Introduction
Mention is your all-in-one home for social listening, brand monitoring, reporting, and social media management. It helps you track what people say about your brand (and your competitors), understand the “why” behind the conversation, and turn insights into action.
This guide is your starting point. We’ll walk through what social listening is, why it matters for your business, and how each major Mention feature—Alerts, Analytics & Reports, Integrations, Notifications, Settings, and Social Media Management—fits together to support your brand strategy.
Table of Contents
What is Social Listening?
Social listening means tracking online conversations to understand what people say about your brand, products, competitors, or industry. Mention collects this “buzz” from news sites, blogs, forums, and social media so you can:
See trends and spikes in conversation
Understand sentiment (positive, negative, neutral)
Spot key influencers and communities
React quickly to crises or viral moments
By listening to your audience, you can make smarter decisions and strengthen your brand’s reputation over time.
Why it matters for your brand
In e-commerce and beyond, social listening can be a game-changer:
Understand customer needs and preferences by monitoring questions, complaints, and rave reviews.
Track your competitors to see what’s working for them—and where you can stand out.
Discover opportunities for campaigns, product ideas, and partnerships.
Analytics turn all this raw conversation into insight—showing trends, sentiment, reach, and the influencers who might help (or hurt) your brand.
Earned vs. Owned Conversations
Earned vs. Owned Conversations
In Mention, it helps to think in two buckets:
Earned conversations – organic mentions of your brand across the web and social (press, reviews, tweets, blog posts, etc.).
Owned conversations – what happens directly on your channels (your social posts and the reactions they generate).
To evaluate earned conversations, you can:
Create an Alert for your company.
Build a Listening Report on that alert to see volume over time, sentiment, and key influencers.
Use the Influencer Table and Influencer List to dig into who is talking about you and how influential they are.
To evaluate owned conversations, you can:
Create Social Analytics or social performance reports for your Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn profiles.
See how many reactions you get, which posts performed best, and how your audience is growing.
Benchmarking Against Competitors
Benchmarking Against Competitors
You don’t just want to know how you’re doing—you want to know how you compare. With Mention, you can:
Create Alerts for each competitor.
Build comparison or competitive reports (for both listening and social performance) to compare:
Overall volume of mentions
Volume by source (news, forums, social, etc.)
Sentiment across brands
Social audience size and posting frequency
Top-performing posts
This helps you identify your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in the market.
🧭 Alerts: Gather Data
Alerts are the heart of Mention. They define what you monitor and power everything else: your feed, analytics, influencer insights, and reports.
You’ll use Alerts to track:
Your brand and product names
Competitors and industry topics
Campaigns, hashtags, and crisis keywords
Specific websites, review pages, and social accounts
💡 Learn more about creating Alerts:
How to Start Creating an Alert
How to Start Creating an Alert
1. Start with a clear goal
Before you create an Alert, decide what you want to monitor and why. For example:
“Monitor mentions of Apple products as computers, laptops, and phones.”
Once the goal is clear, it’s much easier to:
Choose the right keywords
Decide which sources, countries, and languages to include
Avoid wasting quota on irrelevant mentions
2. Build smart keyword searches
Mention fetches data based on the text in your search query. A thoughtful keyword setup is the difference between “useful signal” and “expensive noise.”
3. Include common spellings and misspellings
Your audience won’t always write your brand the same way. Within a single Alert, include:
Common spellings of your brand name
Popular nicknames
Likely misspellings
Singular and plural forms
Example (McDonald’s):
You might monitor:
McDonalds– the standard brand name"Mickey D's"– a popular nickname in the USAMcDo– a common nickname in France, Belgium, and elsewhereMcDnlds– a possible misspelling
This helps Mention capture real-world ways people talk about you.
4. Be careful with special characters
Mention monitors the web and social using both text and special characters you include in searches. Adding characters like #, @, or $ changes what you’re monitoring:
@yourbrandfocuses on handle mentions#yourbrandfocuses on hashtag use
For full guidance, see: Boolean Operators Explained
5. Add supplemental keywords to reduce noise
If you only track your brand name, you might:
Consume your monthly quota too fast
Capture a lot of irrelevant mentions (homonyms, generic terms, etc.)
To help Mention identify your brand correctly, add supporting keywords such as:
Industry terms
Product or service names
Example (Polar Beverages):
"Polar seltzer" OR "Polar drinks" OR "Polar beverages"
Without those extra terms, an alert on “Polar” might pick up mentions about:
The movie
The watch company
The weather
With the additional keywords, Mention understands the focus is Polar Beverages.
