Social listening and brand monitoring terms

Brand mentions, share of voice, sentiment, reputation and review management. 19 terms, each with what it means, why it matters and what to do about it.

Boolean search

Boolean search combines keywords with AND, OR, NOT and quotes to narrow results, for example a brand name without unrelated meanings.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness is how familiar your target audience is with your brand: whether they recognise it, remember it and think of it when buying.

Brand mentions

Brand mentions are any time your brand is named online, in posts, comments, reviews, articles or videos, with or without a link.

Brand monitoring

Brand monitoring is tracking where and how your brand is mentioned online, from forums and social media to reviews and news.

Brand sentiment

Brand sentiment is the overall feeling people express about a brand online, the balance of positive, negative and neutral talk.

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis studies rivals’ products, pricing, positioning and customer feedback to find where you can stand out and win.

Crisis management

Crisis management is preparing for and responding to events that threaten a brand’s reputation, from outages to viral complaints.

Dark social

Dark social is sharing that happens in private channels, such as messaging apps, DMs, email and private groups, where it is hard to track.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free Google service that emails you when new pages it indexes match your keywords, such as your brand name.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score asks customers how likely they are to recommend you from 0 to 10, then subtracts detractors from promoters.

Reputation management

Reputation management is monitoring and improving how a brand or person is seen online, through reviews, replies and search results.

Review management

Review management is collecting, monitoring and responding to customer reviews on sites such as Google, G2, Trustpilot and app stores.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis classifies text as positive, negative or neutral, so you can see how people feel about a brand across many mentions.

Share of voice (SOV)

Share of voice is your brand’s portion of the conversation in a market: your mentions compared with competitors’, as a percentage.

Social listening

Social listening is tracking public conversations about your brand, competitors and market, then learning from and acting on what people say.

Social media analytics

Social media analytics is measuring how social content and accounts perform, such as reach, engagement and growth, to guide decisions.

Social media monitoring

Social media monitoring is collecting mentions of your brand or keywords across social networks and responding to the ones that need it.

Unlinked brand mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are pages that name your brand without linking to your site, often a chance to ask for a link or a correction.

Voice of customer (VoC)

Voice of customer is gathering what customers say they need and feel, in their own words, from interviews, surveys, reviews and conversations.