Brand mentions are one of the most valuable things business leaders should be monitoring today. Offering a behind-the-scenes insight into customer sentiment, opportunities for creating user-generated content, and the chance to monitor business reputation, mentions are brimming with value.
In today’s digital world, consumers have more opportunities than ever to share their opinions online about products, services, and businesses in general. What your customers say about you on the web has a direct impact on your company’s reputation. After all, customers trust the reviews and testimonials of their peers more than any form of a marketing campaign. In fact, 9 out of 10 customers consult the opinions of other consumers before making a purchase.
Brand mentioning tools are how you ensure you can listen in on the conversations your buyers are already having about you. The right solutions will monitor everything from social media posts to reviews on directories to references of your brand on other websites.
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The more information you can collect with brand mentions tools, the more you can transform customer perceptions and strengthen the impact of your brand.
What are Brand Mention Tools?
The term “brand mention” refers to any instance in which a company, enterprise, or specific branded product is referenced by another individual online. Notably, brand mentions don’t just include instances when customers @mention (tag) your company on social media.
In fact, if you’re focusing on tagged mentions alone, you could be missing out on a significant portion of the conversation customers are having about your brand. With brand mentions tools, businesses utilize intelligent software to capture all instances of a “mention” wherever it may appear. These solutions allow you to monitor specific terms, such as your brand name, in real-time, for a comprehensive view of customer sentiment and perception.
While the features of brand mention tools can vary, many will allow you to track information from a range of environments, including:
- Social media mentions: Tagged and untagged mentions on social media channels from TikTok to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
- Customer reviews: Reviews or testimonials shared by customers on review sites, Google, and other platforms across the web.
- Blog post mentions: Blogs or articles written specifically with reference to your company, either in the form of a review, comparison or just a statement.
- News articles: Press mentions of your company posted on news websites and online publications.
The Benefits of Brand Mention Tools
Monitoring brand mentions is how business leaders learn more about the sentiment and perceptions of their customers, conduct in-depth research into preferences, and find new ways to differentiate their brand. However, tracking these mentions manually can be complex. Even with @Mentions on social media, it can be hard to find everyone discussing your brand.
With brand mentions tools, you can access a unified platform for tracking customer comments across a variety of different channels and environments with minimal effort. There are even tools that allow companies to automate the collection of crucial data and use artificial intelligence to detect patterns and opportunities in their target market.
Brand mentions tools allow businesses to:
- Analyze customer sentiment: The sentiment of your target audience towards your brand makes a huge difference to your chances of success. If your customers think positively about you, they’re more likely to become loyal advocates for your brand. Monitoring sentiment can also help you to determine whether your marketing campaigns are driving real results.
- Track customer engagement: The more customers you have mentioning your brand, the more likely it is you’ll benefit from a high level of engagement. Monitoring brand mentions can also help companies to retain engagement by responding to customer queries, testimonials, reviews, and concerns.
- Improve customer service: As mentioned above, brand mentions tools allow you to monitor what customers are saying about you, so you can respond quickly to any issues they might share. If you notice a customer sharing a negative review, you can quickly assign your customer service team to assess and rectify the problem.
- Develop deeper insights: With brand mentioning tools, you can also pay attention to what customers actually want from your company. You can learn about your audience’s preferences, the new features they want, and even the issues they have with existing products. This leads to better research and product development.
- Increase sales: Brand mention monitoring also allows you to identify sales opportunities within online discussions. You can pinpoint customers interested in your brand and even monitor which trends and patterns push customers to buy from you. This can lead to the development of better marketing and sales campaigns.
The 5 Top Brand Mention Tools Available Today
As the “voice of the customer” becomes increasingly crucial to business leaders worldwide, various brand mention and monitoring tools have emerged throughout the digital landscape. Some solutions focus specifically on providing ways to monitor social media mentions, while others concentrate on a wider scale. There are even brand mention tools built into some social media scheduling apps.
We chose the following 5 brand mention tools based on their overall functionality, incredible features, ease of use, and potential impact on businesses.
1. Mention
Ideal for: Comprehensive social media management
In the last couple of years, Mention has evolved from being one of the top social media listening tools to being a comprehensive platform for social media management. The solution integrates with collaboration tools like Slack to support team collaboration and provides “tag” options so staff can create alerts within alerts for different types of mentions.
The platform also acts as a full social media management suite, allowing teams to schedule social posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You can filter incoming mentions by sentiment in seconds, share real-time analytics dashboards with team members, and even use “spike alerts” to send instant notifications to employees via email or mobile.
