Tracking Story Activity

Read time 8 min Level Intermediate Prerequisites A live Story in Campaign Builder; familiar with Email Pitching, Telephone Pitching and Bookings & Coverage

In a nutshell: Buzzscribed captures every meaningful event on a Story -- pitches sent, NewsWire pickups, leads generated, calls logged, interviews booked, coverage recorded -- and surfaces it on three purpose-built dashboards. Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY is your working base for the Story in flight, Story Performance is the analytics deep-dive for one Story, and NewsWire Analytics is the cross-campaign view. Pick the right surface for the question and let the platform handle the rest.

What you will learn

The three surfaces that show Story activity -- and what each is best at.
How NewsWire downloads, leads, bookings and logged coverage flow into those dashboards.
How to turn "something happened" into a next action without camping on a screen.
What the Client portal shows the client alongside the internal working view.

The mental model

Story activity is the full trail of what has happened on a campaign so far: pitches sent, NewsWire pages visited, assets downloaded, leads captured, interviews booked, coverage logged. Buzzscribed captures every one of these events as it happens and surfaces them on three dashboards, each tuned to a different question:

Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY -- your working base for one Story in flight.
Story Performance -- the analytics view for one Story: NewsWire engagement, downloads, leads, placements.
NewsWire Analytics -- the cross-campaign view across your portfolio.

Activity is captured continuously; you check it at a cadence. Pick the right surface for the question you are asking and the platform tells you everything you need to act on.

Surface 1: Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY

Open a Story in Campaign Builder and the first tab is ACTIVITY. This is your working base while the Story is in flight -- the place you sit while you run the launch. Step out to BRIEF, OUTCOMES, MEDIA RELEASES, TALENT or the other tabs to do specific jobs, then come back here to see where the Story stands.

[Screenshot placeholder -- Campaign Builder open on the ACTIVITY tab for the Globex Wellbeing Index 2026, with the tab strip across the top and the activity feed below.]

Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY. The home base while you are working the Story.

Surface 2: Story Performance -- the analytics deep-dive

Story Performance (TRACK menu) is the analytics view for one Story. Pick the Story and you get:

NewsWire Activity: A chart of file downloads from the Story's public NewsWire page over time. The shape of the curve tells you when interest peaked.
NewsWire Engagements: A table of which assets are pulling weight -- title, description, file type, engagement count. Tells you which asset is doing the work, so you can lead with it on the next wave.
Leads Generated: Leads captured through the NewsWire -- outlet type, size, region, outlet, contact, the file they picked up, the date, and whether the lead converted.
Placements: The coverage logged against the Story, with the download counts behind each placement asset so you can trace pickup back to coverage.

This is where you go to answer "what landed and what did it produce?" -- a day or a week after the pitching, when the real picture has come into focus.

Surface 3: NewsWire Analytics -- the portfolio view

NewsWire Analytics (TRACK menu) is the breadth view -- it spans your Stories rather than drilling into one. The Recent Contact Activity table shows contact-level activity across the period you select, so you can scan the whole portfolio in a single glance. Use it as the morning scan: which Stories have movement, which are quiet, where to point your attention first. Then drop into Story Performance or the Story's ACTIVITY tab for the detail.

How events flow into these surfaces

Every dashboard is built from events the platform captures as work happens:

Pitches sent -- captured when you send through Email Pitching.
NewsWire visits and asset downloads -- captured the moment a journalist (or anyone with the link) opens the Story's NewsWire page and picks up a file. Every download is fingerprinted back to the campaign.
Leads captured -- captured when someone completes the lead form on a gated NewsWire asset.
Calls and call time -- captured when you log them in Telephone Pitching.
Interviews booked -- captured when a booking is made (including through the Schedule portal) and surfaced in Bookings & Coverage.
Coverage -- captured when a piece of coverage is logged against the Story.

The discipline that keeps the dashboards honest: log calls and bookings the moment they happen. A logged call appears immediately on the activity record, the next colleague reading the Story sees it, and the team avoids double-handling the same journalist.

Worked example: the morning after the Mr Widget Ltd launch

Mr Widget Ltd's fraud-detection API launched yesterday. The morning-after rounds for the account team at Acme PR Corp run like this:

09:00 -- NewsWire Analytics. Scan Recent Contact Activity for the period covering the launch. Mr Widget Ltd is showing strong movement; the Globex retainer is quiet.
09:10 -- Story Performance for Mr Widget Ltd. NewsWire Activity shows a spike of downloads yesterday afternoon. NewsWire Engagements: the CEO video and the fact sheet are the two assets being pulled. Leads Generated: five new rows, two from fintech trade titles.
09:20 -- act. Phone the two trade-title leads. One asks for a 30-minute walk-through with Sarah Mahmood (CEO); book it. Log both calls in Telephone Pitching and the booking in Bookings & Coverage.
10:00 -- Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY for Mr Widget Ltd. Confirm the booking shows. Plan the next pitching wave to the titles that downloaded but did not respond.

An hour of focused work, every action grounded in captured signal -- not screen-watching.

What the client sees

The Client portal shows your client a filtered view -- NewsWire downloads and logged coverage -- not your draft pitches or internal call notes. When the client wants to know "what is happening?", point them at the portal and they get the picture you want them to have, live. The detailed working view (the ACTIVITY tab, Telephone Pitching call logs, Story Performance) stays internal.

Try this: On your next launch, set yourself two fixed activity check-ins -- mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Each time: NewsWire Analytics for the cross-portfolio scan, Story Performance for the Story with the most movement, then act and log. The platform captures everything else; your job is to read, decide, and move.

Frequently asked

Where do I see who downloaded an asset?: For gated NewsWire assets, the Leads Generated table in Story Performance shows the lead detail. For Gated Content shares, the download list lives on that share's REPORT tab.
I logged an interview booking -- where does it show?: In Bookings & Coverage for the Story, in the Interviews Booked count on the KPI Scorecard, and on the Story's activity record. Bookings made through the Schedule portal flow into the same place.
How fresh is the data on these surfaces?: Events are captured as they happen. Open a dashboard and you are seeing the latest captured signal -- not a sample, not a hourly snapshot.
Which surface should I use during a launch morning?: NewsWire Analytics for the cross-portfolio scan; Story Performance for the Story you are working; Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY as your home base for that Story. Cycle through them at a fixed cadence rather than camping on one.
Can I see signal across Stories in one place?: Yes -- NewsWire Analytics is exactly that view: pitching effectiveness and download activity rolled up across your portfolio, with the Recent Contact Activity feed for a per-contact lens.

Key takeaways

Buzzscribed captures every event as it happens and surfaces it across three purpose-built dashboards.
Campaign Builder > ACTIVITY = the working base for one Story. Story Performance = the analytics deep-dive. NewsWire Analytics = the cross-campaign view.
Events flow in from Email Pitching, NewsWire activity, gated lead forms, Telephone Pitching, Bookings & Coverage and logged coverage.
Calls and bookings logged at the time become visible on every dashboard immediately.
The Client portal shows the filtered client-facing view; the internal working view stays separate.