Mentions

What is Mentions?

Mentions on social media are instances where users reference another user by using the @ symbol. Other ways of mentioning a user or brand can be with a hashtag (#) or through plain text. For businesses on social media, tracking their mentions is one way of measuring brand awareness and image online.

How to calculate Mentions

ƒ Count(Mentions)

What is a good Mentions benchmark?

Mentions indicate brand awareness, so a higher number of mentions does indicate higher brand awareness. However, businesses must take care to ensure that these mentions are not complaints or other negative-sentiment tweets, and if they are, to resolve the problem.

Example

The Twitter account for a business gets mentioned 100 times with an @ symbol, 10 times with a hashtag, and 10 times with plain text. The Mentions for that account is (100 + 10 + 10) or 120.

More about this metric

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are a great way for businesses to engage with users by publishing information, responding to users, and giving a human touch to the business by online interactions and relatable posts. This also means that it is a platform for users to voice their thoughts about a business or ask questions.

When users mention an account using the @ symbol, hashtags, or plain text, the account can then track these Mentions either through notifications or searching and tracking hashtags. While it can be used as a vanity metric to measure brand awareness, a more important and time-sensitive application of Mentions is to address customer concerns. It is common for users to voice their complaints or questions about a business on social media and replying to these concerns by providing a solution in a timely way reflects well on a business. Missing the opportunity to do that in a timely way can be very detrimental to a brand.