There's a great deal of value to be gained from monitoring discussions about your brand online. Tracking brand mentions can lead to honest feedback, objective insight, reputation management opportunities, and a clearer understanding of how others interact with your brand's products or services.
That said, while monitoring brand mentions is highly beneficial, it's also an incredibly time-consuming and cumbersome task.
Fortunately, there's a wide range of tools available that'll do the job for you. In this post, we'll look at five tools for tracking brand mentions that you'll actually want to use.
1. Awario
One of the best brand monitoring tools out there, Awario not only enables you to keep track of brand mentions on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, but also on each and every website out there - whether they're forums or news sites.
With this tool, you can monitor millions of sources. Awario provides instant, real-time data, and notifies you whenever someone discusses your brand - meaning you can be there to react and interact.
Via Awario's inbuilt browser, you can respond to brand mentions and discussions in seconds, without even having to leave the application. You can tweet, reply, and send private messages, all from within the browser itself.
One of the best aspects of this tool, however, is its Reach metric. This gives you more of an idea of your commenter's level of influence, making it easier for you to tailor and prioritize your responses.
Using the tool is simple too - all you need to do is sign up, enter your keywords, and you'll be notified when someone mentions your words online. Awario's compatible with multiple devices, meaning you can access your data easily.
Awario offers a free 14-day trial, which enables you to try all of the platform's features before you buy - with no credit card required - and if you do decide to continue using the tool, there are a range of payment plans to choose from.
The most affordable option is the Starter Plan, which costs $19 per month. Other options available are the Pro, Enterprise, and Custom Plan. The tool's most popular plan is the Pro Plan, which costs $69 per month. It offers data export capabilities and double the alerts of the Starter Plan.
2. Social Mention
Social Mention monitors and aggregates data from social networks, like Digg, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. It identifies all mentions of a specific keyword, and offers a great insight into brand discussion and interactions - all in an easy to understand visual format.
It presents you with a list of mentions about your brand, but that's not all. It also provides data about your brand's strength, which is how often your company is being discussed on social media, as well as sentiment, passion, and reach.
Passion is how likely it is that someone will repeat the mention and reach is the measure of influence. Sentiment is the ratio of positive to negative mentions, and your score shows you how your brand is perceived online. With Social Mention, you can also view related keywords and hashtags.
This tool doesn't offer as much data as other similar tools on the market, nor is it quite as customizable, flexible, or finessed. However, it's still a budget-friendly tool that's a good starting point for smaller businesses. Also, using Social Mention is easy - simply, enter your brand's name, and hit search to view your links and mentions - and you can then sort the results by time frame or source.
Best of all, Social Mention is entirely free to use, and you don't even need to create an account or register to use it.
3.Mention
If you want to track your brand's mentions across various social media platforms, a nice option is Mention.
With this tool, you can set up alerts and monitor multiple sources in real time. You can reply to mentions from within the app too, which is convenient.
Mention makes it easy to collect data and generate reports, and share alerts with colleagues to boost your online presence and reputation. The tool also utilizes influencer scores, which provide you with an insight into your commenter's level of influence.
Mention's fairly simple to use. You can set up alerts for different categories, so you can choose exactly what it is you want to monitor. Select from options including my company or product, a competitor or anything else. Then enter the keywords, websites or companies that you want to monitor.
Mention offers a free 14-day trial, and no credit card is required. If you decide to continue using the service, you can choose from three pricing options - Solo, Starter, and Company.
Solo costs $29 per month, offers 3,000 mentions per month, and is best for individuals. Starter is best for small businesses, offers 5,000 mentions, and costs $99 per month. The Company plan is a custom program suited to larger companies and agencies, and as such, varies in price.
4.Hootsuite
While most people use Hootsuite to schedule social media posts, it can also be used to track brand mentions. In addition, you can also track specific keywords and phrases across all of your social media streams, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Twitter.
These streams load in real time, meaning that you can easily discover brand mentions and be there to respond immediately. You can also respond to messages on Twitter and other social networks from within the app itself.
While Hootsuite is user-friendly in some ways, its interface can be a little too crowded. However, Hootsuite does offer a simple method of monitoring brand mentions, and it's definitely a budget friendly option.
Hootsuite is free for a basic account, and Pro accounts start at $9.99 per month. With the free account, you can add up to three social media profiles and two RSS feeds, and you can also schedule social media posts.
With the Pro plan, you can add up to 100 social profiles, unlimited RSS feeds, enhanced analytics reports, and advanced message scheduling.
One of the best features of the Pro membership, however, is the Assign to Team option. With this, you can share and manage your brand mentions with other team members.
Hootsuite also offers an Enterprise plan, which can be tailored to suit your individual requirements. The cost of this plan varies.
5.Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts is a tool that enables you to set up alerts and track brand mentions. You can set up alerts for your brand or any keywords you want to monitor, and the results are sent to your inbox.
You'll also receive data about the performance of your brand mentions, and sources of the discussion, as well as sentiment analysis and information on influencers discussing your brand. Extras such as demographic data also make Talkwalker Alerts a fairly well rounded tool.
If you pay for Talkwalker Alerts, you'll get access to the premium features of its Social Media Analytics and Monitoring Tool as well. With this tool, you can not only track brand mentions online, but you can also monitor 30,000 brand images, and get access to two years of historic data.
Mentions are also in real time, and one of the best features of the premium tool is that it enables you to compare your brand against your industry peers.
To set up an alert with Talkwalker Alerts, simply enter a keyword or phrase and select what type of results you want to see, whether that's news, blogs, discussions, or everything. The data for which is sent directly to your inbox.
Overall, Talkwalker Alerts is a good tool for keeping up with brand mentions, but its results are not as thorough or comprehensive as some other tools. Also, while Talkwalker Alerts' premium features are definitely better than the others on this list, they are quite expensive, meaning this tool is better suited to large companies.
Using Talkwalker Alerts is free, but if you want access to its premium Social Media Analytics and Monitoring Tool, it costs $700 per month. Unlike most social media tools, Talkwalker Alerts doesn't offer you the opportunity to sign up for a traditional free trial. Instead, you have to request a free demo.
Conclusion
Monitoring the discussions of your customers and potential customers online can have a big impact on your marketing strategies.
Tracking conversation about your brand, however, can be time-consuming, and many of the tools out there simply aren't worth your time. Awario, Social Mention, Mention, Hootsuite, and Talkwalker Alerts are all tools that are definitely worth trying out.
Now it's over to you guys - let us know how you track brand mentions for your own sites in the comments section below.
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