Step 1: Welcome to Ferretly
Ferretly helps your team find social media profiles for a subject, analyze their public activity, flag content that matches your criteria, and produce reports you can review and share.
Getting from an empty account to a finished report is one workflow with six stages:
Get access and credits
Configure how checks run
Add subjects
Run checks (or assign a Ferretly analyst)
Review flagged posts
View and share reports
This guide is a map of that workflow. Each step links to detailed how-to articles—you do not need to complete every deep link on day one.
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Step 2: Get access and credits
Before anyone can run a check:
Confirm your organization has a Ferretly plan that fits your volume. See Ferretly Plans.
Complete signup using the instructions in your welcome email (sent after your first invoice is paid).
Sign in and confirm your account has credits. Running a check consumes credits.
Admins can review credit balance and billing under account settings. See Usage and Billing and Add Credits.
You’re ready for this stage when: you can sign in and see available credits.
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Step 3: Configure how checks run
A report profile is a reusable set of settings that controls how Ferretly analyzes a subject and what appears in reports. Attach the right profile to each subject before you run a check.
At minimum, decide:
Area | What you control | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
--- | --- | --- |
Flags | Which behaviors and content types are flagged | |
Keywords | Custom terms to flag or ignore | |
General settings | History window, platforms, and related options | |
Report format | How reports look and what they include |
Create and manage profiles:
You’re ready for this stage when: at least one report profile reflects how your organization wants checks to run.
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Step 4: Add subjects
A subject is the person you want Ferretly to analyze. Stronger identifiers (name, location, age, school, employer, known handles) improve profile matching.
Add subjects in any of these ways:
Manually Add a Subject — best for learning the product
Bulk Upload Subjects — best for batches
Add Subjects via API — best for integrated workflows
Helpful concepts:
You’re ready for this stage when: the subject appears on the Subjects page with the right profile assigned.
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Step 5: Run checks (or assign an analyst)
### Run checks yourself
Start analysis for new or existing subjects:
Optional ongoing monitoring:
### Use Analyst Assistant instead
If your plan includes Analyst Assistant, you can assign subjects so Ferretly analysts handle identity resolution, the check, and redress:
Track progress with Understanding Subject Statuses.
You’re ready for this stage when: the subject status shows the check is queued, processing, or complete—or an analyst is assigned.
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