Candid is a comprehensive content management system (CMS) used for a variety of social content marketing use-cases. Below is what we hope is a gentle introduction to high-level definitions that will help in understanding Candid terminology, data modelling concepts and navigating the back-end admin tools and corresponding support guides.
Streams
Streams are the building blocks of Candid and define what you’re interested in monitoring or collecting – they are the primary curation mechanism and define how media is pulled into your Collections. Some platforms call these “trackers” or "monitors". Each Stream is a single search term of interest (i.e. an Instagram or Twitter hashtags, a user account, a location or even just a raw set of geo-coordinates). For Instagram, you can even monitor and pull in likes from a variety of connected accounts. Candid pulls media for each Stream from a variety of social channels on a regular basis (typically every 10-15 minutes) into Collections for moderation. You can also manually refresh each Stream on-demand or refresh the entire Collection at once via the Collection dashboard (Tasks -> Refresh Collection). For live event displays, instant refresh times are also available. Streams aren't the only way to get content into your collection, bu they are the primary "harvesting" method for social. You can also bulk upload media into your collection from your desktop, import your recent likes from Instagram, or add media directly by it's URL on its source network.
Collections are the highest-level container and most brands will work within a single Collection.
A collection is a container for one or more Streams along with various Approval & Display Settings that dictate how media is published. Collections can also have different moderators assigned to them for team-based administration. You can think of Collections as folders or albums. Unlike most platforms, Candid does not charge separately for each Stream. All collections you have access to will appear under the My Collections view. Collections support team-based management meaning you can invite different users to collaborate on a collection with unique roles/permissions and audit trails to keep track of changes.
Collection Dashboard
Each collection has a primary "dashboard" or "control panel" where all back-end tasks are performed. The collection dashboard also has Preview option in the top right for the various display plugins. You can safely bookmark your collection dashboard URL and share it with other team members that also have access.
Conversion Analytics
Each collection has a suite of reports that expose all conversion metrics and provide detailed purchase funnel analysis. To enable conversion analysis, a conversion code must be installed at the order confirmation step. Additional details on how to read and interpret the various conversion reports are provided here.
Instagram Storefronts
Instagram Stores or the "Shop My Likes" display is a profile link replacement for Instagram that automates your content marketing and improves conversion rates (see full setup instructions). Let fans personalize and shop your Instagram feed with a single click using the most sophisticated Instagram store in the market. Advanced capabilities include: Real-time Publishing, Real-time Revenue Tracking, Automated Product Mappings, Complete Layout Control, Creative Control and Personalized Email Campaigns. Most Instagram stores are deployed under a vanity domain but you can also Preview them for any collection via Dashboard -> Preview -> Gallery.
Cover Photo
Each collection can have a Cover Photo associated with it for easier identification on various internal Candid lists (this has no impact on end-user displays).
Approval Settings
Approval settings are the primary moderation mechanism and determine which images in your Collection are currently displayed through all display products ranging from the embedded Widget to mobile hosted galleries or on-site infinite scroll Walls. Collections currently support two approval settings:
- Approve Everything: by default, all media is public unless marked as ‘rejected’ explicitly
- Hold Everything: by default, all media is private unless marked as ‘published’ explicitly
You can change your Collection approval setting at any time and also reset approvals of individual media via Dashboard -> Tasks -> Reset Moderation . You can also designate accounts as “pre-approved” to allow auto-publishing for select accounts while holding all other content in the Pending queue.
Each collection has a list of pre-approved accounts that you can manage via Dashboard -> Tasks -> Manage Approved Accounts. These accounts enjoy enhanced publishing privileges. By default ,any pre-approved account that references one of the branded hashtags that you're monitoring is eligible for auto-mapping and auto-publishing. You can add/remove accounts from this interface at any time.
Mapping Tags
Mapping tags come in two flavors: Product Tags and Placement Tags. Product Tags control the visual CTAs (call-to-actions) that appear alongside media on your public displays and Placement Tags are simply used as a grouping mechanism to organize media into related sets. Both types of tags are assigned to media using the "Map To..." type-ahead box that appears underneath entries in your collection. Once assigned, product tags appear under the entry with a gift icon and placement tags appear with a pushpin icon to represent "pinning" to a particular group. There is no limit to the number of tags added to a particular entry.
[NOTE: as of the December 2013 release of Candid, you can now also create Product Variations as a third type of mapping tag. Product variations are alternate configuration for a particular Product Tag that allow you to test performance.]
Display Plugins
Candid offers a variety of display plugins for desktop, mobile and custom displays that remove the need for costly in-house implementations that leverage social APIs. Display plugins can be installed in seconds and configured by CSS designers to achieve an integrated and seamless look and feel. All display plugins are backed by the parent Collection settings and have engagement and conversion analytics built-in.
Media Rights
Media Rights provide a scalable and effective solution to engage with your fans and easily request full rights to amplify their media across digital properties, ads, social networks and more. The service is enabled on individual collections through your account manager. Please note, rights management settings are completely independent of moderation settings and display plugins can be configured to render moderation approved media and/or rights approved media.
Default Tag
The default tag is an optional mechanism that can be deployed to partially automate the content mapping process. It applies automatically to all Approved media where no other product inferences were found. It is used as a placeholder link to direct users to a generic destination in the absence of more specific mappings.
[TIP: A quick way to get started without having to map each image to products in your catalog is to create a default tag with multiple variations linked to “what’s new” or “featured” merchandise in your collection. That way, users get a fresh call-to-action on each entry and you only have to manage a single tag.]
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I invite other people to collaborate on my collection?
We're working on making invitations/permissions a self-service feature but at the moment these changes require a support ticket. The upside is there is no "per-seat" licensing and you can invite a variety of collaborators (your developer, agency, marketing & social teams) to your Collection. Please ask them to create a personal account with Candid and let us know which of your Collections you would like to invite them to. The permissions matrix below identifies what features are available at the collection level for each role:
| Moderate |
Messaging, Rights Management |
Delete |
|
| Administrator |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Moderator |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Messenger |
No |
Yes |
No |
In general, you should only need multiple collections if you're managing multiple social accounts or properties. One Collection is more than flexible enough to handle all of the display needs of a given property, ranging from mobile to integrated product page displays. All analytics are tracked at at the Collection level and so if you ever want to correlate activity across displays you need to work out of single Collection.
How many Widgets can I create for a single Collection?
There's no limit here.
Remember, Widgets are just a display plugin for rendering media from a collection; there is no limit to how you organize images in that collection. Thus there is really no limit to the number of widgets that you can publish for a given collection. Another way to think about this is that there is no limit to the number of Mapping Tags that you can create for a particular Collection; hence there is no limit to the number of custom Widgets that can be generated off of a single Collection.
Think of each Widget as a “window” into your Collection that shows only a subset of the approved Media. You can create homepage widgets, product-specific widgets, related-products widgets and so on.
How many Streams do I need?
Most brands start with just 2 streams: their Instagram account and their branded hashtag. As they start to run separate campaigns throughout the year, they can add additional streams to their collection to track new media or they may choose to bring up new collections for each campaign.
How else can I get media into my collection?
You can also use “temporary” streams to find and track media that may be outside of your “permanent” streams. You can also add images to your collection directly by URL (Dashboard -> Tasks -> Add by Url) for those rare cases where the correct hashtag was not used – be sure you have consent in these scenarios.
