasets that offer valuable insights. Custom Sourcing is a powerful tool for enhancing competitive intelligence efforts by expanding the scope of data collection.
Adding Sources
Adding a source is a simple and intuitive process in the Contify Market and Competitive Intelligence (M&CI) platform. Users can click on “Add a Source” and enter the URL.
If Contify is already tracking that source, users can click on “Results” and submit it. However, to add a custom source, users need to click on “Add Source,” specify the category, and submit the source.
Contify’s Custom Sourcing feature categorizes sources into different categories, including Website, RSS, Webpage Tracking, and Social Media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter. This streamlined process ensures that users can quickly and efficiently add their custom sources.
Add an RSS feed as a source
When a website offers RSS feeds for blogs, case studies, and news, the Contify M&CI platform allows you to easily integrate RSS feeds from those pages and add custom tags at the same time. Contify will aggregate the new blog or case study or news published on the website pages.
What’s better, even when there is no RSS feed available on the page, Contify users can still go ahead and add the page URL. Contify will create a feed in the backend and start sourcing updates from the page as if its RSS feed is integrated.
Additionally, for complex sources such as regulatory websites where information can only be retrieved with a search, you can reach out to our dedicated support to integrate such sources.
Add a webpage to monitor any business-relevant changes
Webpage tracking is yet another powerful feature of Contify’s custom sourcing. This feature allows you to track only strategically relevant changes on specific pages and get alerts when changes occur.
This is useful for use cases such as keeping track of competitor features, pricing, packaging, messaging or positioning changes, or a new link added to the website. Such changes are not announced in a press release, blog, or news update.
Monitoring webpage changes can provide weak signals that may indicate things to come before the competitor announces them.
For example, you can set up the management team page of your competitors for monitoring. The Contify platform will identify relevant changes – executives joining or moving out and will alert you.
Enabling this efficiently with the use of technology is extremely complex; A web page can have several HTML changes but only a few are of strategic value. For example, a javascript change on a page has no business value.
To extract changes that have strategic value, Contify has developed proprietary machine learning models to identify them and discard unnecessary digital noise.
Add social media accounts as a source
Social media is another important source of information for businesses. With millions of users on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, market landscape trends, and competitor activity.
By adding company social media handles as a source, you can monitor your competitors or your own brand reputation.
Social media channels are a great source for a specific kind of market intelligence, for example, to monitor information around events your competitors have sponsored or attended.
Such sources are also excellent for monitoring employee engagement initiatives and employee branding.
In addition to features that ensure content exhaustiveness, Contify’s Custom Sources module has features to ensure that you only get the most relevant updates.
Add exclusion rules to remove specific news updates
Contify is recognized in the industry as the M&CI platform with the most clean news updates without any irrelevant or duplicate updates.
The primary reason for this achievement is the “Exclusion rule” feature, which allows users to exclude information based on rules. This powerful functionality enables users to refine the content and achieve precise and noise-free intelligence updates.
For example, if you’re tracking your competitors’ websites, and are not interested in news related to their sustainability initiatives, you can add an exclusion rule to ensure that you do not receive any updates regarding sustainability.
Adding exclusion rules is easy with Contify’s custom sourcing. Simply specify the keywords or topics/ themes that you want to exclude, and Contify will take care of the rest. You can create multiple exclusion rules to remove different kinds of updates that you do not want to get on the newsfeed.
Add taxonomy tags at a source level for information categorization
Taxonomy items (tags) are a powerful tool to structure the information for personalized distribution and further analysis. Therefore, it is important to have accurate tagging of the information.
The most accurate tags can be applied at the source level. For example, if you have integrated your competitor’s blog, the source-level tags should be “Competitor name” and “Blogs”.
By adding custom tags based on your taxonomy at the time of setting up custom sources, you can ensure that you receive accurate information in accordance with how you have configured your market landscape.
Exclude an pre-configured Contify source with a single-click
Sometimes you may find that a pre-configured source is not relevant to your needs. For example, sources with stock price-related updates or syndicated market research reports.
In such cases, you can exclude that source directly from Contify’s curated newsfeeds.
You can include excluded sources via the Exclusion Sources tab in the Custom Sources module.
Once excluded, such sources can easily be included again from the Custom Sources module of the platform. This helps you streamline the list of sources and ensure you only receive relevant information.
This is primarily applicable if you want to exclude already available Contify sources and related news updates from your newsfeed.
Conclusion
Contify’s Custom Sources feature empowers organizations to gather data from diverse and tailored sources, enabling them to make informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
By leveraging categories and exclusion rules, users can streamline their data collection process, save time, and focus on the sources that truly matter.
With Custom Sourcing, organizations can unlock the power of comprehensive and targeted competitive intelligence, gaining a competitive edge in their respective industries.
Remember, the key to success in today’s fast-paced business environment lies in accessing the right information at the right time. Custom Sourcing is the gateway to unlocking the actionable insights that drive success.
To learn more about Contify, its features, and how it can benefit your organization, contact us.