6. Manage your quota efficiently
Every time you validate an Alert, the mentions that match your query are subtracted from your monthly quota. That’s why it’s crucial to tune your search carefully.
7. Use filters in the alert creation flow
Below the Keywords tab in your Alert creation page, you’ll find filter tabs that help you pull in only what matters:
Sources & Blocked Websites
Choose specific sources (news, blogs, forums, social networks, review sites).
Blacklist specific URLs you don’t want to track.
Countries & Languages
Target only the countries and languages relevant to your brand.
For brand management, these filters let you:
Reduce unnecessary quota usage
Focus on core regions and channels
Avoid irrelevant or low-value sites
📖 More on filters:
How to Use the Preview to Estimate volume
How to Use the Preview to Estimate volume
The Preview shows an estimate of how many mentions your Alert could receive over 30 days.
If your query is too broad, you’ll see a high volume estimate.
If your query is too narrow, you’ll see a very low estimate.
💡 The Preview takes both your search query and filters into account. As you tweak keywords, sources, countries, and languages, the Preview updates with your new estimate.
How to Blacklist to Cut Noise
How to Blacklist to Cut Noise
Blacklisting is one of the most powerful ways to control volume and relevance. Think about:
Terms you want to exclude
Sites you never want to see
Competitor or unrelated product names
How to blacklist terms and sites depends on your Alert type:
Basic Alert
Use the Excluded Keywords box (up to 5 terms).
Standard Alert
Use the
AND NOToperator to block terms.Use the Preview to see quota impact and click Update Preview after changes.
Advanced Alert
Also use the
AND NOToperator in your Boolean query.Again, use the Preview and Update Preview to refine.
You can also block specific URLs from Mention entirely.
How to Track your Owned Channels with Monitored Pages
How to Track your Owned Channels with Monitored Pages
Alerts aren’t just for keyword monitoring—they can also track specific social and review URLs with Monitored Pages. For brand management, this is key to understanding conversations on your owned channels.
We recommend adding your official pages to your Alerts. Mention can fetch:
Facebook Pages – posts and comments from your brand page
Twitter/X Accounts – tweets, replies, retweets, and @mentions for your account
Instagram Business Accounts – posts from your brand page
Review websites – customer reviews about your products or services
📊 Analytics & Reports: Measure Your Impact
Analytics and Reports turn all your mentions and social activity into insights you can act on. They help you:
Understand brand health at a glance
Dig into specific metrics like sentiment, reach, or influence
Showcase results to your team or clients
Mention offers analytics across the platform:
Mention Dashboard
Metrics inside the Feed
QuickChart
Mention Data Reports & Social Analytics
Influencer Table & Influencer List
Mention Dashboard – your home base
Mention Dashboard – your home base
When you log into Mention, you land on the Dashboard, which, by default, shows an overview of all your Alerts for the past 7 days (you can also view 1 day or 30 days).
The Dashboard includes:
Top area – quantitative metrics
Bottom area – visual graphs
You can treat the Dashboard as your session launchpad:
Click a module to jump straight into the Feed, Analytics, or Social Media Management tools.
Metrics in the Feed
Metrics in the Feed
Inside the Feed, Mention gives you quick context on every single mention:
Sentiment
Positive (green dot)
Negative (red dot)
Neutral (no dot)
Influence Score (0–100)
Shows how popular or impactful a website, page, or profile is.
Helps you prioritize which mentions to handle first.
These micro-insights make it easier to scan your mentions and respond intelligently without reading every article or thread in full.
QuickChart - Build Graphs in Seconds
QuickChart - Build Graphs in Seconds
Quick Chart is a graph creator focused on specific metrics and visualizations. In the composer, you can choose:
Which Alert to analyze
Which metric you care about
How you want to visualize it (lines, bars, clouds, etc.)
Recommended visualizations for brand management:
Sources – See which channels (news, blogs, forums, social) contribute most to your mentions.
Languages / Countries – Understand where people talk about you geographically and linguistically.
Sentiment – Spot potential crises or viral positivity.
Reach Score – Estimate how many people might have seen mentions on specific days.
Influence Score – Identify top-impact sites and social accounts.
Topics & Hashtags – Topic and hashtag clouds to find common themes and new hashtag ideas.
Tags – If you’re using Tags for campaigns, crises, or products, see their breakdown here.
Once mentions start flowing into your Alerts, check QuickChart occasionally to keep an eye on the metrics that matter most to you.
