As a brand, it’s vital that you keep an eye on your target audience.
What your target audience says about your brand is something you must acknowledge, as well as address and manage. These are known as “brand mentions” and they can be identified and tracked with various brand monitoring tools.
This article will cover everything you need to know about them, including the 12 best tools available, paid and free.
Ready? Let’s get into it.
What Are Brand Monitoring Tools?
Brand monitoring tools let you track the various mentions of your brand across the internet and social media. They’ll let you know more about your target audience, competitors, and market.
Having access to a brand monitoring tool is vital because it allows you to keep up-to-date on any potential crises. You’ll be able to stay ahead of them, before they become too large to deal with. You can also address and maintain your organization’s online reputation.
Best Brand Monitoring Tools You Should Know
Below, we’ve listed the 12 best brand monitoring tools you should know about in 2021.
ReviewBot
ReviewBot is a real-time brand monitoring tool that helps you keep track of what your customers are saying. It’s used by well known brands like Microsoft, TED, CBS, Sony, Foursquare, and Jet.
It works by scanning your brand’s reviews on platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, Amazon, and the Apple/Mac stores. Everything your target audience and customers say about you will be sent to you in a report.
You can also easily translate reviews in other languages, as well as easy social sharing.
There are also features that allow you to track your competitors, keeping an eye out for any mention of you.
ReviewBot also integrates with the following 6 different platforms:
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- Zendesk
- Trello
The only downside is that it’s not free. It is however very cheap compared to other brand monitoring options available. There are 2 plans:
- A $5 per month “Basic” plan
- A $10 per month “Pro” plan
There’s also a free 14 day trial so you can test it out first before you commit to any form of payment.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free, easy to use brand monitoring tool that’ll help you track mentions of your brand online.
By entering any keyword you want, you can monitor the activity of it online. When an individual uses the keyword, you’ll be sent an email informing you about the brand mention.
The downside to Google Alerts is that it isn’t particularly advanced — there’s no robust analytics feature. You’re not going to receive any extensive reports, nor does it track social media activity. Despite all of this, it still has value due to it being free.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a premium brand monitoring tool that gives you everything you need to understand those talking about your brand. Unlike Google Alerts it’s a paid tool that offers multiple different pricing plans. It’s one of the most expensive brand monitoring tools out there.
What’s great about Brandwatch? Well, it provides you with extensive historical data, backed by a powerful machine learning algorithm. What this achieves is that the data you get is:
- Extremely high quality
- Indepth
- Customizable through segmentation
The machine learning algorithm will make it easy for you to create your ideal customer profiles, based on the data you receive.
Brandwatch also has a robust reporting platform that provides real-time updates and reports. You don’t have to wait to look and analyze the data — you can do it anytime you want.
Unlike Google Alerts, this tool allows you to monitor activity on social media. The social listening features are robust, identifying and analyzing any and all mentions of your brand.
The major downside to Brandwatch is that it’s very expensive — it’s ideally used by large enterprise sized businesses. It’s also more confusing to use, requiring a steeper learning curve, due to it’s technicality.
Buzzsumo
Although BuzzSumo isn’t specifically a brand monitoring tool, it can — and is — absolutely be used as one. The tool offers brand monitoring services that’ll let you keep an eye out for mentions of your brand.
Whether your brand is being mentioned on the internet, within blogs, comments, or social media, Buzzsumo has got you covered. Some brand monitoring features include:
- Keyword alerts
- Domain alerts
- Author alerts
- Link alerts
With these features you can track all the mentions of your brand all over the internet and social media. You can also keep a good watch on other mentions, important and related to your brand.
The downside to Buzzsumo is that — because it’s not solely a brand monitoring tool — it is rather expensive. The cheapest plan is $99 per month, which makes sense because of its many uses. If you’re looking for a budget option on your list, this probably isn’t it.
Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring tool that helps you monitor your brand, growing your reputation.
With the tool you can identify brand mentions across both the various social media platforms, as well as the web. By simply entering a keyword, you’ll be fed results from all over, giving you a chance to have a say. This makes it ideal for both crisis and online reputation management.
Email notifications can be set up as well, giving you the heads up when new mentions occur. Each result will include a “sentiment analysis,” which tells you if it’s good or bad.
There are also features that allow you to track competitors, as well as identify influencers and top mentioners.
Mentionlytics is a paid tool, with the lowest plan coming in at $99 per month. There are also much larger plans — the most expensive is $450 per month. This tool is out of the price range for a lot of smaller sized businesses and solo entrepreneurs.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO suite that provides a variety of solutions for individuals looking to grow their website’s traffic. Like Buzzsumo, it’s not specifically a brand monitoring tool, but some of its features allow you to use it as one.
The tool allows you to identify and follow backlinks directed to your website. These are individuals going out of their way to link and reference you. They no doubt will have something to say about you.
You can also keep track of specified keywords and uncover content surrounding it with the content explorer.
Because Ahrefs isn’t solely a brand monitoring tool, it’s rather expensive. The cheapest plan comes in at $99 per month, with the highest being $999 per month. If you’re looking for a simple, cheap brand monitoring tool this probably isn’t the best option.
BrandMentions
BrandMentions is a brand monitoring that searches all areas of the internet and social media to find your mentions. With it, you’ll be able to engage your audience, acquire and retain customers, and improve your brand’s reputation.
