1. Decide what the monitoring is for
Start with a decision such as evaluating a product alternative, preparing a customer conversation or understanding a competitor's position in one market. Identify changes that could affect it: a launch, public pricing change, partnership or geographic expansion. Separate factual updates from guesses about strategy. An announcement is evidence of what a company said, not proof of its impact.
2. Identify the company precisely
Use the company's full public name and the relevant product, market or region. If its name is shared with other organisations, add distinguishing context in the description. Keep unrelated competitors in separate topics when possible so you can judge each stream without mixing sources. Plan your topic set around the Free limit of 5 work topics, not an assumption of unlimited monitoring.
3. Write a description around observable changes
The following is a fictional, illustrative example, not a real company or a case study. Name: ‘Example Analytics product updates’. Description: ‘Follow public product releases, pricing announcements and partnerships from Example Analytics, a fictional business-analytics software provider, focusing on European business customers. Prioritise concrete changes over generic industry opinion.’ Replace the fictional identity and context with the company you actually mean. Description preferences guide relevance, not exact filtering.
4. Research the topic and review the first sources
Add the topic under Work. Topic creation and initial research are free within plan limits, and automated research continues about once a day for active accounts. Open the first sources to assess whether they refer to the right company and market. Delete irrelevant resources rather than treating every saved page as valuable. Retrieval is not exhaustive; keep direct access to important official announcements alongside the topic dashboard.
5. Distinguish discovery, publication and event dates
‘Found’ records when TopicWeaver discovered a resource. ‘Published’, when present, records the page's publication date. The event discussed may have happened earlier still. Read the original source before describing an update as new. Several different pages can cover one launch: duplicate-link filtering does not automatically group all reporting about the same event.
6. Check the claim against primary evidence
For a product launch, inspect the company's release notes or announcement. For pricing, check the public pricing page and any stated conditions. For a partnership, look for statements from the parties involved. News coverage can supply context, but distinguish reporting, commentary and promotional claims. A working link does not verify factual accuracy. Where evidence is missing, record uncertainty in your own notes instead of presenting inference as fact.
7. Turn a review into a short decision note
Use a simple format in your own document: what changed, original source, relevant dates, why it matters to your decision and what still needs checking. This is a suggested review practice, not a reporting feature TopicWeaver performs automatically. Do not infer revenue, customer adoption or strategic intent from an announcement alone. Compare the update with your previous understanding before changing a recommendation.
8. Keep the routine proportionate
Choose Daily or Weekly email digests, or Off if you prefer the app. Digests group topics with new resources; manual refreshes do not email and cost 1 Credit each. Daily research remains free at zero Credits. Monitoring is not real time and can miss a development, so do not use it as the sole source for urgent decisions. Use ‘Verify links’ when saved pages become unavailable and retire topics when they no longer support a live decision.