Have you ever wondered if someone is talking about you behind your back?
We all have had this thought at some point in our lives.
While this thought might disturb most of us in real life, if you run a website or have a blog, then it’s not as disturbing as you might think it is.
As a matter of fact, knowing what people are saying about you in the online world pays off in more ways than you can imagine.
That’s exactly what brand mention monitoring is. Sometimes your blog is mentioned in someone else’s article or blog, and you are tagged in it. Sometimes someone has misspelled your name, and sometimes you are not tagged. However, no matter how annoying reverse-spelling check and link reclamation is, brand mentions are important if you want to stay relevant online.
Lucky for you, it is not that difficult. With so many brand mentions link building techniques, and tools available online, you can easily monitor brand mentions, analyze them, and optimize the conversation around your website or company.
We have rounded up the best brand mention techniques and tools for you to help you apply your findings to your content marketing and social media marketing strategies and make your brand’s reputation skyrocket. In a good way, of course!
So without wasting any time, let’s dive into our comprehensive brand mention guide:
What Are Brand Mentions?
A brand mention occurs when a certain brand or website is “mentioned” or “referenced” in articles, blogs, websites, and social media posts across numerous social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
These brand mentions are typically published alongside customer reviews, complaints, positive feedback, reviews, comparisons, or posts that tell the audiences about the brand. In Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, brand mentioning is a strategy used by many companies and brands to establish credibility and improve domain rankings.
What Is a Brand Mentions Tool?
Software and tools that enable you to keep track of what is being said about your business online and on major social media platforms are known as brand mention tools. Although there are numerous ways to accomplish this, a brand mention tool —also known as social listening or social media monitoring tool —is usually the quickest and most efficient way to do brand mentions SEO.
These tools can improve how you communicate with your target audience because they are created specifically for identifying, monitoring, and responding to conversations about your blog or business. You can also build brand mentions links with them if you know how to use them for your benefit.
Types of Brand Mentions
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News Articles & Press Releases
Your business can get mentioned in different news publications and press releases when you host an event, achieve a new milestone or receive an award for something. Moreover, you can get brand mentions if someone from your senior team lands an interview with a major news publication network. Plus, you can get brand mentions for hosting workshops on different skills.
F1 was in the news recently when it raised 280,000 euros for Emilia-Romagna to help the region deal with the floods it is experiencing. Here is a snippet from one of the news articles published about them for your reference:
Source: Pledge Times
Make sure that your social media team keeps up with these brand mentions and re-shares them on your accounts on social media platforms. A brand mention from a news article can build your credibility and spread the word about your business into the world.
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Social Media Mentions
People spend a considerable amount of their time on social media platforms. You are going to find a huge percentage of brand mentions on social media sites such as Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Pinterest, to name a few.
On social media, brand mentions show up as stories, comments, reels, reshares, or posts. Social media mentions can include reviews of products, brand endorsements, complaints, or recommendations.
Let’s take a look at examples of brand mentions on four major social media platforms:
Here’s a brand mention for NIKE on Twitter.
Source: Nike
Similarly, here is Uber getting a brand mention from Economic Bariloche on Facebook:
Source: Facebook
Now, let’s take a look at brand mentions on Instagram. Here is Threadless mentioning Seba Sebi on Instagram:
Lastly, let’s look at an example of a brand mention on LinkedIn. Forbes recently hosted its Forbes Iconoclast Summit 2023. Here is Forbes, mentioning the company Cerberus Capital Management:
Source: Forbes LinkedIn
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Blog Post Brand Mentions
What is a blog post brand mention? When you write an article or a blog post for your website and link the source for whatever information you take from them, that link is considered a brand mention for the website or brand whose article you have linked to.
Similarly, if someone else mentions your website or brand in their blog across any platform, that would be a brand mention for your website. So, you can also get brand mentions backlinks from other blogs and websites.
Let’s take a look at this blog post we recently published, where we talked about the top-ranked guest posting agencies in 2023 and mentioned those agencies:
Source: Globex Outreach
Blog brand mentions validate the authenticity and meaningfulness of your brand’s content. As a result, this increase in authenticity increases your DA (Domain Authority).
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Customer Reviews
One of the main reasons your brand will be discussed online is because of customer reviews. People like to review products and services online. Whenever they leave a review for a business, they make sure to tag that business and mention its name. Be it a bad review, or a positive review, you will get a mention if someone reviews your service.