The tool searches on both social media and the web to find all the mentions about your brand. Real-time alerts are sent to you when new mentions occur, ensuring you respond quickly. Each mention comes with a sentiment analysis, identifying whether it was positive or negative.
With the cheapest plan being $99 per month, this is a pricey tool, not suited to everyone. It’s more suited to larger small businesses, as well as medium and enterprise ones. The most expensive plan comes in at $499 per month.
If you’re a solo entrepreneur or smaller sized small business, this might be out of your price range.
Mention
Mention is a brand monitoring tool that enables you to monitor the web and social media for mentions. With it, you can identify important conversations, uncovering and analyzing trends.
The tool crawls online forums, news websites, blogs, as well as social media platforms to find brand mentions. Audience insights will allow you to better understand your audience.
You can also monitor the activity of your competition, keeping an eye on what they’re doing. If they mention your brand, you’ll become aware of it.
Although Mention has a free plan, it’s limited to 1,000 mentions per month. This might not be enough for some individuals who operate on a larger scale. The smallest paid plan is $25 per month, which is very affordable, but there are cheaper options available.
Falcon
Falcon is a social media marketing platform that can be used as a brand monitoring tool. The social listening, customer engagement, and audience management features allow you to do this.
The tool will scan all across the major social media platforms, searching and identifying all mentions of your brand. They can be filtered by sentiment analysis, making it easy for you to sort through and prioritize them.
Because Falcon is not solely a brand monitoring tool, it naturally is more expensive than other options. The smallest, cheapest plan is $129 per month, which makes the tool not accessible for lots of small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.
It’s also a social media tool, so you can’t use it to find brand mentions on the web.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that can be used as a brand monitoring tool.
Using the tool, you can target specific keywords, monitoring the conversions on your social channels. When that phrase is used, you’ll be notified about it.
Given that Hootsuite is primarily a social media management tool, it’s restricted to just social media. That means you can’t use it to find brand mentions outside of the social platforms it’s used for. You’re not going to be able to find stuff like blog posts or news articles about you.
It’s also not a free tool, starting at $19 per month.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an “all-in-one” social media management platform that you can use to track brand mentions with.
With the tool you are able to scour various social media platforms, uncovering the conversations about your brand. You’ll be able to address any and all concerns, and strengthen your reputation on social media.
Other useful brand monitoring features include sentiment analysis, competitor tracking, and influencer recognition.
The downside to Sprout Social is that it’s only a social media tool, which means no web for brand mention monitoring. You’re not going to be able to find articles and blog posts talking about you outside of social media.
It’s also a more expensive option, as it’s not just for brand monitoring. It’s an entire social media management suite, which is why the cheapest plan costs $99 per month. This price makes the tool not suitable for smaller sized small businesses and solo entrepreneurs.
Brand24
Brand24 is a brand monitoring tool that searches all over the internet and social media to uncover brand mentions. It makes activities like online reputation management and competitive analysis easy.
The tool works by scanning various sources such as social media, forums, blogs, news sites, and review sites. Brand mentions and other important things are identified and tracked. You’ll receive a detailed report, including a sentiment analysis.
Unfortunately Brand24 isn’t free — the cheapest paid plan is $49 per month. For smaller small businesses and solo entrepreneurs this might be too expensive a solution.
Brand Monitoring FAQ
Got some questions regarding brand monitoring? Don’t worry — we’ve put together an FAQ that should help you understand the topic better.
What Is Brand Monitoring?
Brand monitoring is a business process involving the tracking of “brand mentions.” These are people talking about or referencing your brand on various channels, such as social media or the internet.
Monitoring your brand mentions is important because it helps you better understand your target audience, competitors, and market. With brand monitoring, you’ll be able to stay ahead of any potential crises. You’ll also ensure the perception of your organization is sound.
How do you monitor brand performance?
Due to the highly contextual and personal nature, brand performance can be hard to measure. What’s ideal for one brand might not be for another. This is significantly more true when you consider the unique target audiences for various different industries.
So, how do you monitor brand performance then? Well, it typically involves tracking the following:
- Audience growth
- Audience engagement
- Brand awareness, knowledge, and penetration
- Sales
Keeping a track of these metrics will give you a good idea on how your brand is performing. If they have improved then most likely your brand has too.
How do I check my brand mentions?
Brand mentions can be checked with any of the brand monitoring tools outlined in this article. Most are paid solutions, but are free ones you can use. They’ll be more limited in functionality and features, but they can get the job done.
If you’re looking for free ways to find mentions of your brand, here are some options you can utilize:
- Use Google search commands: By using Google search commands, you can identify brand mentions on the internet and on social media. You can also discover who’s linking to you with the “link:” command.
- Use Google Alert: The Google Alert tool will send you an email whenever someone uses the keyword you specify online. For instance, this might be a new blog post, news article, or even page.
- Use on-site social media tools: Using on-site social media tools like Instagram Insights or Facebook Analytics will help you identify and understand various brand mentions.
Conclusion
In this article we covered the best brand monitoring tools you should use in 2021. With over 12 different options outlined — paid and free — there should be a solution available for your needs.
Brand monitoring is essential as it helps you identify and understand how people are mentioning your business.
Got any questions? Leave a comment below