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Social Listening

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Qtip: This support page describes functionality that we intend to release starting August 20, 2025. Qualtrics may, in its sole discretion and without liability, change the timing of any product feature rollout, change the functionality for any in preview or in development product feature, or choose not to release a product feature or functionality for any reason or for no reason.

About Social Listening

Social listening is the practice of tracking and analyzing what people are saying online about your organization or even the industry you’re in. By tracking mentions, keywords, and hashtags, you can understand how customers feel about your organization, as well as spot new trends to stay ahead of competitors.

We have several workflow tasks that can help you track mentions of your organization from key social media sites:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
Qtip: For a list of the information we can pull from these social media sites, see Social Listening Tips and Tricks.

Workflows can pull data from key social media into Qualtrics for analysis and dashboard creation. On this support page, we’ll cover how to achieve this setup end-to-end, from workflow creation, to the best dashboard presentation.

Permissions Required

To use this feature, you’ll need a Brand Administrator to enable the following user permissions for you or a user type you belong to:

  • Use Social Channels (under General permissions)
  • Extension permissions:
    • Extract data from Instagram
    • Extract data from Facebook

Step 1: The Social Channels Project

Before you can start regularly pulling data from social media into Qualtrics, you need to create a Social Channels project.

  1. Log into your Qualtrics.com account.
  2. Go to the Catalog.
    clicking hamburger menu top of every Qualtrics page and selecting catalog
  3. Create a Social Channels project.
    inside catalog, have selected social channels
Qtip: Data from multiple social media sources can be added to the same Social Channels project.

Step 2: The Social Listening Workflow

  1. On the main page of your project, click Connect next to the social channel of your choice.
    social channels page of social channels project. each social media is listed and has a connect button
  2. You’ll get a quick description of the social channel’s guidelines. Make sure to read through before you click to proceed.
  3. Set a schedule.
    window where you schedule the workflow

    Qtip: You will also be able to immediately run the workflow after it’s created, if you choose.
  4. Add a task.
    add a task button shown on workflow
  5. Select one of the following:
    facebook and insta extraction tasks

Qtip: The Instagram and Facebook extractors are exclusive to Social Channels projects.
Attention: Please complete the extraction task setup before you proceed with Step 3: Loading Data.
Qtip: These workflows can only be created in your social channels project. But once they exist, you can access them in your project’s Workflows tab, or with your stand-alone global workflows.

Extracting Data from Facebook

By using the Facebook data extraction task, you can create an automated workflow that continuously pulls posts, comments, and replies for any public Facebook page into your Social Channels project.

  1. Select the task Extract data from Facebook.
  2. Select or add a Facebook account.
    window where you add Facebook accounts to your workflow

    Qtip: For detailed steps, see Connecting Social Media Accounts to Workflows.
    Attention: The connection between your Facebook user account and Qualtrics needs to be refreshed every 90 days. If you don’t perform this task, your Facebook extraction workflow may fail. See Refreshing Your Facebook-Qualtrics Connection for easy steps to follow.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Choose between the following:
    selecting between Facebook tracking types

    • Track your Facebook Pages: Get posts and comments from Facebook pages you own.
    • Track external Facebook Pages: Get posts and comments from Facebook pages you don’t own, such as competitors.
  5. Click Next.
  6. If you chose to track your own page, you’ll see a list of pages you have access to. Select the pages you want to track.
    selecting pages to track
  7. If you chose to track someone else’s page, copy the URL of the page and enter it in the text box. Click Add more to paste additional page URLs you want to track.
    Adding URLs for Facebook pages

    Qtip: Use the full URL of the facebook page. Do not cut out https://
  8. Click Save.
  9. Now it’s time to load the data.

Extracting Data from Instagram

By using the Instagram data extraction task, you can take any Instagram business profile you own and continuously pull posts, comments, and replies from it into a Qualtrics social channels project for reporting and analysis.

Instagram account requirements

The Extract data from Instagram task only works for accounts that meet the following criteria:

  1. Create your Instagram account from a Facebook login.
  2. Set your Instagram to a business account.
  3. Link your Instagram to Facebook.
  4. Create a Facebook page for the same business.
    Qtip: If a colleague already created a Facebook page, they can share administrative power over the Facebook page with you.
  5. Connect the Facebook page to your Meta business suite.
  6. Connect the Instagram to your Meta business suite.
Qtip: Qualtrics Technical Support can reiterate the requirements listed above. However, if the way you access these settings in Meta has changed from what’s linked above, please reach out to Meta’s support team.

