4 free PR tools to track brand mentions on social media and the web

Industry: Press Release Tips

(PRUnderground) October 21st, 2013

topsy

A look at Topsy monitoring

These days your business and brand (or even you as an individual) can show up all over the internet – on Social Media, on Websites, in Search Engines. We have compiled 4 free web services to track your marketing and PR efforts on the web, as well as monitor when and where you are mentioned by others.

Every PR guru, marketing expert, and business manager should be aware of these valuable tools:

  • Mention: Mention lets you put in keywords (your brand or name, or your competition for example) and it tracks it across the web, including social media and forums. It is particularly good for monitoring Twitter, and lets you react right from the interface. The free plan lets you track up to 250 mentions per month and you can have them sent to you by email as they find them (https://en.mention.net/)
  • Google Alerts: Setting Google Alerts is an essential duty of any PR pro or marketer. It’s free, and you can again track your brand mentions, or your competition, on the web wherever they show up. (https://www.google.com/alerts)
  • Topsy: The free Topsy monitoring tool is like a search engine for your keywords. Put in your brand and see where it shows up on social media over the last day, week, 30 days, or all time. (https://topsy.com)
  • SocialMention: SocialMention is another social media search engine, where you can put in your brand name and see where it has been mentioned in social media (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc). They also rank your brand on social media brand strength, positive versus negative sentiment, a passion percentage which looks at repeat ‘mentioners’ of your brand, and they rank the social media reach of your brand. They also track the top users mentioning your brand. The measurements are interesting, but not without their limitations. (https://socialmention.com)

None of these 4 tools are perfect, as they do leave out many website and some social media mentions (especially any on sites or forums which require logins). There are of course paid tools which are more robust solutions, but these four are a great free starting point to monitor your brand and your competition.

What are your free favorite monitoring tools? Tweet us at @prunderground

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