Shift focus from tedious manual work to more productive analysis by automating labeling across all your social channels. Create flexible rules, apply them to your chosen profiles, and – just like that – all content that fits your rules is labeled.

What’s a rule?

A rule is a set of text conditions, specified by you, that you can use to label many posts at once. If a post fits the conditions, your chosen label will automatically be added to it. A rule can be set across many different profiles and platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Youtube.

Until now, labeling had to be done manually, which can become incredibly tedious, especially if you’re working with a lot of content. Now, rule-based labeling takes care of everything for you – but, no stress, you’re always in control. You can easily pause or remove any rule for any reason, without consequence.

So, let's get into rule-based labeling. First, we’ll take a quick peek at some of the key components of rule-based labeling as a whole. Then, we’ll walk through how to create your first rule and dive into just how customized your rules can be.

A Quick Tour of Task Automation

In the Task Automation section of Suite, click on the Labeling tab to get started. Here, you’ll find your labeling overview.

What’s in the overview?

In the overview section, you’ll see all the key information about the rules you currently have. This quick snapshot is especially useful if you’re working in a large team because it can get everyone on the same page quickly. So what exactly can you learn from the overview?

Name: This is an easy way to identify what the rule is about, usually in reference to the label itself
Content type: Confirms what content the rule applies to, what’s being labeled, from posts to comments and direct messages.
Profiles: Confirms how many profiles this rule applies to.
Date range: Confirms the start date and end date chosen for the rule. A useful end date option is “forever” for long-term planning. For a specific campaign, you can select a more specific end date.
Status: Perhaps most useful, a status confirms what the rule is up to, based on your specifications.

• If Running, the rule is actively labeling new content coming into Suite
• If Paused, the rule has been paused and is not labeling anything  
• If Done, the rule’s date range has expired and no longer is labeling new content
• If Draft, the rule has not been finished and is not labeling anything
• If Invalid, the rule is still missing some key information in order to being running. For example, if a label or profile has been deleted from the account, the rule needs to be set to a new label or profile.
  

Now that we know what information is available in the overview, let’s set up a rule!

Setting up a Rule

Every time you create a new rule, Suite guides you through each step as you go, so you can get your automated labeling up and running quickly. To get started, click +Add rule from the overview section. From there, the set-up wizard will open. In five quick steps, your rule will be created.

1. First, select the content type you want the rule applied to: Choose from Posts (All posts, including Tweets, Instagram Stories, YouTube videos, and Pins), DMs (Available for Facebook, and Twitter) and Comments (Available for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn).
   
2. Next, select the profiles you want this rule applied to. You can, of course, select more than one profile across more than one social platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, and LinkedIn. In the overview above, you can see the sheer number of profiles that rules can be applied to. Check out the rule named Post - Winter Fashion Ad Campaign. It was running for 192 different profiles!
   
3. This is the key step of the whole process: the conditions of the rule. Adding your conditions is really flexible, so you can be sure to set up the exact rule you need. We’ll go into how to set your exact preferred conditions next.
   
4. Next, select the labels you want applied when the content fits the rule. Use predefined labels or create new ones, it’s up to you. In this case, we'll select a global label that already exists, Summer Fashion Ad Campaign. I bet the team is looking forward to relaxing and letting automation take over.
   
   
   
   
5. Finally, name your label and specify how long you want the rule to run for, with a start date and an end date. As previously mentioned, you can choose your end date as Forever if you want the rule to run until you decide to stop it on your own. In this case, we want the rule to start back in history from June 1, 2018 and apply it indefinitely.

With these steps completed, your rule is now created. Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty details so you can set up the perfect rules for your labels, using the use case of a fashion campaign as an example.

The Ins and Outs of Flexible Text Conditions

Suite’s system of text conditions is very logical and can handle pretty much anything that comes its way. Let’s check out what makes up a condition.

Text Fields and Tags

• The conditions section is made of text fields.
• Users can add as many tags, or keywords, into those text fields as they need.
• Users can add as many text fields as they want.
• Entire text fields work as AND between each other. All information from all text fields will apply in the rule.
  
