Combine NEXT Analytics and Tableau to create a Twitter Word Cloud. NEXT can create a Word Cloud for any Twitter screen name. This article will take you step-by-step through using NEXT Analytics and Tableau together to create a Twitter Word Cloud that you can customize and refresh on demand. Make one Word Cloud to visualize popular words used for your own screen name, brand, or company, and make more to visualize those of your competitors.
Create your NEXT Analytics Query
- Install NEXT Analytics to your computer if you do not already have the software. (Download a FREE 14-day trial)
- Download: Twitter-Mentions-Wordcloud-Tableau
- Excel will open and this page will appear.
- Click on the “NEXT Analytics” tab on the ribbon bar and then click “Subscription” to get your Confirmation Code.

Adjust the Output File Name if desired.


NEXT will show a default list of words that are often excluded from Word Clouds. You may add to this list by typing one word per cell in column A.l
Add as many exclusion words as you like, or delete them by clicking on the cell containing the unwanted exclusion word and deleting the word


This tab will contain an alphabetical list of all the top words for that screen name
Browse the list and modify the “keyword_fixes” as needed.
Save the Workbook

Connect NEXT Analytics to Tableau



The rest of the options should be their default settings




Viewing your Word Cloud
You should see a bubble chart that looks similar to this:
Select “Text” from the drop down in the Marks section to see this kind of word cloud:



Refresh your Word Cloud on Demand
In a few days (or weeks, or months) you can click “Refresh Data” within NEXT Analytics and your word cloud is updated automatically within Tableau.