Channels
How to monitor mentions on social media
Catch every mention of your brand across Reddit, X, forums and the web using free alerts. Which mentions to chase, which to ignore, and what to do with each.
- 3 August 2026
- Free to read
- No signup
How do I monitor mentions on social media?
Monitor mentions by watching three things: your brand name and its misspellings, your bare domain, and your competitors' names. Free alerts — F5Bot for forums, Google Alerts for indexed pages, native saved searches for X — catch most of it within minutes to hours. Untagged mentions matter more than tagged ones, because nobody tags you when they're asking whether you're any good.
Last updated 3 August 2026
| Place | How to catch it | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Reddit, Hacker News | F5Bot email alerts | Free |
| X / Twitter | Saved keyword search | Free |
| Blogs, news, indexed pages | Google Alerts | Free |
| Manual weekly keyword search | Free | |
| Instagram, TikTok | Paid platform or manual check | $30+/mo |
| Review sites | Native review notifications | Free |
Do this
The steps, in order.
- Step 1
Cover untagged mentions first
Native notifications only fire when someone tags you. Most conversations about you never tag you. Keyword alerts on your plain brand name and domain are the entire point of monitoring.
- Step 2
Add the ways people get your name wrong
Spaced, hyphenated, misspelt, and your domain without the extension. For a two-word brand this typically doubles the mentions you catch, and the missed ones are disproportionately buying questions.
- Step 3
Watch competitors for switchers
"Alternative to [competitor]", "[competitor] cancel", "[competitor] pricing". These are people already shopping. A specific, honest reply that admits where the competitor wins converts better than a pitch.
- Step 4
Route everything to one place
Alerts into a single email folder or Slack channel. Two people watching two systems means duplicated replies and missed threads. One queue, one owner, one daily pass.
- Step 5
Close the loop on the ones that matter
Anything that turned into a conversation goes in your CRM or a simple sheet with the link. Otherwise you lose the thread, and the person who replied in week one has no idea what happened in week three.
Worth knowing
The bits people get wrong.
Reddit and forum mentions are the highest-value catch for most software and service businesses. They rank in search for years, so a good reply keeps working long after the thread goes quiet — unlike a post on a feed, which is dead in 48 hours.
Alert latency differs by source. Forum alerts arrive in minutes, indexed-page alerts can take a day or more, and Instagram and TikTok have no free option at all. Set your reply expectations per channel rather than promising a blanket response time.
If mentions are near zero, monitoring is not broken — you do not have enough audience yet. The fix is publishing and outreach, not a better tool.
Questions
Follow-up questions.
Do I need to monitor every network?
No. Monitor the two or three where your customers already talk. For B2B software that's usually Reddit, X and LinkedIn; for consumer and local it's Instagram, TikTok and review sites.
How do I catch mentions that don't tag me?
Keyword alerts, not notifications. F5Bot and Google Alerts both search plain text, which is where the untagged mentions live.
Is it worth monitoring competitor names?
Yes — it's usually the single highest-intent source of mentions, because people complaining about or shopping away from a competitor are actively looking for a replacement.
Elsewhere on gtm.help
Keep exploring.
Free marketing tools
Calculators and generators that run without a signup.
BrowseGrowth playbooks
Step-by-step plans by industry and goal.
BrowseTool guides
What to use, what it costs, when it earns its keep.
BrowseTool comparisons
Head-to-head picks for the calls people get stuck on.
BrowseMarketing checklists
Task lists by business type and competitive situation.
BrowseGet started
Want this answered for your business?
Paste your URL and you'll get a ranked plan, costed in hours and dollars, in about a minute.