How to track your brand mentions and why

Today’s products and services customers are constantly in touch with the latest news of different companies, to understand what products are on the market, and how to make the best choice. Because of this, companies are obliged to pay close attention to how their customers express themselves.

Additionally, they are also encouraged to engage in a conversation with them in conjunction with addressing problems, and thank them for kind and honest reviews, while also accepting constructive criticism.

The most convenient way to achieve this discussion is to perform mention tracking (also referred to as monitoring) of your brand on the web. It is absolutely important to understand what your customers and potential clients think about your product or competitor’s services.

Because of this, keeping an eye on your company mentions is essential for improving the quality of your business.

Why should I track my brand mentions?

There are many reasons as to why it is necessary for you to keep an eye on your brand references. Here are some of the most important ones:

Address negative customer reviews accordingly

When you monitor your business mentions, you can easily find and respond to negative reviews. This will allow you to identify and fix potential problems whilst also preserving your brand’s reputation and clientbase. Taking time to address these reviews will also help build your social image and presence.

Thank customers for their kind reviews 

It is not always negativity that needs to be commented on. There are a number of positive reviews as well. Be sure to take your time and thank your customers as this will lead to a potential increase in trust and loyalty of your customers’ behalf towards your brand.

Find potential clients and answer their questions

Imagine that someone asks about your company on a given online forum. If you have implemented brand mention tracking, you can quickly respond back to the author of the post on your company’s behalf, showing that you are interested in answering any questions that potential clients might have.

Additionally, you can even take things one step further and contact the user directly to possibly discuss matters in more detail and provide them with more information about your brand. You could even offer them a special deal, offer or discount in order to entice them to start using your services if they seem interested.

Analyze mentions in publications and comments

It is extremely useful to see general feedback across several online platforms in order to understand what business aspects you could possibly improve.

As an example, there could be a lot of reviews that talk about the excellence of your services, but also point out flaws in the customer support department. With such valuable insights you can focus on improving the areas that need it the most.

Watch out for potential scams using your name for credibility

Unfortunately, scams and phishing attacks are not going away any time soon, especially in this digital age due to the current development and progressive advancement of technologies. The risk of being subjected to online fraud is constantly increasing.

For example, scammers can create a website with a mention of your brand to appear more credible in the eyes of their target. They could potentially require users to reveal sensitive or private information which they can exploit at a later stage, which could severely damage your company’s reputation and tarnish your public image.

The sooner you discover such issues, the quicker you can address the situation and resolve any confusion and potential problems that might have arisen.

Where can I implement such monitoring?

There are a plethora of places where you use to track your business mentions with some prime examples being social media platforms and online forums. Due to their popularity, these are generally the places you need to visit to gain an overall insight on how users perceive your brand online.

Consider using hashtags to discover potential discussion about certain aspects of your business such as marketing, customer service, product or service quality, issues and others.

Other places, which you could consider visiting, include news platforms, blogs that are related to your niche or area of expertise and your competitors as seeing what they have to offer is also very important.

What should I track for my company?

This is a very broad question, which encopampases a number of different aspects that you can potentially monitor. There is an ongoing debate whether you should aim to follow brand name mentions in particular or those of the service or product that you provide.

There are many different roads that you can take. If you are interested in the general online presence of your company, then tracking brand mentions will be the most helpful for you as it will provide you with a good overview of people’s opinion on your brand.

Also, in addition to the official name of your company, do not forget to include its shortened names along with different misspelled variations.

If, on the other hand, you need to gain an insight to what people think of a given product or service that you provide, you need to make sure to keep an eye on that in particular and avoid general data collection as it can lead to an informational overload and be left as unused cluttered data.

So how should I keep watch on my brand references?

Once you have gathered all necessary information about your business and the platforms that you would like to monitor, it is time to go over some tools that can help you achieve the desired results.

Generally speaking, there are two methods that you can utilize to track brand mentions - manual and automatic with the latter one being either free or paid.

Is manual monitoring worth it?

As the name implies, this type of monitoring involves putting in a substantial amount of manual work and can be really time consuming in the long run.

Manual tracking is widely used specifically in relation to social media platforms as it is relatively straight-forward. You just need to search for your brand on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and see if there are any mentions of your company or services. This will provide you with valuable information straight from the source (your client), making this process worth it.

However, if your company does not have a great number of social media followers, this method might not be the most convenient. Additionally, if you have a company name that can be used in a different context, the results your manual actions will yield might not be satisfactory.

Examples of free tracking tools

There are both free and paid tracking tools on the market, all of which offer different features that you can implement when it comes to tracking your brand mentions. The following are some of the most popular free tracking tools.

Google Alerts

It is a simple and convenient tool that can help you find mentions that have been posted previously. Google Alerts will notify you as soon as it finds a mention of your brand on the Web.

Moreover, it does not require you to register. You just need to input the keywords that you want to track, enter your email, and expect notifications in the future.

Furthermore, results in multiple languages are also available. The downside of this tool is that it does occasionally miss some matches due to the sheer amount of data that it has available for parsing. However, given that the tool is free of charge and developed by a trusted company, it is a very viable starting option for your needs.

f5bot

Another good free monitoring tool is f5bot. It can also find the exact or broad matches of any keywords and send them straight to your inbox.

Additionally, you can always log into your account in order to pause the tracking process of specific keywords or modify them. While it does a very good job of tracking a set of keywords, a disadvantage of this tool is its ability to only monitor a set number of websites (Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters).

If you believe that users on these platforms actively talk about your company, then you definitely consider utilizing this tool.

Ultimately, you can use Google Alerts along with f5bot for even better results.

Examples of Premium tools

Paid monitoring tools usually offer a lot more flexibility and features that you can use to more effectively track your brand mentions online.

Mention

Mention has the capacity to track millions of content sources from a total of 42 languages, allowing you to observe brand mentions all over the world.

Moreover, you also have the ability to select what content you do not want to see, which will allow you to pay more attention to the trends that matter to your brand.

Additionally, it has a competitive analysis tool that can compare a specific brand to its rivals. Mention comes with a free 14-day trial followed by a billing of $29/month depending on the number of users, the size of your business, and its overall goals.

Awario

This is another great tool, which you can definitely utilize for your business. Awario is a social listening tool that is focused on building brand awareness. It does this by tracking keywords in all languages from all over the world.

Specifically, it can be quite useful if you want to see how your brand compares in relation to your competitors while also providing you with people’s opinion on the different companies in this industry. This tool comes with a free 7-day trial, which should be enough for you to decide whether you like the service and would like to continue using it.

Similarly to Mention, the starting price is $29/month for three topics, where one topic is equal to a keyword or a set of industry keywords.

Importance of observing your business mentions

We have just touched the tip of the iceberg as there are substantially more tools that you might find useful for your business. What is important here is to start monitoring your brand mentions rather than the tool that you will be utilizing to do it with.

Who knows, someone might be giving their personal opinion on your company and your services as you are reading this article. It is absolutely crucial to start tracking your brand mentions as soon as possible in order to capitalize on any potential opportunities to build an image for your business and also attract more clients.