People can leave feedback for your business on your company’s website (in the form of testimonials), third-party apps, social media platforms, digital communities, online forums (like Reddit), and even Google.
Have a look at this customer review left on our website in the form of a testimonial for our guest posting services:
Source: Globex Outreach
Here’s another example of customer review brand mentions (in the form of a comment) for Samsung on Facebook:
Source: Facebook
Why Is Brand Monitoring Important?
Brand mention monitoring is important. People who run websites and blogs care about what people say about them online.
But why?
Brand mentions determine and shape the reputation and public perception of brands.
Let’s find out why you need to care about brand mention monitoring:
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Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
While it is a good thing to mind your business and not meddle in other people’s businesses, it doesn’t apply when it comes to Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.
A crucial component of comprehensive brand monitoring is keeping an eye on your rivals to find out what they are doing right and where they are going wrong.
You can then use this information to perform a competitive analysis and tweak your strategy accordingly. You can learn from their wins and losses, both. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and use a tool in order to do that.
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Source Fresh and Trendy Content
Did someone mention you in a blog post, a tweet, or an Instagram Story? Or did they express their love for your brand that they want to buy all your products or services? If it is a good review, it means you have got fresh content to broadcast on social media platforms and your website so your audience can see it too. And you only had to wait and observe for that content.
What’s surprising is that the information does not even need to be super high-quality. It just needs to be entertaining enough for people to notice and reshare.
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Maintain Your Online Reputation
Brand mentions monitoring keeps you informed and prepared to seize opportunities and pounce on any issues you may encounter or take advantage of praise. After all, did it ever happen if someone complimented you on a social media platform and you did not react to it?
You can respond right away and maintain your reputation by tracking conversations about your brand online.
Take some inspiration from the official Duolingo account on Twitter, which hastily responded to a tweet about a dating show comparing the show to Duolingo. It chose an emoji to keep it light but mysterious at the same time. Here it is:
Source: Twitter
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Study Your Audiences’ Sentiment
You want to know how people on the internet are talking about you instead of just focusing on whether they are talking about you or not. You can gauge the social sentiment and capture the pulse of your brand with brand mentions monitoring.
When doing a sentiment analysis for your audience, keep an eye out for any unexpected peaks or dips, and make sure you identify their cause. You might be dealing with a PR problem if something you posted caused a sharp decline in brand sentiment.
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Engage With Your Audience
Your social customer service or communications strategy can benefit greatly from brand mentions monitoring. When you track any brand mentions for your business, you are looking for more than just tagged social mentions. Additionally, you want to be aware of any unnoticed remarks (even the ones where you are not tagged) and address them. No one does this better than Duolingo.
Here is Duolingo responding to a tweet in the best way possible:
Source: Twitter
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Keep an Eye on Old Content
The internet spreads information quickly, so it frequently becomes popular within a few days (or even hours) of being published. Things go viral all the time, albeit momentarily.
However, occasionally, content or posts that are several months or even years old will unexpectedly become popular online. By keeping track of all of your posts, not just the most recent ones, brand mentions monitoring ensures that you can profit from your older posts that go viral.
For example, the band Edison Lighthouse’s 1971 song “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes” went viral on Tiktok in 2022. Even the famous actress Drew Barrymore posted a TikTok on the song:
Source: TikTok
Brand Mention Strategies: How to Get Backlinks From Brand Mentions?
Building links to your company through brand mentions is a smart strategy. One that pays off really well. However, how can you obtain these worthwhile brand mentions backlinks from these unlinked and untagged mentions?
You must be specific about the metrics you want to track and the methods you want to use to analyze the results, as with any link-building approach. We have rounded up some of the most effective brand mention tips to help you achieve your brand mention goals:
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Use Customer Reviews to Your Advantage
When it comes to enhancing the reputation of your brand and improving your brand persona, customer feedback reigns supreme. The majority of the time, new clients check old testimonials and reviews before deciding whether to work with you or not.
Very few customer reviews have nearly the same effect that bad reviews have on customers. Make sure you encourage your clients to review your brand or its product (or services) after they have worked with you. You may as well think about giving your audience some perks in exchange for taking the time to write you a compelling review.
On top of that, see to it that you acknowledge and appropriately respond to any unfavorable consumer feedback. Do not leave any bad reviews unattended.
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Work on Linking Domains
Work on increasing the number of linking domains. This will indirectly affect your popularity and influence your brand mentions by association. Moreover, they also come in handy because they help you understand the difference between the number of unique domains linking back to you prior to and following your pursuit of an unlinked brand mention.
