How to Track Social Mentions? [2025 Guide]

Whether you’re a small business, or a brand investing thousands of dollars into its social media presence, you’re most likely talked about by other people online. Every time you appear in other people’s content or comments on major social media channels – it counts as a social mention.

The more people talk about your brand online, the bigger brand awareness you have. And it translates directly to increased sales and your overall position on the market.

Social mention is a comment, post, or any other content that mentions your brand. It can be published on various social media platforms and either include a tag or not. Monitoring them provides many valuable insights into your social media performance and sentiment. Social mention is a small but crucial part of the digital landscape that can shape your social media strategy.

What is a mention?

In digital marketing, a mention refers to any time a brand, product, service, or company is talked about online.

This could happen on various digital platforms, including social media, blogs, news articles, forums, podcasts, newsletters, reviews and more.

Mentions play a crucial role in digital marketing strategies, especially when they occur across major social media networks.

They can significantly influence a brand’s online presence, reputation, and relationship with its audience.

Types of mentions in digital marketing:

1. Social media mentions: Users tag or mention a brand in their posts or comments.
2. Blog and article mentions: Brands are discussed or cited within blog posts or articles.
3. Forum mentions: Brands are mentioned in discussions on forums and community boards.
4. Review and rating sites: Mentions occur in customer reviews and ratings.
5. Influencer mentions: Influencers mention or endorse a brand in their content.
6. News mentions: Brands are mentioned in news articles or press releases.

Here you can see an example of online mention:

What is a social mention?

Social mention is a little more narrowed. It happens when mentioning or tagging someone’s username or profile in a post, comment, or message on social media platforms.

It’s kind of a square and rectangle situation – social mention is a mention, but not every mention will be a social mention.

Tagging is accomplished by using the “@” symbol followed by the user’s username.

But, social media users might mention brands or products without tagging them.

In that case, to detect such mentions, you need to use a social media monitoring tool for tracking social mentions.

Such tools can also analyze your mentions and provide you with insights on:

• Sentiment
• Volume of mentions
• Most active platforms
• Most active users
• And so much more!

Here are the examples of social mentions, I used Brand24 to find them:

Why social mentions are important?

Do you want to know what people are really saying about your brand?

Social media mentions hold the answer – and they’re packed with insights.

Social media managers can use these insights to refine their strategies and improve brand engagement.

When users mention your brand online, they’re giving you feedback on:

• How to improve user experience
• Ideas about the changes to be made for the next version of your product
• Research on your target audience
• A deeper look into the factors that influence purchase decisions

But here’s what most businesses don’t realize: these mentions contain patterns that can predict the future.

And by future, I mean emerging trends, competitive weaknesses, and people passionate about your brand before they become customers.

You can know a product issue before it goes viral or discover an unexpected use case that could become your next marketing campaign.

The businesses that track social mentions gain an almost unfair advantage.

Why?

Let me show you!

Benefits of monitoring social mentions

To make things easier for you, I curated this list of 4 main advantages you gain when starting to monitor online conversations:

1. Take care of your digital reputation

Every tag and reference to your brand creates a digital footprint that shapes how others perceive your brand. By monitoring these conversations, you get the power to amplify positive buzz and address concerns before they start to escalete and shape your brand online. It’s an important factor for social media marketing strategy. What narrative are you letting others write about you?

2. Establish relationships

When someone mentions your brand, they’re opening a door to connection. Brands that respond transform casual commenters into loyal advocates. These “minor” interactions are what truly matters in building authentic relationships.

3. Be one step ahead

Your mentions are much more than empty words. They can be the early signals of what’s next in your market. Your competitors’ weaknesses, emerging trends, and unexpected product use – are all revealed in these conversations.

4. Find new opportunities

A single mention can give growth or become a reputation crisis. The difference often comes down to how quickly you spot it and how you respond. By tracking mentions, you control the narrative rather than scrambling to recover from it.

How to track mentions on social media?

