How to Track News Mentions? [2024]

In today’s digital-centered age, tracking your brand’s mentions can make a big difference. Kodak received 100,730 mentions in just the last 30 days. This kind of attention has a significant impact. Especially if most of the sentiment is positive, like in Kodak’s case. Monitor conversations to understand your audience better. How? Read on to learn!

News mentions are conversations about your brand or topic in media, such as newspapers and blogs. They help understand public sentiment, manage reputation, respond to trends, and improve marketing strategies.

Table of contents:

• What are news mentions?
• How to track news mentions?
  • Manual tracking
  • Google Alerts
  • Using a media monitoring tool
• How to analyze news mentions to gain insights?
• Conclusion

What are news mentions?

News mentions are when your brand or topic is talked about in media like newspapers, blogs, and news articles. 

Tracking these mentions helps you understand what people think about your brand, manage your brand reputation, and respond to public discussions.

Benefits of tracking mentions on the news:

• Better brand awareness: It helps you understand your media coverage and in what context your brand mentions occur.
• PR crisis management: You can manage negative mentions to protect your brand’s image.
• Engagement opportunities: Engaging with mentions can strengthen customer relationships.
• Competitive analysis: Monitoring how often and in what context your competitors are mentioned provides valuable benchmark insights.

How to track news mentions?

There are generally three ways to track web mentions: manually, using Google Alerts, and using external media monitoring tools.

Which one is better? 

You probably won’t like the answer – it depends.

Doing it manually can be enough if you don’t collect a lot of mentions and can analyze them on your own.

However, most PR professionals find the advanced tools very helpful as they save time, allowing them to focus on more important tasks.

Read on to learn the details and find the best option for you!

01 Manual tracking

This method involves searching for brand names and keywords on search engines like Google. How?

PR pros simply type each keyword individually and sift through search results.

Sounds… fun. I know.

It’s a daily task that can be very time-consuming and labor-intensive. It’s nearly impossible to find every mention and analyze them accurately.

I decided to try it, and honestly, I wasn’t happy with the results.

When I typed “Kodak” into Google search, I didn’t get anything relevant.

So, I tried to look for the brand mentions on specific news platforms.

This is what I got using a search bar on The New York Times:

It’s better than just trying to find those mentions on Google, but it’s still ineffective.

I can’t imagine trying to analyze this data to get valuable conclusions.

And more important – doing media monitoring in real time with this method won’t work.

That’s why we’ve got tools to gather all those mentions in real time, create reports, and even alert us when a new mention comes.

02 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is free and easy to set up. This is what its dashboard looks like:

It has a few settings to manipulate, including:

• How often do you want to receive alerts (in real-time, once a day, once a week)
• Sources
• Language
• Region
• How many mentions (only the best results, all)
• Where to deliver (email to choose)

However, PR professionals admit you can’t expect much from this tool. It often misses mentions and may not deliver alerts promptly.

These limitations make it not always reliable for important monitoring tasks.

02 Using a media monitoring tool

Media monitoring tools like Brand24 can track news mentions across various platforms. It offers a detailed view of your brand’s online presence.

Brand24 data sources include:

• News sites
• Forums
• Review sites
• Newsletters
• Podcasts

And social media platforms:

• Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (Popular for real-time updates and customer interactions)
• YouTube, LinkedIn (Important for professional and network content)
• Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitch (These cover a wide demographic and interest spectrum)

This makes it simple to keep an eye on what people how people are talking about your brand.

If you’ve tried media monitoring, you’ll know how hard it is to understand the reasons behind spikes in the mentions.

An important feature of Brand24 is its Anomaly Detector. It shows when there’s a sudden change in how often your brand is mentioned.

This is a valuable feature for brand reputation management as you can quickly discover any potential problems or possibilities.

With the “Compare periods” feature, you can easily analyze data from different time periods. This is a crucial tool for monitoring changes in mentions over time, allowing you to:

• Spot trends
• Measure the success of specific campaigns
• Understand fluctuations in brand visibility

By comparing data from different time periods (like this month against last month), you can better understand how your brand’s visibility has changed over time.

This feature is great for:

• Evaluating the impact of marketing strategies,
• Identifying seasonal patterns,
• Making decisions based on historical data.

It’s a powerful tool for optimizing your brand performance and maximizing your marketing efforts.

Benefits of tracking mentions using advanced news monitoring tool:

• Monitor mentions across various news platforms in one place.
• Know sentiment towards your business and respond to customer perceptions.
• Receive real-time email alerts about brand mentions.
• Quickly identify and manage negative press or customer feedback before it escalates.
• Competitor monitoring: how often are they mentioned? What’s their audience’s sentiment?
• Spot emerging trends and topics in your industry.
• Discover top-quality influencers and opinion leaders who can amplify your brand’s message.
• Save time with automated tracking and analysis.

How to analyze news mentions to gain insights?

Analyzing news mentions can seem time-consuming.

But it doesn’t have to be!

Instead of sifting through each mention one by one, features like AI Insights and Metrics Analysis can automatically analyze the data and provide you with valuable conclusions.

AI Insights uses machine learning to scan lots of data. It finds trends, changes in sentiment, and essential points about your brand. Plus, it presents them with simple conclusions.

See for yourself, this is what it looks like:

It helps you see the big picture without reviewing each mention by hand.

And I have to mention my personal favorite – the Metrics Analysis feature. 

It’s excellent at analyzing the reach, engagement, and influence of your mentions and creates easy-to-read charts and summaries. 

You can identify the actual emotions expressed by your audience and learn which platform generates most of the negativity.

Check them out:

This gives you a clear idea of your brand’s performance on different platforms.

Using social listening tools, you can understand your brand’s image, how well your communication works, and spot new chances or risks in the market.

Conclusion

Choosing the best way to track news mentions depends on your brand’s needs. 

For smaller brands, tracking news mentions manually might work well. However, as shown in my case study, even a small number of mentions can be pretty time-consuming and demanding to analyze.

Once your brand starts receiving over 1,000 mentions per month, I highly recommend using an external tool. It will automatically gather and analyze news mentions, saving you time and nerves!

Final Thoughts:

1. It’s crucial to monitor your mentions regularly. It ensures you capture every mention and understand how your audience perceives your brand.
2. Focus on sentiment analysis, reach, and engagement. These provide deep insights into how effectively your brand communicates and resonates with the audience.
3. Use the data from your monitoring to adapt your strategies. Quickly responding to trends or feedback can significantly enhance your brand’s relevance.

All clear? Start with a Brand24 trial and analyze your news mentions!