Subject areaChannels and tools
A mention is a reference to a person or brand in content published on social media.
In the narrow sense it is a call-out of a profile by name, often preceded by @, which notifies the owner and can start a conversation; in the broad sense it is any time a brand is named online, even when its profile is not called out.
The difference matters because two activities treat mentions differently. Social media monitoring collects mentions and counts how often the brand appears. Social listening analyses them and asks why people say what they say, and what the company must do as a consequence. Hence the limit of counting alone: a growing number can hide either praise or a complaint.
An example
A chemical company sees mentions of its name on LinkedIn grow within a week. The count signals that people are talking about it; reading the messages reveals that almost all of them comment on a delivery delay, so the response belongs to logistics before communications.
broader entriesthis entry and narrowertwo levels down← up · → down
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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