Monitor brand mentions everywhere people talk about you
People mention your brand in places you never check: a subreddit thread about tools, a YouTube review, a forum post asking for help, a blog roundup. This page shows how to track brand mentions step by step, what to do with them, and how MentionAlert does the collecting, scoring and alerting for you.
How to track brand mentions in five steps
Step 1. List every way people write your name. Include the brand, the product names, the domain, common misspellings, the handle on X and the name with and without spaces.
Step 2. Decide what you do not want. If your brand is also an ordinary word, write down the words that appear in irrelevant posts, such as a city, a sport or a recipe. These become exclude words.
Step 3. Choose the sources. Most teams start with news sites, blogs, Reddit, X, YouTube and review sites, then add forums, Hacker News, Bluesky and Q&A sites for technical products.
Step 4. Choose who hears about it. Instant alerts for the brand name go to the person who replies. A daily digest suits product names and broader phrases.
Step 5. Review once a week. Look at volume, sentiment and the top mentions, then adjust keywords and filters. A weekly summary does this review for you.
Brand mentions found across the public web
| Source | Mention | Sentiment |
|---|---|---|
| Blog | BlogA newsletter features your shop in its weekly picksPositive | Positive |
| Forum | ForumA hobby forum member asks where to buy your productNeutral | Neutral |
| X | XA buyer posts that your order tracking link does not workNegative | Negative |
| YouTube | YouTubeAn unboxing video shows your product from start to finishPositive | Positive |
Illustrative sample, not your data.
Tracking mentions manually and where it stops
You can run these steps by hand with site search on each platform and saved searches in your browser. It works for a few days. Then the searches return the same posts every morning, new mentions hide under old ones, and nobody can say whether this week was better or worse than last week. Manual checks also miss posts that appear and get buried within hours.
| Task | By hand | With MentionAlert |
|---|---|---|
| Search each source | Every morning, one tab per source | Collected continuously |
| Spot new posts | Compare with yesterday by memory | Only new mentions in the feed |
| Judge tone | Read every post | Sentiment score on each mention |
| Know the reach | Open each post | Reach shown when the source reports it |
| Tell the team | Copy links into chat | Email, Slack or webhook alerts |
| Report to leadership | Build a slide deck | Weekly summary or PDF report |
Brand mention tracking set up in two minutes
Create your account, name your brand and type your keywords. Each keyword gets its type (brand, product, competitor or phrase) and its own filters: include words, exclude words, language, country and source. MentionAlert starts collecting new public mentions right away and shows each one with the source, the snippet, the date, a sentiment score and the reach the source provides, such as points, likes or views.
Alerts go out by instant email or a daily digest on every plan. Team adds Slack and webhooks, Agency adds routing per client and Enterprise adds Microsoft Teams. Every keyword has its own routing, so mentions of a product line can reach the product manager while brand mentions reach support. See the full list on the media tracking software page.
What to do with a brand mention once you find it
- Thank people who recommend you, in the same thread, with a short and specific reply.
- Answer questions about your product on Reddit and Q&A sites, because those answers rank in search for months.
- Pass bug reports to the product team with the link and the full text.
- Ask writers of positive blog posts whether they would link to your site.
- Flag negative mentions with high reported reach to whoever owns social media reputation monitoring.
- Note competitor names that appear next to yours and track them as keywords, as shown on the monitor competitors page.
For a longer guide with search operators and a weekly checklist, read how to track brand mentions online.
Which plan fits your brand
Most single brands with a handful of product names fit on Starter or Team.
| Plan | Yearly price | Monthly price | Keywords | Mentions per month | Reports |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $24/month, billed $288/yr | $49 | 5 | 5,000 | Weekly email summary |
| Team | $74/month, billed $888/yr | $149 | 20 | 25,000 | Weekly PDF report, CSV export |
| Agency | $199/month, billed $2,388/yr | $399 | 80 | 100,000 | White-label PDF reports, scheduled to clients |
| Enterprise | $499/month, billed $5,988/yr | $999 | 300 | 500,000 | Custom report templates |
Five keywords cover a brand name, a domain, two product names and one misspelling. If you also watch competitors or run several brands, Team gives you three brands and 20 keywords. Yearly billing saves 50 percent and is selected by default.
Questions about tracking brand mentions
MentionAlert collects new public mentions continuously and sends instant alerts within minutes of collecting them. You can switch any keyword to a daily digest if minutes are not needed.
Use exclude words, a language and a country filter, and add include words that usually appear with your brand, such as your product category. The demo shows how noisy the bare name is before you sign up.
No. MentionAlert runs in the browser. Alerts reach you by email, Slack, webhook or, on Enterprise, Microsoft Teams.
The limit counts mentions collected in your billing period, and deleting mentions does not free it. You can move to a larger plan at any time, and the count renews each period.
Yes, any time in the account. Access continues to the end of the paid period. Payments are final, as described in the refund policy.