Plus, as you continue with your outreach efforts, you will also ideally notice a rise in the number of linking domains to your website.
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Run Social Media Campaigns
Brand mentions can be increased with the help of a strategically-planned social media campaign. To help advertisers and SEO marketers access larger audiences, the majority of social networks feature built-in advertising solutions. For instance, you can run an ad campaign on both Facebook and Instagram using Facebook’s advertising manager.
You can find ad management interfaces on other networks such as Linkedin, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube. You’ll quickly grasp how to maximize the reach of your content on various social media platforms. Once you have a good understanding of how their ad management systems work, you will be able to work with all social media platforms.
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Monitor Keyword Rankings for Brand Mentioning
It is better to get brand mentions on specific keywords to grow your website’s ranking in search engine result pages. When you focus on getting a brand mention for a specific keyword, you are optimizing your website for that said keyword.
As a result, your website gets indexed earlier, and its visibility increases as well. All you need to do is make sure that you are tracking the keyword’s movement as you work on your brand mentions link building efforts.
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Try to Get Featured in Interviews
Interviews are one of the best ways to generate organic growth and increase your website’s visibility. Podcasts, live streams, YouTube channels, Instagram reels, and Spotify interviews are getting popular day by day. Making your website visible and your brand persona stronger is easier than ever before.
You can try reaching out to people whose content you can relate to and offer to share your brand’s story and your expertise in an interview. Landing an interview will help you get better brand mentions and strengthen your link building efforts.
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Utilize the Webpage Data
Do not forget the importance of utilizing web page data when trying to acquire brand mentions from other platforms. You undoubtedly want the increased traffic and conversions that your links bring to the listed web pages. It is crucial to monitor the number of visits or click-through rates of the website receiving an external reference in order to capture these data points and assess the outcomes.
Finding pertinent unlinked references of your brand can be facilitated by conducting a routine Google search using the right search terms, such as “organization” – site: organization.
If you want to search results for brand mentions derived from particular keywords, blog posts, testimonials, or reviews, you can also set up separate queries.
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Don’t Forget Guest Blogging
Writing an article for a third-party website in order to promote your own brand and getting a backlink in return is known as guest blogging. When selecting websites to publish your article on, tread with caution. As a guest blogger, you should ideally be featured on websites that your target audience is most likely to frequent.
Consider thought leaders, niche experts, websites, blogs, and social media influencers where you’ll most likely get your prospective client’s attention.
You can read different guides on guest blogging if you are not familiar with it already. This way you will be able to make the most of your strategy. Make sure that you are familiar with the dos and don’ts of guest posting so you can avoid Google penalties and other common problems.
The Best Brand Mention Monitoring Tools You Should Get Your Hands On
In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, maintaining a strong online presence and monitoring brand mentions has become crucial for businesses of all sizes. With the ever-increasing volume of content generated across numerous platforms, staying on top of brand mentions can be a daunting task.
Luckily, there are a plethora of powerful brand mention monitoring tools available that can simplify this process and provide valuable insights into brand reputation, customer sentiment, and overall marketing effectiveness.
Let’s explore some of the best brand mention monitoring tools that can help you track and analyze mentions across various channels and social media platforms, so you can make informed decisions and optimize your online strategies:
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Native Social Media Networks and Analytics
Sometimes it is better if you don’t go down the complex route and try intricate solutions. A lot of social networking sites come with built-in analytics and alerting systems.
At least financially, it’s by far one of the least expensive ways to keep an eye on brand mentions and optimize your strategies accordingly.
You must invest a significant amount of time manually analyzing the remarks inside the panel in order to obtain the data you require from native analytics tools. For individuals or small brands, that is the best course of action, but SMEs and large organizations will find it ineffective. So, for larger organizations, we have rounded up some of the best tools below:
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Convosight
One of the first community marketing platforms designed to track brand mentions, Convosight, links companies with community creators. It has an impressive list of more than 1000 successful clients, including but not limited to Unacademy Veet, Plum, Aashirvaad, Amazon, Maggi, and to name a few. It has enabled these brands to run their marketing campaigns successfully.
This tool allows companies to track their user interactions taking place in millions of relevant Facebook groups, which have thousands of thousands of members each. On top of the brand mentions, Convosight helps clients monitor their overall category conversations, user intent, total engagement, and user-generated content (UGC) on articles and posts.
