At present Google Alerts is a well-known, free application which allows you to keep track of keyword mentions on the web – it’s certainly a useful application but there is now a new solution known as ‘Mention’ which is taking the Social Media world by storm.
Mention is quickly becoming one of the best ways to monitor your brand effectively on the web, and so far, via a small team, the company has already managed to produce a web-based app, an iPhone app and a desktop app which can all be used to monitor keywords that are relevant to a particular brand.
How does it work?
You can set up alerts based on keywords that you wish to track, and content related to those keywords is displayed through the Mention application or sent to you via email or social media. Click on any of the items displayed and you can identify additional information which is related to the user and the item.
How can Mention be utilised?
Mention can be used by one person or an entire team of people and it is effective in monitoring and tracking keywords which you can then use to find potential business opportunities and also to build relationships with new people. It can also be extremely helpful during crisis situations, enabling you to respond quickly to situations which could damage your brand.
What are the advantages of Mention?
Although there are many monitoring tools available for the net, the main advantage of Mention is that it is cheap and it has far less limitations. Unlike other tools such as Google Alerts, Mention can provide the functionality to enable people to manage and respond to the alerts they receive across a wide variety of sites.
How do I get started?
Mention provides a free version of its application which sits alongside a very affordable Pro Plan, and it is offered as a free trial for a month. After that, if you do not wish to go ahead, your account will immediately revert to the free plan, meaning you do not have the worry of remembering to cancel anything.
Further benefits
Some of the additional benefits of Mention include being able to share your alerts with other team members and assign tasks to them – when you share an alert with a colleague for the first time an account is automatically created for them. You can also share positive mentions on your Facebook page or on Twitter, or even just send an email to someone. Mention takes information from a broad range of platforms (not just social media) and shows you a detailed breakdown of where your mentions are coming from as well as allowing you to filter the list so you can see mentions from just one particular source if required.
Mention is quickly becoming a very powerful monitoring application on the net, providing easy to use functionality for a reasonable cost. With a free option also available it’s well worth testing it out for your business.
This article was written by Duncan Colman, a digital consultant at OTB Digital in Leeds, UK.
