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Forget Google Alerts, Mention is a much better free social media monitoring tool
For the last month I have been testing a new social media monitoring tool called Mention. I had been using Google Alerts and SocialMention (as well as Traackr and Topsy) but have found them to be a little unreliable and not as accurate or fast as I would like. Then I found Mention - Wow! what a difference!! This is a 'must have' addition to your social recruiting toolbox!
Before I go on to explain why you have to sign up for Mention, I just want to check - you do monitor your name, website address (URL), blog name, brand name your specific keywords or your social media profile names don't you?
For those of you that are doing this then this gold star is for you. Why not take it to the next stage now and look at monitoring your competitors, industry keywords, buzzwords etc.
For those of you that don't monitor anything >>> KAPOW<<< Why the hell not? Why wouldn't you want to know what is being said about you online - good or bad.
Just to give you an example; yesterday Mention picked up that one of my blog posts had been completely copied onto a job board website in Asia without my permission. It has now been resolved very amicably, but I would never have known otherwise.
So onto Mention.
As I said I have been using Mention for the month's free trial and have to say it is brilliant. You can use Mention’s web app on a PC, MAC and across mobile devices (the iOS version is brilliant), and it allows users to share and react to their mentions. The iPhone app with the push notifications and the email alerts that come through in real time have been very fast and accurate so far.
It is really easy to use and then subsequently adjust when the mentions start coming through.
Like other social media monitoring tools Mention tracks a number of sources: Web, Facebook, Twitter, News, Blogs, Videos, Forums and Images. You can turn off these as you choose - I have Twitter turned off as I have already said.
And if you are wondering what these alerts look like:
They have a free version with 3 alerts and up to 500 mentions a month - more than enough for most people (especially if you turn off the Twitter monitoring - you do that on Hootsuite or Tweetdeck anyway, don't you?) And the next price is just $19.99 a month for unlimited alerts and 50,000 mentions. Very reasonably priced.
This ia MUST HAVE social recruiting tool. Off you go and sign up to Mention now and start finding out what people are saying about you!
[Just for reference, I have no affiliation to this product or any other I choose to share here on SironaSays. I share them with you because they are great products!]
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Comments 9
Mike Taylor
Andy
Great find!
I have been looking for something better than Google Alerts for a while now.
Thanks!
Mike Taylor
Julie Hong
Hi Andy, something tells me you will be pleasantly surprised of the results that Talkwalker Alerts can bring to you - it is a freshly launched service that is genuinely free (for unlimited results), and which can retrieve more and faster alerts than Google does.
David Hall
Hi Andy
Do you know if it’s possible to create RSS Feeds from each query? This is a deal breaker feature for me. Google Alerts for all its shortcomings has this covered, does Mention?
Kindest Regards
David
Andy Headworth
David,
I haven’t looked at the RSS feeds (strangely for me!) as I have push notifications coming through my iOS devices. They work so well I hadn’t even thought about RSS.
Just for reference, my RSS alerts on my Google Alerts actually stopped working a few months ago for no reason. I had to reset email alerts again to get any notifications through!
Give this a try - well worth the comparison.
Andy
Andy Headworth
I wasn’t aware of your product, but I will set up some alerts next week and test it for comparison. Thanks for sharing it with me.
David Hall
Hi Andy
Thanks for the reply. I tend to use, for the most part anyway, SproutSocial. The feed reader imports my GoogleReader (that’s another impending issue) feeds which includes all the different folders which are fed by various blog subscriptions etc and loads, too many to count, Google Alerts (mainly industry specific buzzwords). They all form part of my content discover strategy and it comes together nicely in Sprout. Mention would be making a powerful case for itself if it generated RSS feeds because it potentially opens up the use case I’m talking about, which is, admittedly, probably not quite the same as yours. One way or another the last thing I’m looking for is “push notifications” (unless it can be enabled on a case by case basis then it’s something I might use very selectively).
Kindest Regards
David
Andy Headworth
David,
I am a huge RSS consumer for the sa,e reason as you, content discovery. I use Feeddler via my iPad which works really well. Also testing Hootsuite on this but only with a few feeds.
I agree on the Mention RSS point for content discovery, and maybe that will change.
One thing is for sure, there is no one platform that does everything we need currently. I am happy to use 3 or 4 specific products for specific (and well done) tasks until the ‘magic’ platform appears. As with everything in the online/social world - it is the personalisation of needs that is the power and way forward.
David Hall
Thanks Andy. Tell me about it, I’d hate to even begin to list the number of tools I’m using but if Mention allowed an RSS export and are half as good at everything else as so many people say then they could count on my monthly subscription. Alas though I don’t see anything on their Website about RSS so, for the moment at least, I’ll have to assume it’s not supported. I will be keeping an eye out though.
Ian Webster
Wow! I’ve been comparing the results of Mention with Google Alerts for the past week and it (Mention) wins hands down. It’s virtually real-time and the web interface at mention.net is superb. I wonder where it gets its data from?