• Tags, or keywords, inside the text fields work as both AND (all apply) & OR (any apply) between each other
  
• Users can select whether the text field requires the text to be included or not included in the post text.

Let's check out the conditions of this rule we've been working with for the label Summer Fashion Ad Campaign. Here, we want to search and label posts based on the following conditions:

• If the text in a post includes any (doesn't have to be all) of the following keywords: #festivalfashion, #outfitoftheday, aviators, summer, beach waves, sunglasses
• AND does not include any (doesn't have to be all) of the following keywords: coachella, #picoftheday
• THEN and only then will that post automatically be labeled with the label Summer Fashion Ad Campaign.

This case has two conditions, but rules can be made with any complex combinations; it's really up to you.

Text Types and Special Characters

The rule-based labeling system can manage the widest range of use cases. Here, we’ll get into our system’s unique approach to all kinds of special characters and possible text combinations.

No Need for Case Sensitivity

All tags in conditions are case insensitive. You have to enter only one version of the word. For example, there's no need to include both keywords sunglasses and SUNGLASSES – just one will do the trick. We also ignore diacritic marks, so don't spend precious time getting those just right.

Managing Text with A-Z or 0-9 characters

You can search keywords of up to 255 characters combinations, including spaces between words. If you input a keyword like summer, as in the example above, the system searches for all uses of this word with any special character like:

• #summer
• Summer!!????
• summer&winter

If you input an expression, such as: I love summer, then the engine tries to find the exact text sequence, such as: "I can't even begin to tell you how much I love summer."

Getting More Specific with Special Characters

What about keywords with symbols, such as these? -.,§!/)#@$~^^&

In our example, we see the keyword #festivalfashion with a hashtag. By adding the hashtag to the keyword, the search becomes more specific, searching for posts that must include the hashtag: #festivalfashion, #FESTIVALFASHION, #FestivalFashion, etc. Posts that use the phrase "festival fashion" without the hashtag will not be labeled.

Compare this to the keyword festival fashion without the hashtag. Your search will label all results for festival fashion, including Festival Fashion, festival&fashion, #festivalfashion, etc.

By adding hashtags or any special characters, you're able to be more specific in your search and labeling. Note that keywords including a special character cannot include a space. Therefore, words with special characters cannot be labeled based on sentences.

Links as Keywords are an Option Too

There are many possibilities how to label based on links. For a link such as this: https://www.yourcompany.com/automation, you can enter a variety of conditions and it’ll work out, including: yourcompany.com/automation or Yourcompany.com or https://www.yourcompany.com

Using Wildcards

Wildcards are special characters that can stand in for unknown characters. They allow you to include related variants for a keyword and locate multiple items with similar, but not identical words. There are two different types of wildcards that can be used as a suffix to your keyword:

• ? to replace any single character 
• * to replace any number of characters.

 

Security, Stability, and the Rule Activity Log

With a large operation, sometimes automation may not go the way you had planned. It may end up creating unwanted labels, especially if you create rules for labels you use very often manually. No need to panic if this does happen. Automation will never permanently "destroy" your hard work or manual labeling efforts.

To keep things running smoothly and everyone happy, a key feature of Task Automation is the Rule Activity log. The log illustrates exactly what the rule has been up to, who's been involved, and when changes have occurred. To make sure you feel comfortable getting creative and exploring all the benefits of automation, every rule has its own activity log. The Rule Activity log ensures that:

• Every edit or change made to the rule is visibly written in the rule detail
• Every label placed by the rule is visible in the Applied labels tab
  
• Every label in the Activity log includes a Remove button to remove what the rule has done

As previously mentioned, rule-based labeling takes care of everything for you, while you're staying in control. You can easily pause or remove any rule for any reason without consequence without ruining your manual set up. Removing a rule will remove all labels on posts made by the rule without removing the whole label from the account. Removing a rule will only remove the labels that have been placed automatically. Labels placed manually will remain untouched.

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Created by you and run by Suite, automated labeling based on rules allows you to see what's happening more quickly across your profiles and platforms, improve productivity overall, and optimize your campaigns to get the most out of your efforts on social.