How to Track Media Mentions? [2024]

Samsung has received 708,000 media mentions during the last 30 days. This indicated an estimated reach of almost 3 million. Over 96% of those conversations had a positive sentiment. These numbers hold a great marketing value. You can also get your own using advanced media monitoring tools. Here’s how!

Media mentions are crucial indicators of your brand’s impact and reputation. Tracking them reveals how frequently your brand is being talked about and the sentiment behind these conversations. Monitoring these mentions provides invaluable insights that can help manage your brand’s online presence.

Table of contents:

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

What are media mentions?

Media mentions are when your brand, product, or industry topic is discussed in different media types. This includes online places like social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, or review sites.

These mentions can be good or bad and can appear in many ways.

Someone may say your brand’s name in a TikTok or talk about something new you’ve launched in their article. These all are media mentions!

But why are these online mentions important?

Well, they can completely change how people see your brand.

Positive mentions can make your brand more popular, but negative ones might need quick action to fix things. Media mentions are not just about your brand. They can include what people say about your competitors or important feedback about your product.

Tracking social media mentions is key for knowing where your brand stands in the media and helps in making smart decisions for your business.

Benefits of tracking media mentions:

• Brand awareness monitoring
• Reputation management
• Competitor analysis
• Audience insight
• Crisis management
• Influencer identification
• Market trend analysis
• Access to clients feedback

How to track media mentions?

There are two ways of tracking media mentions. You can try to do that manually, use Google Alerts, or use external social media monitoring tools.

So, which is the best solution for you?

01 Manual tracking

Social media mentions can be tracked within the apps by counting the notifications.

But that’s extremely time-consuming and doesn’t give you much information about your overall brand awareness.

You’ll have no idea about what’s being said about your brand on forums, podcasts, and many more.

And imagine someone wanted to share feedback but made a typo and didn’t tag you – you won’t notice that, too.

Lucky us, there are tools that can do that hard work for us.

For example, Brand24 can track online mentions (even those not tagged directly). This is what an untagged mention looks like in the dashboard:

And that’s the typo in a mention that Brand24 found:

02 Google Alerts

This is a popular choice for tracking media mentions, especially if the company has limited budgets. This free media mentions tool is attractive due to its simplicity.

Sadly, it has many limitations.

The main problem is the lack of coverage. You might only see a fraction of the conversations about your brand as the tool doesn’t have the ability to search all platforms.

This leads to a lack of context and detail in the data gathered.

Plus, people admit they find it inconsistent in capturing mentions. Many relevant discussions and references might slip through unnoticed, leaving gaps in your monitoring.

In the fast-paced world of media and public relations, receiving delayed notifications can mean missing out on critical opportunities to engage or respond to evolving conversations around your brand.

As a result, after trying out a free solution like Google Alerts, many PR professionals and businesses ultimately turn to more sophisticated solutions.

03 Using a media monitoring tool

Media monitoring tools like Brand24 offer a comprehensive way to track media mentions across a wide range of platforms. They provide a broader and more detailed view of a brand’s online presence.

Brand24 tracks a variety of sources:

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

It also covers an array of social platforms:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Pinterest
• TikTok
• Twitch

The tool only collects public mentions, so you won’t see mentions from private groups or profiles, but it still covers a lot.

You can easily filter and sort these mentions on its dashboard by source, sentiment, and more.

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

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 as you can quickly find out about potential problems.

The tool also lets you compare different times or even check out what competitors are doing. This is helpful for seeing how your brand is doing over a given period of time or compared to others.

Benefits of tracking mentions using advanced media monitoring tool:

• Find mentions across various platforms, including social media
• Get sentiment analysis
• Know mentions media reach
• Keep tabs on competitors’ media presence and strategies
• Identify emerging trends relevant to your brand or industry
• Quickly detect potential crises
• Find key influencers and opinion leaders in your sector
• Get AI conclusions about your brand visibility

How to analyze media mentions to gain insights?

Analyzing media mentions is much easier with the right tool, and Brand24 does just that.

It uses smart features to help you understand your brand’s mentions quickly.

Let’s talk about AI Insights and Metrics Analysis.

These features automatically look through your mentions and give you the most important points. This means you get important information without having to go through those numbers yourself.

There’s also something really cool in Brand24 called AI Brand Assistant.

You can ask questions about your project, and it gives you answers using your own data. This makes sure you get useful and correct information.

With Brand24, you save time and get straight to the conclusions you need to make smart decisions about your brand.

Conclusion

Tracking media mentions is crucial for understanding your brand’s presence and impact.

For small brands, social media apps might suffice, but for brands with more mentions (over 1k per month) – I recommend advanced monitoring tools.

These tools automate collection and analysis, providing a more comprehensive overview.

Final Thoughts:

1. Smaller brands can start tracking social media mentions in apps but should consider advanced tools as they grow.
2. Advanced tools offer a broader view, catching mentions across various platforms, not just social media.
3. Tools like Brand24 save time and provide features like sentiment analysis, competitive analysis, and trend detection.

Want to try media mention tracking? Start with the Brand24 trial and improve your marketing.