Key features of Mention include:
- Fully customizable individual and team alerts
- Sentiment analysis for each mention
- Boolean search capabilities
- Integrations with collaboration apps
- Competitive analysis
- Automated and manual reporting
- Smart folder for mention retention
Pricing:
Mention offers a 14-day free trial for beginners and a discount on annual plans. The four premium plans offered by the company include:
- Solo: $49 per month for 1 user, one social account per network, 2 basic alerts and monitoring for up to 5,000 mentions, as well as basic social media publishing tools.
- Pro: $99 per month for all the features of Solo for up to 10 users and 10 social accounts, 5 alerts, and 10,000 mentions.
- ProPlus: $179 per month for all the features of Pro, plus 7 alerts, 15 social accounts, unlimited users, and 20,000 mentions.
- Company: Custom pricing for 10 basic, advanced, and standard alerts, unlimited users and social accounts, and over 100,000 mentions.
Pros:
- Exceptional integrations with leading tools
- In-depth competitor and customer analysis
- Automated and manual reporting
- Scheduling for social media posts
- Customizable alerts
Cons:
- Restrictions on users and social accounts in most plans
- Complex initial setup
2. Brandwatch
Ideal for: Social media and influencer marketing
After merging with Falcon.io and Paladin in the last couple of years, Brandwatch has emerged as a truly powerful tool for monitoring social media mentions and other business insights. The platform includes tools for end-to-end influencer marketing, data synchronization with “Listen” insights from over 100 million sites, and a comprehensive academy for learning resources.
With Brandwatch, companies can track brand mentions across every online platform, make smarter decisions with in-depth segmentation, and even connect with partners on TikTok to create new content. You can also leverage deep Meta integrations, next-generation review analytics, and insights into Google business profiles.
Key features of Brandwatch include:
- Comprehensive sentiment analysis
- Insights into popular and trending topics
- Connections with influencers for marketing campaigns
- Reddit social panels
- Industry-leading AI for data analysis
- Automated and manual reporting
Pricing:
Pricing for Brandwatch is a little more complex than the packages for other brand mentions tools on this list. You’ll need to contact the customer service team to create a package combining all of the features you need. There are different “plan” options available depending on whether you want to access consumer intelligence, social media management, or influencer marketing tools.
Free trials and demos are available, but the overall price you’ll pay will depend on which features of the platform you want to combine.
Pros:
- Fantastic influencer marketing tools
- In-depth monitoring and social management features
- Automated and manual reporting with custom KPIs
- AI-driven analytics and insights
- Support for content research
Cons:
- Slight learning curve for beginners
- The pricing isn’t very transparent
3. Sprout Social
Ideal for: Brand monitoring and employee advocacy
Sprout Social is one of the better-known tools in the market for social media listening, content management, and more. It comes with a range of topic templates to choose from, which help you to monitor brand health and stay on top of common conversations.
The platform combines brand monitoring features with tools for engaging employee advocacy, and a smart inbox, so teams can rapidly respond to any queries customers might have across a range of different channels. In the last couple of years, Sprout Social has updated its feature set with automated customer feedback requests, advanced “smart categories” for segmentation, paid and organic campaign management, and integrations with a range of tools, like Salesforce.
Features include:
- Comprehensive tools to monitor social media mentions
- CRM integrations and productivity tools
- Employee advocacy features
- Paid promotion tools for boosting social posts
- Response rate and time analysis reports
- Automated link tracking
- Powerful in-depth AI analytics
Pricing:
Sprout Social offers companies an opportunity to test out its robust functionality with a generous 30-day free trial. After that, prices include the following:
- Standard: $249 per month for 5 social profiles, a unified inbox, social media posting and scheduling, review management, location, keyword and profile monitoring, CRM tools, paid promotion tools, and mobile apps
- Professional: $399 per month for all the features of Standard, plus response rate and time analysis reports, custom workflows, message tagging, unlimited social profiles, paid social reporting, and trend analysis for hashtags and keywords.
- Advanced: $499 per month for all the features of Professional, plus message spike alerts, chatbots, digital asset libraries, automated link tracking, and CSAT and NPS tracking
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for all the features of Advanced plus tailored implementation, onboarding, and customer service, plus premium analytics.
Pros:
- Comprehensive social media management toolkit
- Powerful solutions for employee advocacy
- AI insights for tracking trends and opportunities
- Automation workflows to save teams time
- Mobile apps for on-the-go work
Cons:
- Complex initial setup
- Expensive premium plans
4. Awario
Ideal for: Analyzing mentions and competitors
One of the most popular brand mentions tools on the market today, Awario, makes it simple for businesses to automate the process of listening to customers all over the web. The solution monitors every corner of the digital landscape for mentions of specific keywords, providing instant alerts to business users with insights into positive or negative sentiment.