There are 2 main ways to track social media mentions:

1. Manual tracking
2. Using social mention tools

01 Manual tracking

Well, you can track social media mentions manually by checking notifications on your social media apps.

Here’s how you could go about it:

• Use the search function on each social media platform to look for mentions of your brand, products, or specific keywords. Remember to check for common misspellings or variations of your brand name.
• Manually search for relevant hashtags that are associated with your brand or industry.
• Ensure that your notification settings are configured to alert you of mentions.
• Regularly check the notifications tab on each social media platform.
• Use similar tactics to keep an eye on mentions of your competitors.

However, this process has significant disadvantages.

⭐️ Pros of manual tracking:

• Cost-effectiveness: Usually, it’s a free option.

❌ Cons of manual tracking:

• Time-consuming: Manual tracking can be very time-consuming, especially as your brand grows.
• Not comprehensive: You might miss mentions, especially if users don’t tag your official profile or if they occur on platforms you are not actively monitoring.
• Lack of social media analytics: Unlike social listening tools, manual tracking doesn’t provide analytics or sentiment analysis.

02 Using social mention tools

While manual tracking is possible, it’s more feasible for small brands.

For larger businesses or those serious about reputation management and engagement, investing in a tool is usually more effective.

You can find out more about using such a tool in this case study.

These tools automate the tracking process, provide comprehensive social media analysis, and ensure you don’t miss out on important conversations across social channels.

Here’s a guide on how to set this up:

• Select a social media monitoring tool that suits your business size, industry, and specific needs.
• Ensure the tool covers all the social media platforms relevant to your brand. For example, Brand24 monitors Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Linkedin, Medium, Quora, Twitch, and Telegram. 
• List all relevant keywords, hashtags, brands, and product names you want to track. Then, set up a monitoring project.
• Discover the Mention Tab – the place where all mentions appear. You can filter them to find the most relevant.
• Pay attention to the sentiment of the mentions, whether they are positive, negative, or neutral.
• Configure the tool to send you notifications or reports for mentions.

Remember that effective social and brand mention tracking requires a strategic approach, the right tools, and genuine engagement.

⭐️ Pros of using social mention tools:

• AI analysis: You get instant customer insights to use in your marketing campaigns right away.
• Time efficiency: You can focus on the most important mentions or check just the general reports for a quick overview.
• Reporting capabilities: You don’t need to create reports from scratch, but it’s easy to make them personalized.

❌ Cons of using social mention tools:

• Costs: For more comprehensive tools – you need to pay.

How to respond to social media mentions?

Whether you’re a small, mid-sized business or a large company that gets tens of thousands of online mentions per day, what matters most is:

What can you do with a social mention?

How do you respond to the people who are behind each mention: your customers, your clients, your users, and your fans?

There are 3 types of social mentions:

• Positive – gives you an opportunity to show appreciation to the person behind it.
• Negative – gives you an opportunity to potentially solve a problem. Or, it lets you display some sensitive smarts and show sympathy for customers who didn’t have good experiences.
• Neutral – is an opportunity for you to collect feedback about your service or product that wouldn’t otherwise have been shared.

Whether it’s a positive, a negative, or a neutral mention, each of them is an opportunity for you to engage with your audience.

But, the way you should approach will be dictated by the type of the mention.

So, let me briefly explain how to respond to each type.

What to do with a positive mention?

If only every online mention could be an ego-boosting flattery!

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. But that only makes us appreciate positive mentions even more.

DJ and record producer Alan Walker spends his entire day making music, but he still finds time to let his listeners know how much their support and opinions matter to him with posts like this on his social media channels:

“Reading all your comments. Thanks for all the kind words, I’m glad you like it!”

Nothing beats personalization and individual attention.

However, if you receive more than 400 comments & 16k likes from a single post, just take a cue from DJ Alan Walker and simply acknowledge that your listener, user, customer, or client has taken personal time to praise you in a mention.

