Idea Scout – automated topic research

What is this about?

The Idea Scout takes regular topic research off your hands. It searches web trends, results of your News Monitor, social media trends and websites you specify. An AI rates the findings based on your brand and stores them as ideas with sources. You can create several Idea Scouts, for example one per topic.

Each hit contains a Summary, a Description, Key Facts, a Story Idea, Storytelling Angles, a Relevance Score and Sources & Citations.

What you can set

• Data sources: web trends, News Monitor results, social media trends and web sources (your own website addresses).
• Keywords: terms that are searched for. Without keywords or web sources, the Idea Scout cannot be activated.
• Search language: the language in which searching and writing take place.
• Context for the rating: brand master data, brand voices, target audiences and knowledge stores. Added to this are your feedback (the last 20 accepted and 20 dismissed ideas) and the last 10 ideas, which are excluded to avoid repetition.
• Frequency: Manual only, Hourly, Daily or Weekly, set in the Search agent („Suche-Agent“) building block. The Next scan is shown.
• Automation: Automatically create posts for selected channels, optionally Auto-schedule, with Weekly goal (posts).
• Notifications: idea email and auto-report to selected members.

Step by step

1. Open the Idea Scout. In the sidebar, go to Workflows → Idea Scout. Alternatively, on the Create page, start the quick setup via the Inspiration tile: you describe in your own words what should be searched for, and Amy turns it into a proposal.
2. Create an Idea Scout. Click Create New Scout and open the Configuration tab.
3. Define sources and keywords. Choose the Data Sources, enter Keywords and, if needed, Web source URLs, and choose the Search language.
4. Choose a rhythm and activate. In the Search agent building block, click Configure („Konfigurieren“), set the Frequency and switch the Idea Scout to active at the top right.
5. Start a run. Click Scan now. If your balance is insufficient, the button is disabled. You see the progress in the log and in the notification bell. With Cancel you stop a run; ideas already found are kept.
6. Review the results. In the Results tab, you sort by Date or Rating and filter by New, Accepted and Dismissed.
7. Process further. Open a hit and choose Accept to Inbox, Create post or Dismiss.

Limits

• Credits: Every run uses credits, including scheduled runs. If the balance isn’t sufficient, no run can be started.
• Quick setup: Here and when setting up via Amy, at most 12 keywords, 8 websites and 1 to 20 ideas per run apply.
• Automatic posts: Automatic creation is limited per week, by default to 10 posts. Once the weekly goal is reached, further ideas are collected but no longer automatically turned into posts.
• One run at a time: If an Idea Scout is already running, you have to wait until the run has finished.
• Approvals: If an approval workflow is active, automatically scheduled posts are first submitted for approval.

Tips

• Use a schedule instead of manual runs if you regularly need fresh topics.
• If the results remain empty, the keywords are usually too narrow or too few sources are active.
• Accepting and dismissing sharpens the rating of future runs.

Frequently asked questions

How often does the Idea Scout run?

As often as you set under Frequency: manual only, hourly, daily or weekly. Scheduled runs only start if the Idea Scout is active.

What happens to dismissed ideas?

They remain visible in the Dismissed filter and can be restored. At the same time, they feed into the rating as a learning signal.

Related articles

• Managing the idea inbox
• Set up the News Monitor
• Understand and top up credits