In recent years, Awario has enhanced its analytical tools to implement state-of-the-art artificial intelligence for sentiment analysis and insights into brand reach. You can set up custom alerts, monitor progress over time, and even identify top influencers in your industry, all within the same easy-to-use and convenient dashboard.
Key features:
- Boolean search functionality
- Data export and PDF reports
- API access for automation across workflows
- Powerful integrations with a range of tools
- Robust competitor comparisons
- Insightful analytics and visual reports
Pricing:
Users can access Awario for 14 days as part of a free trial service. After that, you can choose to pay monthly for your service or opt for an annual subscription to save up to 40%. Plans include:
- Starter: $39 per month for 3 topics, 30,000 mentions per month, 5000 stored mentions, Boolean search, and 1 team member
- Pro: $119 per month for up to 15 topics, 300,000 mentions per month, 15,000 stored mentions, 10 team members, all the features of Starter, and data exports.
- Enterprise: $399 per month for all the features of Pro, plus 100 topics to monitor, 1 million mentions per month, 50,000 mentions stored for each topic, unlimited team members, PDF reports, data exports, white label reports, Boolean search, API access, and an account manager.
Pros:
- Extremely easy-to-use platform
- Access to insights from all over the web
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Visual reporting features with export options
- Boolean search functionality
Cons:
- Limited collaboration features
- Basic customer service
5. Keyhole
Ideal for: Campaign optimization
Considered one of the top analytics and brand mentions tools on the web today, Keyhole helps businesses to monitor the impact of their marketing campaigns, events, and more. In the last couple of years, the company has updated its hashtag tracking technology and now offers companies tools for competitor research and Twitter insights.
Keyhole’s comprehensive platform offers access to a wide range of social media management features, from influencer tracking tools to profile analytics and quick trend monitoring. You can also leverage comprehensive social listening tools and use publishing features to automate your social media campaigns across a range of channels.
Features include:
- Comprehensive social listening with a hashtag and keyword tracking
- Publishing and scheduling tools
- Influencer monitoring and insights
- Sentiment analysis for mentions
- Quick trend analysis on any social platform
- Optimization recommendations powered by AI
Pricing:
Keyhole offers a range of four paid pricing options for customers, with a 20% discount for those who choose an annual plan. Packages include:
- SMB & Freelancers: $99 per month with 2 trackers, 5k mentions, 5 brand trackers, 1 month of history, integrations with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and PDF experts.
- Corporate: $299 per month with all the features of SMB, plus 10 trackers, 20k mentions, 10 watched accounts, 20 brand trackers, 3 months of history, optimization recommendations, 3 user accounts, and XLS exports.
- Agency: $599 per month for all the features of Corporate, plus 25 trackers, 50k mentions, 50 watched accounts, moderated media walls, campaign reach and impression insights, 50 brand trackers, 6 months of history, more social integrations, campaign level post analysis, and quick trends access, plus white-labeled dashboards.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for all the features of the Agency plus 40+ trackers, 100k+ mentions, campaign benchmarking, the share of voice insights, 1 year of history, competitor benchmarking, unlimited users, dedicated account manager support, and onboarding.
Choosing the Best Brand Mention Tool
The best tool for monitoring brand mentions will depend on your specific needs and requirements. However, each of the options above has earned exceptional reputations for their ease of use, overall functionality, and ability to showcase valuable business data.
Monitoring brand mentions can be an excellent way to improve the quality of your social media campaigns and increase marketing ROI. However, you can also take your social media strategies to the next level with support from the right experts.
Contact Growth Collective today to find the ultimate social media account manager, influencer expert, or marketing guru to help you strengthen your online presence.
Brand Mention Tools FAQ
How do you get brand mentions?
While you can’t force customers to mention your brand, you can improve your chances of earning brand mentions by actively encouraging customers to leave feedback. Speak to your audience regularly, and use your content marketing strategies to push customers to talk more about your brand. When customers do mention you, respond to them quickly to increase engagement.
How do you find brand mentions?
There are a few ways to monitor brand mentions. You can use social media to track @mentions of your brand and product names. However, it’s much easier to monitor the entire conversation around your brand using one of the brand mention tools mentioned above.
Do brand mentions help SEO?
Even if customers don’t link to your website when they mention your brand, they could improve your SEO score. People talking about your brand shows Google that your business is authoritative and trustworthy. Plus, you can reach out to bloggers and press companies mentioning your brand to request backlinks.
