The single biggest upgrade available to you in Acumin isn't a plan change. It's connecting an account.
It moves the read from public view counts to your real reach and retention (from tier 1 to tier 2 evidence), and that's a change of instrument, not a change of degree. Public data can tell you what drew attention. Only your own analytics can tell you what held it.
This is what each connection does, what it asks for, and where the limits genuinely are.
The principle first
Every connection Acumin makes is read-only for analytics, and you connect through each platform's own login. You're consenting to your own account, on the platform's page, and you can revoke it there at any time.
There is one deliberate exception, and it's worth naming up front: Instagram's connection includes comment and message permissions, because the Engagement inbox needs them to reply. Acumin drafts; you send. Nothing goes out that you didn't write and press send on.
YouTube: the biggest single jump
Scopes requested: yt-analytics.readonly and youtube.force-ssl.
What it unlocks: your real analytics rather than public view counts. Impressions, traffic sources and (the important one) [retention curves](/glossary/retention).
The retention curve is the most actionable single artefact in video, and it's completely invisible from outside. It's the difference between knowing a video got 40,000 views and knowing that 60% of them left at 0:38, which is a fact you can act on this week.
youtube.force-ssl is the broader of the two scopes and it's what allows comment replies on your own channel. If you're not going to use the Engagement inbox, the analytics scope alone is where the value is.
Instagram: reach, and the inbox
Scopes requested: instagram_business_basic, instagram_business_manage_insights, instagram_business_manage_comments, instagram_business_manage_messages.
What it unlocks: your real Instagram reach and insights, and the comment and DM side of the Engagement inbox.
Two honest caveats:
It requires a business or creator account. A personal Instagram account can't grant these permissions. That's Meta's rule, not ours.
Data appears after the next gather, not instantly. Connecting doesn't retroactively populate your Snapshot. Acumin flags this in the product rather than leaving you wondering why the numbers haven't moved.
On the messaging side, platforms limit how long you have to respond to a DM after a user's last message. Meta documents its own policy in the Messenger Platform documentation, and it's the reason the inbox surfaces alerts on a clock rather than treating all messages as equally urgent.
TikTok: profile and video stats
Scopes requested: user.info.basic, user.info.profile, user.info.stats, video.list.
What it unlocks: your profile stats and your video list, so TikTok stops being a handle you typed in and starts being data in the analysis.
Read-only, and no posting permission is requested. There's also no comment API available on this tier, which is why TikTok doesn't appear in the Engagement inbox. That's a platform limit, not a roadmap item we're being coy about.
Meta Ads: connected, results rolling out
Scopes requested: ads_read, pages_show_list, instagram_basic, business_management.
All read. ads_read is exactly what it says: there is no ad-management or spend permission in that list, and Acumin cannot create, edit or pause a campaign.
X and LinkedIn: connected presence, honestly labelled
These two are worth being blunt about, because both look like they should do more than they do.
X requests users.read and offline.access. That's identity plus public metrics: follower counts and a follower trend. It deliberately does not request tweet.read, which sits behind X's paid API tier. So: presence and a trend line, not content analysis.
LinkedIn requests openid, profile, email. That's the free "Sign In with LinkedIn" tier, and it is identity only. There are no personal metrics scopes on that tier. They don't exist to request. Anyone offering you LinkedIn personal-post analytics is either on a partner programme or making it up.
Both connections give you a verified presence and a deep link to your native board. Neither gives you analysis. That's stated in the product the same way it's stated here.
What to connect, in what order
If you're YouTube-led: YouTube, then Instagram. Stop there until you've felt the difference.
If you're Instagram-led: Instagram, then YouTube if you have a channel at all.
If you're running paid: connect Meta anyway. The connection is read-only and it'll be ready when the results layer opens.
X and LinkedIn: connect when you want the presence and the deep links, not because you're expecting metrics.
The order that actually matters
Do it after your first Snapshot, not before.
Run the tier-1 read first. See what public data says. Then connect and watch what changes. That contrast teaches you more about what each evidence tier is worth than any explanation (including this one), and it makes you a better reader of every number the product shows you afterwards.
Where to do it
Settings → Connections. Each platform is a button, each opens that platform's own login, and each takes a couple of minutes.
A connection can expire: tokens do, especially when a password changes or a permission is revoked on the platform side. If a platform's data goes stale, that's the first place to check.
The things it will never do
Worth stating plainly, because "connect your accounts" is a sentence that reasonably makes people cautious:
- It cannot post. No publishing scope is requested on any platform.
- It cannot spend money.
ads_readis read. - It cannot see anyone else's data. Every scope is on your own account, granted by you.
- It cannot send a message you didn't write. Replies and DMs are drafted in the product and sent by you.
How to use this tomorrow
Connect one platform (the one your channel actually lives on), then re-open your Snapshot and compare the confidence levels against what you saw before.
If a headline moved from Early signal to Well-evidenced, that's the tier change doing its work, and it's the clearest demonstration of why the ladder matters.
Related: What your evidence is actually worth explains why the tier-1 to tier-2 jump is the big one. Reading your first Snapshot is where you'll see the difference.