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BuzzSumo
Another tool that can help you get your brand mention monitoring to the top is BuzzSumo. It provides some of the best services for brand monitoring, even though most people do not know about BuzzSumo.
You can use the brand monitoring tool’s several functions to find all the pertinent mentions, such as brand and keyword alerts, real-time notifications, personalized dashboards, etc. It also offers domain alerts that allow you to receive a notification whenever new content is posted on a specific domain.
Moreover, you can track all posts made by a specific author using author alerts. Plus, it lets its users receive a notification whenever a new backlink is created on their website.
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Mention.com
This tool is made especially for tracking and monitoring brand mentions. It is also capable of gathering information and reports for its users from many websites, blogs, and social media platforms.
Mention.com also assists in determining how your audience feels about any published content on your website. In addition, it helps you manage your brand because it can keep an eye on your competitors and their marketing efforts.
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TweetDeck
Would you like to concentrate only on Twitter? Twitter social media monitoring is simple to do! If your goal is to get brand mentions from Twitter only, then you need to check out TweetDeck ASAP.
TweetDeck is a free brand mention monitoring tool that helps its users design a Twitter dashboard that meets all of their requirements. Using the application, you can actively participate in an online conversation while paying close attention to hashtags during live events and workshops.
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SEMrush
A common tool used by online marketers and SEO executives is SEMrush. For assessing content channels and finding fresh prospects for content distribution, its brand monitoring score always comes in handy.
This tool also does a good job at source type-based refinement of unlinked brand mentions. On top of that, SEMrush reports give information about customer behavior and competitor backlinks.
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Awario
Awario is the right app for you if you want to immediately learn about every new relevant brand mention regarding your company. Apart from the amazing APIs, this social listening technology searches over 13 billion web pages every day to make sure you are always on top of all brand sources.
It covers all social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It also tracks all sorts of blogs and news websites to gather notifications for you, and you will be immediately notified.
Furthermore, Awario can help you find important conversations on social networks so you can join them in real time. To reach new audiences and encourage word-of-mouth marketing, you can market and spread the word about your product, service, or content online and on social media with ease.
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Keyhole
Keyhole can provide you with information about the online performance of your brand. The brand mentions monitoring tool provides a brief summary of the most significant social metrics, such as total impressions, total link clicks, and Total engagement, to name a few.
Keyhole keeps track of how predetermined keywords, URLs, hashtags, and @ brand mentions are performing. Moreover, it provides in-the-moment data and monitoring. The brand monitoring tool can be used to keep tabs on your business’ progress or to assess how you stack up against the performance of your rivals.
It is, however, a paid tool and starts at a $179 monthly minimum.
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Google Alerts
Google Alerts are tried-and-true methods for finding and learning about past, present, and future brand mentions. You can adjust the various features after setting up alerts for your brand name, its variations, or anything else you believe might be referenced by others.
Some of the features that you can adjust include alert frequency (daily, weekly, as-it-occurs), sources (automatic, discussions, news, blogs, the web, videos, and books), region, region (local preferences or any region), number of alerts (all outcomes, only the best), and language.
Google alerts are often delivered to the email address of your choice, making it simple to identify and keep tabs on unlinked mentions from outside sources.
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Talkwalker Alerts
Another brand monitoring tool that searches the whole internet, including social media sites, to provide you with consolidated alerts concerning the keywords you track data for is Talkwalker Alerts. It is trusted by more than 500,000 users, and the platform markets itself as a superior alternative to Google Alerts.
The main distinction between the two is that the latter is entirely free while the former offers a variety of paid subscription plans for its premium features. Talkwalker distinguishes itself from its rivals by giving channels with the highest engagement priority. In other words, it will provide you with an update on the brand mentions that matter.
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Ahrefs alerts
Another app that SEO experts love to use is Ahrefs. Similar to how Google alerts operate, Ahrefs is also easy to use for brand mentions. It helps marketers in tracking keyword and brand mentions.
However, the features that Ahrefs offers are a little different. Its features include search queries, language, mode (keyword placement in the URL, title, and content), blocked domains (websites from which you don’t wish to receive alerts), and interval (alert frequency).
Alternatives to Brand Mention Tools
As businesses strive to enhance their online presence and engage with their target audience, monitoring brand mentions has become an integral part of their digital marketing strategy. While there are numerous dedicated brand mention monitoring tools available, some businesses may prefer alternative approaches or seek additional options to suit their specific needs.