Setting Up the Task

  1. Select the task Extract data from Instagram.
  2. Select or add a user account.
    window where you connect a Meta account for Instagram

    Qtip: When adding or refreshing an account, you’ll log in from Facebook. For detailed steps, see Connecting Social Media Accounts to Workflows.
    Attention: The connection between your Facebook user account and Qualtrics needs to be refreshed every 90 days. If you don’t perform this task, your Facebook extraction workflow may fail. See Refreshing Your Facebook-Qualtrics Connection for easy steps to follow.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Choose between the following:
    window where you decide what to track in Instagram

    • Track your Instagram profiles: Get posts and comments from your own Instagram profiles. All Instagram profiles must be linked to the same Facebook accounts.
    • Track hashtags: Get posts with specific hashtags ( # ) from your own Instagram profiles. Comments are not included with this type of tracking.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Select the Instagram accounts you’d like to track. Only accounts you own will appear.
    selecting Instagram profiles to track
  7. If you chose to Track hashtags, you’ll also get to enter the specific hashtags you want to track. Enter hashtags comma-separated, with a maximum of 30.
    loading hashtags to track

    Qtip: If you own multiple Instagram profiles, you can add separate hashtags for each.
  8. Click Validate to add hashtags to the list being tracked for your account.
    Attention: Instagram provides profile-wide limits to tracked hashtags. If your profile’s hashtags are being tracked in another external platform or software you use, those will count towards the max of 30 hashtags. This is also why you may start to set this task up and see that hashtags are already being tracked towards this limit.
  9. Click Save.
  10. Now it’s time to load the data.

Step 3: Loading Social Data to Qualtrics

Now that you’ve extracted your social media data, it’s time to tell Qualtrics where it all needs to go. If you want to keep data in Qualtrics, these steps will show the workflow how to add the social data to your Social Channels project (created in Step 1).

  1. Add a task or a Data Destination.
    adding a task
  2. Choose Load into a data project.
    window where you set up the load data into project task
  3. For the data source, choose the social media extractor you made earlier.
  4. Under Choose a project to load data into, select Use an existing project.
  5. Select the Social Channel project you made earlier.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Make sure all of your fields are mapped correctly.
    mapping fields from social into Qualtrics

    Attention: For recommended fields and their data types, see Available Social Data Fields. If you need further help with mapping fields in a data loader task, see this guide.
    Qtip: Qualtrics appends the following fields to all responses: _recordVersion, _lastUpdatedDate, _creationDate. These fields are unnecessary and can be deleted when at this mapping stage. All other fields will automatically map to the correct fields.
  8. Click Save.
  9. If you’re ready, turn the workflow on.
    activating workflow
  10. Confirm Yes.
    new small window where you confirm status change
  11. If you want to immediately pull all eligible data into your project, click Run immediately.
    run immediately button in upper right of workflow editor
Qtip: Learn more about workflow run histories and general workflow troubleshooting.

Step 4: Connecting Social Data to a Dashboard

Qtip: In this example, we show how to use the data mapper because it is the simplest. However, social channel data can be used in data models, too.
  1. Create a dashboard project, or open an existing one.
    Qtip: You can create a dashboard project from your Social Channels project. However, whenever you need to find this dashboard, it will be listed separately on the Projects page like a standard Dashboards project, and will not be nested inside the Social Channels project in any way.
    button to go to the catalog and add a dashboard
  2. Add a dashboard inside the Dashboards project.
    create a dashboard button
  3. Make a dashboard dataset.
    embedded window where you create and add datasets to dashboards
  4. Choose Data mapper for the easiest setup.
    screen where you select the dataset type and name
  5. Under External Datasources, select your social channels project as a source.
    mapping external data source

    Qtip: Here we just named our project “Social Channels.” You’ll be able to search by project name in this menu, but not project type.
  6. Check to make sure your fields are mapped with the recommended field types. See Available Social Data Fields.
    embedded window where you map fields

    Qtip: You can also map multiple sources together with social channels projects. Just make sure to map the social data fields as described in the pages linked above.
  7. Save your dataset.
  8. Select your completed social channels dataset.
    embedded window where you create and add datasets to dashboards, but with new dataset selected
  9. Finish adding your dataset to your dashboard.

Step 5: Customizing the Dashboard

Once your social data has loaded in your dashboard, you can customize the dashboard however you want. Show individual posts, show top social media engagement, filter for replies, perform text analysis to determine trends, and more.

To help you get started, we have a support page with recommendations of useful dashboard features to try, including specific widget setups.

See Building Dashboards with Social Data.

Troubleshooting Social Listening

Whether you have questions about social media data extraction or the best practices for data mapping, we have many resources to help you get set up. See Tips and Tricks for Social Listening.

FAQs