Thank them for it!!!

What to do with a negative mention?

The example below is our favorite kind of negative social mention.

Why? A specific problem has been addressed, which gives us an opportunity to offer a solution.

The Babbel customer is experiencing trouble with a recent update and is unable to use the app because of this problem. They clearly anticipate a quick response from them.

If you receive a negative mention like this, which poses a problem that you can solve – fantastic!

Any viable problem has a viable solution. Just remember to respond with patience and kindness in your answer.

Now, what if the social mention is more of a scathing insult, and there isn’t a particular problem for you to solve? What should you do then?

A scathingly negative mention is ruled by emotions.

Whether the problem occurred with your company, a partner, retailer, supplier, or shipping services provider is irrelevant. In the eyes of the customer, you’re guilty by association.

The best way to handle a situation like this is to be direct and apologize.

• Acknowledge any mistakes or oversights that may have occurred.
• Be sympathetic and truly listen to your customers.

Document the exchange with these negative mentions so that you can learn from it, use it to train future employees, and improve the way that you handle situations like these in the future.

Here’s a guided infographic with more details on each step of the process for handling negative social mentions.

Don’t get upset if the customer doesn’t immediately change their tune afterward.

Your goal isn’t to change their mind. When you’re handling any negative social mention, remember that:

• If there is a specific problem mentioned, try to solve it.
• If there isn’t a particular problem for you to solve, at least acknowledge that your customers did not have a positive experience and apologize for their inconvenience.
• If applicable, offer compensation or a small token as a gesture of your appreciation that personal time has been wasted.

What to do with a neutral mention?

A neutral social mention is an opportunity for you to collect feedback about your product.

Take the example below:

This mention neither raves nor complains about the Lays’ vs. Doritos versions of wasabi chips.

It provides relevant marketing information to both Lays and Doritos (both are actually part of the Frito-Lay family, but that’s another topic).

This neutral social mention shows Lays which other chips their consumers compare them to (Doritos), and the flavors that their customers enjoy (wasabi).

Collecting other social mentions like this (and unlike this) will give you access to all kinds of information that will be helpful to your market research.

Neutral social mentions can help you fill in the gaps and answer questions like:

• Who is my target audience?
• Who is my main competitor?
• What do my customers like about my product?
• What do my customers dislike about my product?
• How can I improve my product?
• Why do they choose my product?
• Why do they choose my competitor’s product?

My 5 simple tips on replying to social media mentions

To make it easier for you – I created this list of more general tips to answer mentions (doesn’t matter the sentiment).

So, here’s what you should do:

1. Respond ASAP – people expect brands to answer their queries timely.
2. Make it private – Sometimes it’s easier to provide personalized and genuine experience in the DM’s. Plus, it’s a better option for your digital reputation.
3. Be a human – People are over with AI-generated replies. They look for empathy and understanding.
4. Set boundaries – Do your best to resolve customer issues and turn the conversation around… But keep in mind that some problems take time and not every customer will be fully satisfied despite your efforts.
5. Attract engagement – Instead of simply reacting to a comment about your brand – answer with a question. It will encourage the person for further engagement and boost your visibility.

Conclusion

Do you know those social media accounts that make posts, and that’s it? They don’t engage users, respond to comments, and undoubtedly do not track mentions.

That’s quite the opposite thing you should do to attract new followers and run a successful profile.

Key takeaways:

• Monitoring mentions should be a part of each social media strategy.
• Each social media mention is user-generated content that you can reuse.
• Tracking the sentiment of social mentions will help you manage and protect your brand reputation.
• Pay special attention to mentions from influencers or brand advocates.
• Use the insights gained from the tracking tool to optimize your social presence.
• Address negative social mentions promptly, offering solutions.
• Track mentions of your competitors to gain insights into their social media presence and reputation.

With a social mention tool in hand, you’ll be ready to face even the most challenging situation. The good news is that you can try such a tool for free. Register for a 14-day free trial!