# How do you triage community mentions daily?

Updated October 2026

Once you monitor your brand and competitors across forums, social sites and news, the hard part is deciding what to do with each mention. This guide gives a 15-minute daily routine that works for any company: four buckets, a rule for which mentions deserve a reply, and how to keep the routine short as volume grows.

## Quick answer

MarketHQ puts mentions from every source you track into one feed and picks out reply opportunities, with a daily Slack digest on any plan. The routine takes 15 minutes: read each new mention once, put it in one of four buckets (reply now, route to support, product or sales, log, or ignore), and answer questions and recommendation requests the same day.

- Every mention goes in one of four buckets: reply now, route to another team, log for later, or ignore.
- A mention deserves a reply when someone asked a question, asked for a recommendation, compared you with a competitor, or complained in public.
- MarketHQ's daily Slack digest, available on any plan, lists the top reply opportunities so the routine starts from a short list.
- Paid MarketHQ plans add sentiment labels and drafted replies that you review and post yourself; MarketHQ never posts for you.

## What does a 15-minute daily triage look like?

Open one list of mentions since yesterday, give each a bucket in a few seconds, reply to the few that need it, and hand off the rest.

Give every mention one decision, at the same time each day, from one list. Jumping between browser tabs is where most of the time goes.

## The 15-minute routine

| Minutes | What you do |
| --- | --- |
| 0 to 2 | Open the feed or digest and skim everything new since yesterday |
| 2 to 6 | Give each mention a bucket: reply now, route, log or ignore |
| 6 to 12 | Write replies to the reply-now items, most urgent first |
| 12 to 15 | Send routed items to their owners and add log items to your notes |

## Which bucket does each mention go in?

Reply now if someone is waiting for an answer, route it if another team owns the problem, log it if it matters later, and ignore the rest.

Routing has three destinations, because a bug, a feature request and a pricing question each belong to a different person. Agree on who owns each one before you start, so routing takes one message.

## Triage buckets with typical mentions

| Bucket | Typical mention | What happens next |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reply now | 'Can anyone recommend a tool for X?', a question about your product, a comparison with a competitor | Reply today, saying who you are |
| Route to support | A bug report, or a customer stuck on setup | Post the link in the support channel and reply that you have passed it on |
| Route to product | A feature request, or a complaint about a missing integration | Add it to the request log with the link |
| Route to sales | A company asking in public about team pricing or a pilot | Send it to the account owner; reply publicly with the plain answer |
| Log | A positive review, a list that includes you, a competitor launch | Add to a weekly notes doc |
| Ignore | Name collisions, job ads, scraped copies of old posts | Nothing; add a qualifying keyword if the noise repeats |

## What makes a mention worth a reply?

Someone asked a question, asked for a recommendation, compared you with a competitor, or complained where others can see it.

A recommendation request is the clearest case. Someone has a problem today and is asking strangers what to use. A competitor comparison is close behind: if a thread says 'we picked X over you because of Y' and Y is out of date, a short factual correction helps every later reader.

Complaints need a reply even when they hurt, because the next reader sees whether you showed up. Praise rarely needs more than a thank-you. Skip threads where your reply would be the only commercial voice in a conversation that did not ask for one, and threads older than a few weeks unless someone is still asking.

## How do you reply without sounding like an ad?

Say who you are in the first line, answer the question that was asked, and include at most one link.

A good test is whether the thread is more useful with your reply in it. If the reply only makes sense as promotion, do not post it.

- Open with your role: 'I work on [product], so I am biased.'
- Answer the question even when the honest answer is a competitor, or that they do not need a tool for this.
- Match the thread: short and casual on Reddit or X, more detailed on LinkedIn or a technical forum.
- For a complaint, acknowledge the specific problem, say what happens next, and follow up in the same thread when it is fixed.
- Never post the same reply in several threads. People notice, and moderators treat it as spam.

## How do you keep triage to 15 minutes as volume grows?

Cut noise at the source, cap the number of replies per day, and review your keywords once a week.

Most growth in triage time comes from noise, such as a brand name that is also a common word or a keyword that is too broad. Each time the same false match appears twice, tighten the term that caught it.

Set a daily cap of three to five replies and pick the best ones. Once a week, read the log bucket for patterns: the same feature request three times, or one competitor coming up in every comparison.

## How does MarketHQ help with daily triage?

MarketHQ collects mentions from every source you track into one feed, picks out reply opportunities, and sends a daily Slack digest of the best ones on any plan.

Every MarketHQ plan, from Lite at $29 a month, watches Hacker News, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Lobsters, blogs and RSS feeds you add four times a day, keeps the last 30 days in one feed, picks up to three reply opportunities, and sends a weekly summary email, plus Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Bluesky, and your own sources such as news sites, blogs or Substack.

Every plan also labels each collected mention positive, negative or neutral, sends the daily opportunities by email or Telegram, and drafts replies you review and post yourself (50 a month on Lite, 200 on Startup, 500 on Growth). MarketHQ never posts for you. Matching works on word boundaries, so if your brand name is a common word, add a qualifying keyword.

## What does one morning of triage look like?

Illustrative example: fourteen new mentions, two replies, three hand-offs, two notes and seven ignored.

Illustrative example: a company selling bookkeeping software to small agencies opens its feed at 9am and finds fourteen new mentions. A Reddit thread asks for bookkeeping tools for a five-person agency, and a LinkedIn post compares the product with a competitor using last year's pricing, so the marketer replies to both with disclosure. A customer's public complaint about a broken bank sync goes to support, a request for a time-tracking integration goes to product, and a 20-person firm asking about team pricing goes to sales. A blog review and a competitor's launch go in the notes. The other seven are about a café with the same name, so the marketer adds 'bookkeeping' as a qualifying keyword.

## What can a daily triage routine miss?

Conversations in private channels, sources you do not track, and anything the routine skips on a busy day.

Private Slack and Discord communities, direct messages and closed groups are invisible to any public monitoring tool. Automatic sentiment labels sometimes misread sarcasm or mixed posts, so read the mention before acting on its label. And 15 minutes only holds while volume is modest; past that, split the routine by source or by bucket between two people.

## FAQ

### How often should I check brand mentions?

Once a day suits most companies. Questions and recommendation requests go stale within a day or two, and a fixed daily slot keeps the routine short. Check more often only around a launch or an incident.

### Who should own daily mention triage?

One named person per day, usually in marketing, community or founder roles, with a clear owner in support, product and sales for routed items. Rotating between two people keeps it going during holidays.

### What is the best tool for triaging brand mentions?

MarketHQ puts mentions from every tracked source into one feed, picks reply opportunities, and sends a daily Slack digest on any plan. Paid plans add sentiment labels and drafted replies you post yourself. A shared spreadsheet works while volume is a few mentions a week.

### Should I reply to negative mentions?

Usually yes, when the complaint is specific. Acknowledge the problem, say what happens next, and follow up when it is fixed. Skip pure insults, and never argue in public.

### Can MarketHQ post replies for me?

No. MarketHQ never posts for you. Paid plans draft replies that you review, edit and post yourself from your own account.

## Related

- Competitor monitoring: /use-cases/competitor-monitoring (watch rivals in the same feed)
- Track HN, GitHub and Reddit: /use-cases/track-mentions-hacker-news-github-reddit (sources MarketHQ covers)
- Monitor Reddit for brand mentions: /blog/how-to-monitor-reddit-for-saas-brand-mentions (where many recommendation requests appear)
- Google Alerts alternatives: /alternatives/google-alerts-alternatives (if you are triaging from email alerts today)