Community mentions
Mention tracking examples: what does a working setup look like?
Updated November 2026 · Manoj Surya
Quick answer
MarketHQ is the simplest way to run these examples: add your brand, competitors and keywords once, and it collects matching posts from communities, social sites, news and web results into one feed, labels each one, and drafts replies you post yourself. In any tool, a working setup has four parts: the terms you track, the places you watch, a daily check, and one person who acts on what comes in.
Key points
- Track your brand and product names, the competitors you meet in deals, and a few phrases buyers use to describe the problem.
- A launch, a competitor watch and a complaint use the same setup; what changes is the question you ask of each mention.
- MarketHQ labels every mention as an opportunity, risk, revenue, mention or noise, with a plain next step such as 'Thank them or ask for a review'.
- MarketHQ sends the day's top reply opportunities by email, Slack or Telegram and drafts replies you edit and post from your own account.
Founder of MarketHQ. Building market intelligence for companies that sell to developers.
Most guides explain what mention tracking is and stop there. This one shows it in use: a starter setup, then three illustrative examples (a product launch, a competitor watch and a public complaint), each with the terms to track, what to look for and what to do next. Every team below is hypothetical.
What does a basic mention tracking setup look like?
A short list of terms, a list of places your buyers talk, one daily check, and a named person who acts on what comes in.
Start small: ten good terms read daily beat a hundred nobody opens. The table below is a starter setup for a hypothetical project-management app; swap in your own names.
In MarketHQ the three kinds of term are separate: brand, competitor and keyword. Sources include Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bluesky, news and web results, plus RSS feeds you add. A one-word term shaped like an ordinary word and typed with a capital letter (for example 'Mention') matches only whole words with the same capitalisation, so a brand that is also an everyday word does not match the everyday word. Type it in lowercase if you want looser matching.
| Part | What goes in it | Example for a project-management app |
|---|---|---|
| Brand terms | Company name, product names, common misspellings | [Brand], [Brand] Boards, [Brand] App |
| Competitor terms | The two to five rivals you meet in deals | The two apps prospects most often compare you with |
| Keywords | Phrases buyers use for the problem, taken from sales calls | 'project tracker for agencies', 'client approval workflow' |
| Places | Where your buyers actually ask and compare | Reddit, LinkedIn, news and web results |
| Check | Once a day at a fixed time | 9am, about 15 minutes |
| Owner | One named person, with a backup | Marketing lead, with support covering holidays |
How do you track feedback after a product launch?
Add the new feature's name as a keyword before launch day, read every mention of it daily for the first week, and sort bugs from praise from questions.
For example, a team shipping a calendar sync feature might add '[Brand] calendar sync' and 'calendar sync' as keywords a few days before launch, so the first posts are caught rather than found later by search.
- Before launch: add the feature name, the phrase people are likely to use for it, and any launch hashtag.
- Launch week: read new mentions every morning, paying most attention to Hacker News, Reddit, X and LinkedIn.
- Bug reports go to support the same day, with a public reply saying it has been passed on.
- Praise gets a thank-you, and a happy user is a good person to ask for a review.
- At the end of the week, count repeats. One bug reported by five people matters more than twenty likes.
| Mention | Label | Suggested next step shown |
|---|---|---|
| 'Calendar sync keeps duplicating my events' | Risk: complaint about your product | Reply: they're unhappy with your product |
| 'The new calendar sync saved me an hour this week' | Revenue: praise for your product | Thank them or ask for a review |
| A news post announcing the feature | Mention: neutral mention of your brand | Neutral mention of your brand, worth a look |
How do you use mention tracking for competitive intelligence?
Track your main competitors by name and read the threads where buyers compare you, complain about a rival, or ask what to use instead.
For example, a team selling scheduling software might track its two closest rivals. Over a month, those mentions show why people leave a rival and which articles shape the shortlist.
In MarketHQ, a thread comparing you with a competitor is labelled an opportunity, with the reason 'Someone actively comparing options' and a next step like 'Reply: they're comparing you with [competitor]'. A complaint about a rival gets the reason 'Complaint about a competitor', so switching reasons are easy to pick out. These mentions also feed the gap analysis and action plan, which turn repeated patterns into tasks.
| What you see | What it suggests | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A buyer comparing you with a rival | A live decision | Reply the same day, say who you are, stick to facts |
| Repeated complaints about a rival's pricing or support | A reason people switch | Publish an honest comparison page; reply when someone asks |
| One rival feature praised again and again | A gap in your product or your messaging | Send to product; check whether you already do it and nobody knows |
| Roundups that name rivals but not you | You are missing from shortlists | Send the author a short factual update |
How does mention tracking help when a complaint goes public?
It puts the complaint in front of you while the thread is still active, so you can answer before other readers decide the story for you.
For example, a customer might post on Reddit that an invoice export broke and support has gone quiet. With tracking, it shows up in the next daily check instead of weeks later.
In MarketHQ the post is labelled a risk, with the reason 'Complaint about your product', and you can filter the feed by sentiment to find every negative mention at once. You can ask for a drafted reply; by default, a draft that names your brand says you work there, and you edit and post it yourself. MarketHQ never posts for you.