Mention Reports – Data Reports & Social Analytics
Mention Data Reports
Mention Data Reports
Mention Reports are interactive dashboards that bring your metrics together in one place. There are two main types:
Data Reports – Use data directly from your Alerts. You can:
Engage with graphs interactively
Apply filters across your report
Adjust visualizations
Social Analytics – Pull data straight from social networks (Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn) for any connected account or tracked profile.
You can:
Analyze your own channels
Track competitors or partner brands
There are 11 report templates available, including:
Listening Reports
Competitive Reports
Campaign/hashtag reports
Social performance and competitive social reports
With Reports, you and your team can:
Analyze trends around your brand, products, or services.
Build recurring dashboards for quarterly reviews or client updates.
Compare your brand’s sentiment and volume to competitors.
Measure campaign impact and refine future strategies.
Share press hits and coverage lists with stakeholders.
Use social analytics to analyze your own posts and competitor posts.
Export reports in multiple formats.
Company plan: schedule or share dashboards via email with ease.
Once created, a Report updates in real time as new mentions arrive. You can:
Check the dashboard whenever you like
Download the latest version before meetings or presentations
⚙️ During Report creation, you can apply filters (by sentiment, location, source, etc.). These filters apply to all modules in the report, ensuring consistency.
📖 Learn More: Mention Reports Explained
Influencer Table & Influencer List
Influencer Table & Influencer List
The Influencer Dashboard is your discovery hub for people and sites that drive conversation about your keywords.
It has two main parts:
Influencer Table
Lists authors and profiles from the web and Twitter/X using your monitored keywords.
Shows metrics such as influence and reach.
Influencer List
Lets you organize authors into custom lists.
You can also manually add URLs from the web or Twitter/X.
If you have an Alert dedicated to your brand, you can use the Influencer Table and List to:
Find journalists, bloggers, or creators to collaborate with
Track advocates and critics
Organize potential partners for future campaigns
🔌Integrations
Integrations help Mention fit into your existing workflow so insights don’t stay siloed.
Connect Mention to your favorite tools
Mention integrates with tools like Slack, Zapier, and more, so you can:
Send important mentions or spikes directly to Slack channels
Trigger workflows in other tools (e.g., task creation, CRM updates, dashboards) via Zapier
Keep your monitoring insights where your team already spends its time
💡 Explore all integrations: Mention Alert Integrations Explained
🔔 Notifications: Stay in the Loop
Notifications make sure you never miss something important—whether it’s a spike in mentions, a viral post, or a quota warning. Mention offers both in-app and email notifications, and some can also be routed via tools like Slack.
Why notifications matter for brand management
Once your Alerts, analytics, and social management are set up, notifications help you:
Stay ahead of crises
Quickly spot opportunities (e.g., press hits, influencer mentions)
Keep your team aligned on what’s happening right now
Recommended notifications for brand management
Top Mentions
Sent daily or weekly by email.
Includes performance statistics for your Alerts.
Great for getting a quick pulse on brand health at the start of your day or week.
Spike Notifications
Triggered when your Alerts suddenly fetch a large volume of mentions.
Helps you spot emerging crises or viral moments as they happen.
Alert Notifications (team use)
Notify you when Alerts are shared with you.
Warn you when your Mention quota is close to exceeding.
Keep everyone on the same page about major changes.
👥 Settings: Work as a team
Settings are where you configure Mention so it fits your team, your goals, and your tech stack.
Work as a team
In Settings, you can:
Invite teammates to your Mention account
Manage permissions so sensitive Alerts, reports, or social accounts are only visible to the right people
Collaborate on Alerts and Reports so everyone shares the same insights
This makes Mention a central hub for PR, marketing, customer support, and leadership to work together.
Control quota and sources
Settings (together with your Alerts) are where you decide how to use your quota wisely:
Review which Alerts are active and consuming mentions
Ensure your filters, blacklists, and Monitored Pages are aligned with your goals
Adjust if you see quota being used too quickly on low-value data
📅 Social Media Management: Engage with your Audience
Mention has partnered with Agorapulse to help you plan your content, track performance, and manage engagement — all in one place.
Learn what social media management features are available here: 💡 Learn about social media management
🤝 Get Help When You Need It
If you ever get stuck, have questions about your setup, or want help optimizing your strategy, our expert Support team is here for you.
Email: [email protected]
They can help you troubleshoot Alerts, refine queries, interpret analytics, and more.