What are brand mentions?

Brand mentions are essentially mentions – also known as citations – of your brand. Brand mentions can refer to your brand, company or product and can appear both online and offline. Usually, these mentions will be part of a story about you, but they can also be about your competitors or your industry.

Where do brand mentions appear?

A brand mention can appear anywhere. However, you will usually find brand mentions in press and news articles (online and offline), on social media channels, in blog posts, review sites and on forums.

How do I get brand mentions?

You generally earn brand mentions through marketing. However, you can also earn brand mentions organically.

Marketing – such as social media marketing, public relations (PR), and email marketing – are great ways to earn brand mentions. Marketing allows you to control the narrative around your brand, product, or offering. If you do this well, you’ll create a buzz, which will result in organic brand mentions across news outlets and social media.

However, be aware that organic brand mentions can also be negative.

Why do brand mentions matter?

The main reason to monitor brand mentions is because they play a crucial role in shaping your brand reputation and visibility. Brand mentions provide valuable insights into helping you to understand how your brand is being perceived and how many people know about your brand.

It is important you track and understand your brand’s mentions and how these mentions may change (i.e. the percentage of negative mentions versus positive mentions).

Tracking brand mentions will also enable you to see the difference between a brand that is thriving, and one that is struggling to capture attention. Many brands not only monitor the sentiment of brand mentions, but also the volume. A brand that is often being talked about in news articles, on social media platforms, in forums and blog posts, is usually a commercially-successful one.

Brand perception and sentiment analysis

Tracking brand mentions allows you to see whether your brand is being seen in a positive of negative light. Sometimes your brand may be featured in an article that is negatively discussing a topic, but your brand may be mentioned positively – and vice versa.

Understand public opinion

Brand mentions may be earned by the brand through social media marketing or PR efforts. But brand mentions are also the result of public opinion. If public perception is particularly favourable or unfavourable, the public will tell you via social media posts, on review sites, in news and press articles, and even opinion pieces.

Do I need to track brand mentions?

It is a good idea to monitor brand mentions for any brand. By tracking brand mentions, you gain valuable insights into your brand image and brand reputation. Tracking brand mentions can also help shape brand positioning and marketing plans.

How do I find brand mentions?

While you can track brand mentions manually, using tools such as Google Alerts, it is advised to use a third party tool to identify your brand’s mentions. A brand mention monitoring tool will give you real-time, accurate data that showcases brand sentiment and highlights a brand’s reputation. These tools analayse both on and offline mentions on news sites, in print, and on social media channels.

There are a number of brand tracking tools available which collate all mentions across all online platforms. They also provide you with an overview to allow you to track both positive feedback and negative mentions.

What brand mention tools are there?

There are standalone brand mention tools and media monitoring tools on the market, as well as some tools that offer brand and media monitoring alongside their core offer.

Some popular tools include:

• Brandwatch
• Pulsar
• Meltwater
• Mention

Specialist brand mention and media monitoring tools analyse brand mentions and track the sentiment across online platforms. These tools give you a real-time view of brand perception and characterise conversations into positive, negative or neutral, tracking those changes over time.

When should I track brand mentions?

You should have a method to continually track brand mentions. Although, you may not see much change from one week to the next. Therefore, it is not always necessary to monitor them daily or even weekly.

However, when launching a new product, campaign, advertisement, etc., it’s a good idea to monitor brand mentions more closely. Doing this will give you a real-time picture of how your launch is being received by the public, and give you a head start should you need to amend anything.

You can also use continual brand mention tracking to inform future plans – such as introducing a new product or offering.