HOW TO TRACK BRAND MENTIONS FOR FREE
- Virginia Buff
- Mar 11, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 20
The tools, tricks of the trade, and approaches professionals take for brand monitoring on a budget.
Brand monitoring is the process of tracking brand mentions across social media and other online sources. There are many benefits to brand monitoring. It can give brands a real-time look into public opinion, actionable insight after analyzing mentions, and provide useful content to share on social media to help promote the brand. However not all brand mentions are positive. Tracking these brand mentions can also be a vital part of reputation management. Giving your brand good PR!
Most marketers can use their social media management tools to track brand mentions, but what about brand mentions outside of social media? Such as community forums, blogs, news articles/newsletters, reviews/testimonials, podcasts, tv & radio interviews, etc. So how does one track these mentions without having a budget for another month by month software?
THE BIG TWO...
At first glance the Google results for "free brand monitoring tools" seem very fruitful. However, after further investigation, it becomes quickly obvious that all of them are fake "free trials" that later must be paid for...All of them except for two, Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts (not to be confused with Talkwalker). Many pass over these options because they come off as limiting and/or inconsistent. However, if used collaboratively with these tricks they can be very rewarding! Especially when the other option is to pay someone else handsomely for their fruit. So what are the trade secrets to successfully picking your own fruit? Each paragraph below is broken down into different ideas that utilizes these free tools of the trade.
GENERAL TRICKS OF THE TRADE
Setup multiple alerts across both platforms
Search/track different variations of your brand's name. Some companies have a few variations of their brand's name. Example: abccompany vs abccompany partners Also people/clients interpret company names different, whether it's the legal name or not. For example some might assume its ABC Company vs abccompany. So include alerts with & without spaces, an s at the end etc. This broadens the search for the Brand's name that might have other wise been limited.
Set up alerts with Co-workers first and last name. This is especially good for finding company mentions like interviews or awards presented to coworker's outstanding achievements.
If your company sells a product(s) with a unique name then try setting up an alert for that product(s) TIP: Have multiple co-workers setup similar alerts so if there are any inconsistencies then this widens the net to catch the brand mentions.
HOW TO SETUP GOOGLE ALERTS & GOOGLE TRICKS
Setting up & Editing Google Alerts:
Create an alert
Go to Google Alerts.
In the box at the top, enter a topic you want to follow.
To change your settings, click Show options. You can change:
How often you get notifications
The types of sites you’ll see
Your language
The part of the world you want info from
How many results you want to see
What accounts get the alert
Click Create Alert. You’ll get emails whenever we find matching search results.
Edit an alert
Go to Google Alerts.
Next to an alert, click Edit .
If you don’t see any options, click Show options.
Make your changes.
Click Update Alert.
To change how you get alerts, click Settings check the options you want and click Save.
Delete an alert
Go to Google Alerts.
Next to the alert you want to remove, click Delete .
Optional: You can also delete an alert by clicking Unsubscribe at the bottom of an alert email.
BOOLEAN & OPERATOR COMMANDS THAT IMPROVE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS
Try using Boolean and operator commands in the Google search bar to improve the search results. You may already use these but didn't know they had a name. Some of examples of these are below...
If you want an exact search and no variations then put your search into quotation marks. Example: "abccompany"
if you want to search abccompany but want to exclude your company's website then add a -site: Example: -site:abccompany.com
Using AND will search strongly connected ideas and phrases. Example: brownies AND ice cream
These websites further explain different Booleans and Operators:
HOW TO SETUP TALKWALKER ALERTS & TRICKS FOR TALKWALKER
Note: Talkerwalker is a paid for monitoring software BUT you can setup FREE News alerts and never have to pay. You only have to pay if you want the full service of Talkwalker!
How to setup Talkwalker Alerts
Click on this link then click on the pink button (left side of screen) that reads create an alert (might have to create a free account)
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF TALKWALKER ALERTS
To get the best results from your alerts, you need to define your keywords accurately. If you are just starting out, you will need to test your search queries and evaluate your results regularly. Some keywords are universal and you must track them irrespective of your industry. In this section, I have listed some of the most common topics and keywords that you can target.
This can also be applied to Google Alerts.
YOUR COMPANY NAME
Your company name
Your company tagline
Your company name AND your products
Your company AND news
Common misspellings of your company name
YOUR COMPETITORS
Your competitor’s name AND news
Your competitor’s name AND review
Your competitor’s name AND product name
YOUR INDUSTRY
Your industry AND updates
Your industry AND (merger OR acquisitions)
Your industry AND IPO
Your industry AND launch
Your industry AND patent
Your industry AND “government policy”
NEGATIVE CUSTOMER REVIEWS
Your brand AND hate
Your brand AND broken
Your brand AND “too expensive”
Your brand AND “bad service”
Your brand AND terrible
Your brand AND awful
LINK BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES
Topic AND “ultimate guide”
Topic AND (tips OR tricks)
Topic AND “how to”
As you explore and learn, you will discover new keywords and search phrases. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try different combinations and see what works.
USE BOOLEANS
Use Boolean operators to make your searches more specific and remove irrelevant results. To get started, here are the three most common Boolean operators:
Use AND to combine 2 or more keywords
Use AND NOT to exclude keywords
Use OR to receive results that include either of the keywords
Use parenthesis () to make complex searches
AVOID GENERIC KEYWORDS
If you have a generic brand name like Target or Apple, add additional keywords to your search query. Instead of creating an alert “Target”, create a search query that says Target AND (retail OR groceries).
This is applicable for industry keywords as well.
CREATE ALERTS FOR PHRASES
If you want to set an alert for an exact phrase, don't forget to enclose them in quotation marks. Quotes will search for an exact string of characters and remove all irrelevant results.
EXCLUDE KEYWORDS & SITES
Similar to “AND NOT”, you can use the minus symbol (-) to exclude keywords from your results. For example, if you want to receive alerts for Mercedes but not trucks, your search query can be: Mercedes -trucks.
If you want to exclude results from a specific website or your own webpage, you can use the following search query:
Keyword -site:”website.com”
TRACK SPECIFIC WEBSITES
If you want to get notified every time a specific website writes about a certain topic, use the site specific search. Here is how it works - “your keyword” site:”The name of the website in quotes”.
Example: SEO site:”https://neilpatel.com”
SETUP A COMPANY EMAIL WHERE CONTACTS CAN SEND BRAND MENTIONS
This last trick is separate from the above tools but is still a very useful tactic. It comes from Martha Silver, Freelance Communications Consultant, Woodfield Communications Group:
Get an easy-to-remember email address like: interviewed@abccompany.com Ask your company leaders to champion sending an email as soon as they finish an interview to this email address with the name of the publication and when they expect publication. You won't capture everyone this way, but with enough repeat requests and sharing the articles somewhere internally or via social media (if appropriate), it will become a habit over time.
This tactic has several valuable benefits:
-No/low cost, depending on the email platform.
-Sharing the media coverage internally helps employees learn what messaging is being promoted. It also reminds everyone to send their email when they've been interviewed.
-Capturing when an interview has occurred allows organizations to analyze how effective their spokespeople/subject matter experts are at answering interview questions because they can identify when the interview wasn't used. It may be a red flag identifying employees who could use a bit more media training to make their answers bite-sized and easy for media to use.
MY LAST PIECE OF ADVICE - keep researching and staying up to date on new trends. Technology and applications are constantly changing, including how to track brand mentions. Be prepared to troubleshoot and learn new tools necessary to monitor your brand. Hopefully there will be more free monitoring tools but for now I hope this article has helped.
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