Within a Basic Alert, you can build search queries using the required, optional, and excluded keyword boxes. These keyword boxes in your Basic Alert work together to monitor topics on the web and social media.
In this article, we are going to teach you the basic principles of these keyword boxes so you can begin creating your search queries with ease. Here are the topics you will learn about:
Introduction to Keyword Search Boxes (Tutorial Video)
📖 In a Basic Alert, you can monitor the web with keyword searches and monitored pages. In this article, you will primarily learn about keyword searches. If you would like to learn more about monitored pages, head to this article: Monitored Pages in Alerts
Keyword Monitoring in the Basic Alert
In your Mention Alerts, you will primarily use keyword monitoring to monitor conversations online. During Alert creation, you will be asked to add keywords or phrases to your search boxes. Mention will begin monitoring the web and social media and will fetch content that matches the search query you've built using your keywords.
🧠 Definitions:
Keyword Monitoring: the method of monitoring online content using text words or phrases.
Search Query: the combination of keywords in your Alert that Mention will monitor online. Along with keywords, your search query is comprised of filters such as language, countries, and sources. All of these components work together to monitor the specific content you want to see.
For the Basic Alert, Mention offers an easy-to-use interface comprised of three search boxes that will help you build search queries:
Here is a breakdown of these boxes:
Required Keywords: every text or phrase in this box has to appear in the publication in order for Mention to fetch the post into your Feed. If a post does not utilize all of the keywords from this box, the post will be ignored.
Optional Keywords: the second box is allows you to monitor multiple topics in your search query. Mention only needs to find one of the words or phrases from this box in order to fetch a publication.
Excluded Keywords: Mention will exclude any posts that use the keywords from the third box.
⚙️ With the Basic Alert, you can add up to 5 keywords for each search boxes. This means that you can build a query with up to 15 keywords in total.
In the next section, we will teach you how to structure new alerts using these search boxes!
Introduction to Alert Creation : Search Keyword Boxes
Now that you have a brief background on keyword searches within the Basic Alert, you can begin creating your first alerts. In this video, we are going to teach you how to organize your search keywords and apply filters for your monitoring:
💡 Helpful Reminders:
As mentioned in the video, here are some useful tips when for your next search query:
Please try to limit the number of required keywords to ensure that your search query is broad enough to capture a wide range of data.
Feel free to add any common misspellings of your keywords in the optional keyword section especially if you are conducting social media monitoring.
Please add a hash-tagged keyword to the alert if you are monitoring Instagram.
Don't forget to add social media or review website URLs to your Monitored Pages tab to ensure that you capture content from those channels.
⚙️ Alert Writing Rules:
When creating your search queries, please remember these writing rules:
You can type individual words or phrases in your keyword search box.
The search boxes are space-sensitive.
Mention Alerts will take into account accents used in your text such as "Perú"
Mention is not case-sensitive.
For more information, check this article: Keyword Search Rules
Search Query Examples - Best Practices & Tips
In this section, we are going to look at a few search query examples and share some best practices for your new alerts.
Below, you will find some search queries that are built in different ways. We encourage you to look at the search query first and try to see if you can understand what the query is going to monitor. Once you've reviewed the query, click on the drop-down menu to view the answer!
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Example 1:
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This search query is monitoring multiple topics:
Samsung AND Tablet when the terms Fridge and TV are not present in a post.
Samsung AND Watch when the terms Fridge and TV are not present in a post.
This user is interested in monitoring specific Samsung products and created their search to fetch only content related to their tablets and watch.
If they wanted to go a step further, they could even add washers, microwaves, or other products to their list of excluded terms that they do not want to see.
We wouldn't recommend adding 'phones' to their excluded keyword list because they could miss some important mentions.
💡Mention Tip - Brand Monitoring
If you're monitoring a well-known brand, we recommend adding it to your required keyword box and using the optional keyword box to specify the key topics you want to monitor.
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Example 2:
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This search query is monitoring a specific topic and it's trying to avoid spelling errors:
FedEx AND EV
Fedx AND EV
FDX AND EV
This user is primarily interested in monitoring the topic of FedEx EVs (electronic vehicles). To ensure that they fetch relevant data, they decided to include the common misspellings of FedEx in their query.
The optional keyword box is a great area to write alternative spellings or misspellings of the key topics you are monitoring. If you decide to create your alert with misspellings, please make sure to add some required and excluded keywords to your alert so you do not fetch too much irrelevant data.
💡 Mention Tip - Queries in Social Media
Social Media platforms are a casual space where misspellings of brands or products can often occur. The example that you see above is a good way to fetch the content that you want with misspellings taken into account.
Since the search is a bit broad, you might fetch a lot of data from multiple sources around the world. Due to this, we also recommend adjusting your sources, language filters, and country filters so you can hone in on the data you want without consuming too much quota.
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Example 3:
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This search query is a very specific search that might not fetch the data you're looking for:
(McDonalds AND Burger King AND Five Guys AND Shake Shack AND Arby's) when 'best french fries' is mentioned.
(McDonalds AND Burger King AND Five Guys AND Shake Shack AND Arby's) when 'best fries' is mentioned.
On top of this, Mention won't fetch posts that use the word burgers or soda.
As you can see, this query is a bit too specific and will probably not fetch any data. It seems that this user wanted to gauge public opinion on the best fries across multiple fast food restaurants.
If you run into a similar issue, consider broadening your alert with these methods:
Lower the number of required keywords
Adjust the keywords you are excluding
Consider placing some keywords in the optional box instead of required.
For more assistance on your queries, contact [email protected]!
💡 Mention Tip - Create Tag Folders for Key Conversations
Tag Folders can be used to automatically fetch mentions with specific words or phrases from your Feed. You can utilize tag folders as an extension of your monitoring especially if you have created a broad search query in your alert.
With a broad search query, you can capture the general conversations around the topics you are monitoring. As an added resources, you can use automatic tag folders to hone in on specific conversations within the alert!
For the example above, a tag folder could be used to monitor the best fries from multiple fast food restaurants. To learn about Tags, check out this article: Organize your mentions with Tags
Thank you! We hope that this article has shown you the flexibility of your search boxes within the Basic Alert. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]