- Read the whole thread first, including replies from other users.
- Reply in public with your role in the first line, acknowledge the specific problem, and say what happens next.
- Fix it, then come back to the same thread and say so.
- Watch new mentions over the following week for the same complaint somewhere else.
How do you organise mentions so the right team acts?
Sort by label first, then hand each mention to the team that owns it: support for bugs, product for requests, sales for buying questions, marketing for comparisons.
Agree owners before you start, so routing takes one message. In MarketHQ you can filter by source, sentiment and brand, and the reply queue filters by label, so each owner can open just their slice. Our daily triage guide covers the routine in detail, including how to keep it to 15 minutes.
What mistakes make mention tracking fail?
Broad keywords that bury the useful posts, watching places your buyers never visit, and alerts that nobody owns.
MarketHQ labels irrelevant matches as noise, so they stay out of the reply queue, which holds opportunities and risks. Read a few noise items each week anyway, to check nothing useful is being filtered out.
- Too many broad keywords at once. Each time the same false match appears twice, tighten or remove the term that caught it.
- Watching where it is easy rather than where buyers talk. Ask customers where they asked for advice before they bought.
- Alerts with no owner. A mention nobody reads is the same as no tracking.
- Missing name variants. Add common misspellings and the product's short name as extra terms.
Which tool should you use to run these examples?
MarketHQ, if you want brand, competitor and keyword mentions from communities, social sites, news and web results in one labelled feed with drafted replies.
MarketHQ plans are Lite at $29 a month, Startup at $99 and Growth at $199, and they differ by how much you can track. There is no free plan and every plan needs a card. Lite and Startup start with a 4-day trial, charged on day 4; Growth is charged at signup. You can run a one-time free check without an account to see what people say about you first.
Paid plans also ask your tracked buyer questions each week in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek, so you can see whether AI answers name you next to the posts that mention you.
What does one week of mention tracking look like?
Illustrative example: a handful of mentions worth acting on, a few to log, and some noise to tune out.
Illustrative example: a company selling booking software to dental clinics tracks its brand, two competitors and three keywords. This is a plausible first week, not real data. Five items needed a reply or a hand-off, one noise item led to a tighter keyword, and one was worth a look even though it was labelled noise.
| Day | Mention | Label | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Reddit post asking for booking software for a three-chair clinic | Opportunity | Replied with disclosure and one link |
| Mon | Job ad that uses one keyword in passing | Noise | Ignored; keyword tightened |
| Tue | LinkedIn post comparing the product with a rival on price | Opportunity | Replied with current pricing |
| Wed | Customer on X saying reminder texts stopped sending | Risk | Sent to support, replied publicly, followed up when fixed |
| Thu | Blog roundup listing both competitors but not the brand | Noise | Spotted in the weekly noise check; emailed the author an update |
| Fri | Clinic manager praising the new waitlist feature | Revenue | Thanked them and asked for a review |
| Fri | Thread complaining about a rival's support hours | Opportunity | Logged as a switching reason for the comparison page |
What can't mention tracking catch?
Private conversations, sources you do not watch, and the context an automatic label sometimes misses.
Private Slack and Discord groups, direct messages and closed communities are invisible to any public monitoring tool. Labels are a first sort, not a verdict: sarcasm and mixed posts get misread, so read the mention before acting on its label.
FAQ
- What is the difference between mention tracking and social listening?
- Mention tracking finds posts that contain names and phrases you chose, such as your brand or a competitor. Social listening looks wider, at themes and sentiment across a market. Most teams need mention tracking first, because it produces posts you can reply to today.
- How often should I check for new mentions?
- MarketHQ users check once a day from the daily summary of top reply opportunities, sent by email, Slack or Telegram. Once a day suits most teams because questions go stale within a day or two. Check more often only during a launch or an incident.
- Should I track my competitors' names?
- Yes. Competitor mentions show why buyers switch, which features they praise in rivals, and which articles shape shortlists. MarketHQ tracks competitors as their own term type, so comparison threads and complaints about rivals are labelled separately from mentions of your own brand.
- What should I do if I get too many mentions?
- Narrow your terms first. Keep your brand and product names, cut broad keywords, and add a second word to any term that keeps matching unrelated posts. MarketHQ labels irrelevant matches as noise and keeps them out of the reply queue.
- Can mention tracking help with customer support?
- Yes. It surfaces public complaints and questions that never reach your support inbox, so you can answer them where others can see. Repeated complaints about the same problem are also a sign that a fix or a help article is overdue.
- What is the best tool for mention tracking?
- Start with MarketHQ. It tracks your brand, competitors and keywords across communities, social sites, news and web results in one feed, labels each mention, and drafts replies you post yourself. Plans start at $29 a month with a 4-day trial on Lite and Startup.
Related
- What is mention tracking? — the definition behind these examples
- Triage community mentions daily — the 15-minute routine
- Monitor Reddit for brand mentions — where many comparison threads appear
- Competitor monitoring — how MarketHQ watches rivals