Whether it’s due to budget constraints, a desire for more customization, or a preference for a different methodology, exploring alternatives to traditional brand mention tools can offer fresh perspectives and unique solutions.
Let’s delve into some compelling alternatives to brand mention tools and potential benefits they offer to businesses looking to gain valuable insights into their brand’s online presence and reputation:
Brand Analytics Tools
Analyze when it is most effective to interact with your audience with brand analytics tools. For instance, they may identify the most effective periods for sending emails, executing ads, posting on social media, etc. Even more information on user demographics, the most popular hashtags, and interactions with your brand can be available from these. You should be aware that some brand mention monitoring solutions also have brand analytics metrics.
Customer Experience Management Software (CX)
By gathering feedback from customers, purchase history, and other insights from every single customer, for simple monitoring of their satisfaction, these tools comprehensively monitor all areas of a customer’s journey. It’s an improvement over customer satisfaction software in some ways. One great example of customer experience software is Qualtrics.
Social Media Management Tools
Prepare your social media stories and posts in advance for automatic publication, and keep an eye on how they’re doing. These functionalities are offered by some brand mention management solutions, but social media management tools remain a separate category. Storyheap and Tailwind are two great examples of social media management platforms that don’t keep track of mentions.
Reputation Management Tools
This bigger category includes brand mention tools, but there is much more to the story than what meets the eye. Software for managing reviews, SEO tools (like SEMrush and Ahrefs), and customer satisfaction survey software (like NPS software) are other alternatives for managing your brand’s reputation.
Influencer Marketing Software
These tools can help you locate influencers online —temporary brand ambassadors— who will talk positively about you. They also assist you in coordinating with influencers and managing influencer marketing campaigns. They frequently offer brand mention tracking functions. However, these functions concentrate on monitoring the conversations revolving around these particular individuals (the influencers).
Affiliate Marketing Software
Businesses utilize affiliate marketing programs to pay people or other businesses (their affiliates) to bring in new consumers. Usually, the affiliate does this by posting a link on their websites, social media pages, and other platforms.
Brand Ambassador Software
You can locate and manage long-term brand ambassadors with the aid of these tools. Tools for brand mentions in this category are somewhat similar. After all, based on the quantity and nature of their mentions, brand or social mention tools can assist you in identifying your largest supporters on social media, who you can then possibly enlist as brand ambassadors.
Brand mention tools often don’t manage and track ambassador initiatives, but brand ambassador software does.
Referral Marketing Software
Through a regulated referral scheme that facilitates and rewards sharing, these tools encourage your consumers to recommend your company to their friends. Yes, they allow you to monitor how many people use the referral program to spread the word about your company, and yes, they aid in building brand recognition. However, because they don’t monitor what people are saying about you online, they are not considered brand mention software.
Linked Brand Mentions FAQs
Which brand mentions tool is the best?
Every tool is different from the others. It depends on your needs. Look for a tool that includes an intelligent and interactive dashboard that helps you understand, find, and make business decisions to build your brand as a thinking leader.
When looking for a brand mentions tool, what is the key feature that you should look for?
A brand mentions tool’s major feature is that it tracks and generates notifications for every mention of your brand in real-time across numerous platforms while also keeping track of the data. Look out for that.
What is the best way to respond to negative brand mentions?
Respond swiftly, apologize if necessary, provide a solution, maintain professionalism, and follow up to make sure the issue has been fixed when handling bad mentions. By doing this, you may safeguard your reputation, keep customers’ trust, and show that you are dedicated to providing them with a satisfying experience.
Which free brand mentions tools are the best to use in 2023?
The top free brand mentions tools in 2023 include Awario, Ahrefs, Mention.com, and Talkwalker Alerts.
How do you respond to compliments?
When someone mentions your company favorably, thank them and post about it on social media to express your gratitude. When answering queries or comments, be prompt and informative.
Consider what it was about your product or service that the customer enjoyed, and as a way of saying “thank you” for their patronage, think about giving them a discount or promotion. Customers become more loyal as a result of this.
Conclusion
Your marketing strategies may be significantly impacted by keeping an eye on the internet conversations involving your current and potential customers that also include your brand.
However, keeping track of brand mentions involving your business may be time-consuming. You do not have to worry about it. Use the strategies we have listed above as well as the amazing brand mention monitoring tools. You will notice a considerable change in your brand’s visibility over time.