The Boolean Behind the Swiftie Effect ✨

Hey there, Boolean Wizards! 👋 I’m back to share another Behind the Scenes boolean string to give you some ideas for your own searches - this time it’s the search behind this recent Meltwater social post.

While it’s become a sarcastic meme that Travis Kelce rode Taylor Swift’s coattails to fame, Meltwater’s social team wanted to see if the data supported that conclusion. The findings? The Swiftie Effect may not be entirely responsible for Kelce’s rise in the public eye, but it has certainly been a factor: 

Want to do your own social listening around the effect of Taylor Swift on Travis Kelce’s mentions? Just want to see the magic behind the infographic? These boolean strings will get you most of the way there, but keep in mind the social media team used some custom filters when creating this post, and you’ll need to adjust the dates if you want to try to compare. Your numbers may not match this post exactly, but you should still be able to observe similar trends.

How to do social listening around Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce:

First, you’ll need to create an Advanced Search for all mentions of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Here’s how it’s done.

Step 1: Create an Advanced Search in Explore

Step 2: Copy and paste this Boolean string into Explore:

(("Travis Kelce" OR "Travis Kelsey" OR Kelce OR Kelsey OR "Kansas City Chiefs") AND ("Taylor Swift" OR Swift)) NOT (RT OR QT OR "fantasy football" OR "power ranking*" OR "D'Andre Swift")

Step 3: Apply Filters:

To clean up the data, next to “Filter set” click “Source type” and select all types except for Product Reviews, Request for Proposal, and RSS, then click Search.

Step 4: Save your search - we’ll use it again in a minute!

This will show you all mentions of Taylor Swift AND either Travis Kelce or the Kansas City Chiefs. That’s the first part to our comparative search!

(Note: I adjusted my date range to the Last 90 days so I could observe some of the spikes from the post)

Here’s how you compare mentions of Taylor + Travis with mentions of Travis alone:

First, you’ll need to set up a similar Boolean search for Travis Kelce that excludes mentions of Taylor Swift. Our team used this Boolean to create our comparison search.
 

Step 1: Create an Advanced Search in Explore

Step 2: Copy and paste this Boolean string into Explore:

("Travis Kelce" OR "Travis Kelsey" OR ((Kelce OR Kelsey) NEAR/15 NFL)) NOT (RT OR QT OR "Taylor Swift" OR Swift OR Swiftie* OR taylorswift)

Step 3: Apply Filters:

Just like in our first search, next to “Filter set” click “Source type” and select all types except for Product Reviews, Request for Proposal, and RSS, then click Search.

Step 4: Save your search and return to the Explore home page

Step 5: In Explore, click “Create” on the “Compare Search” tile.

Step 6: Select “Add Search” to add your Taylor + Travis and Just Travis searches

Step 7: Click “Update Results”

I even got the spike for Kelce’s injury that was mentioned in the original social post ✨

Get even more data with mentions of the Chiefs without Taylor

Want to add in a third search to compare? Save your combined search and return to the Explore home page, then follow these steps.

Step 1: Create an Advanced Search in Explore

Step 2: Copy and paste this Boolean string into Explore:

("Kansas City Chiefs" OR (chiefs NEAR/15 NFL)) NOT (RT OR QT OR "Taylor Swift" OR Swift OR Swiftie* OR taylorswift)

Step 3: Apply Filters:

Again, next to “Filter set” click “Source type” and select all types except for Product Reviews, Request for Proposal, and RSS, then click Search.

Step 4: Save your search and return to the Explore home page

Step 5: In Explore, click “Create” on the “Compare Search” tile.

Step 6: Select “Add Search” to add your Taylor + Travis and Just Travis searches

Step 7: Click “Update Results”

Here, you can see the connection in mentions even more, with the Chiefs getting a huge spike for each of Kelce or the couple’s bumps in activity. 

Sound off in the comments 👇

• Can you think of another “shared fame” story this method would work for? How would you construct that search / comparison? 💑
• If you wanted to add another search for Taylor Swift mentions to compare yet another dataset, how would you build the boolean to keep it relevant and helpful? 💃
• Did we forget something? Another factor that should (or shouldn’t) have been considered? 💡