Why Brand Monitoring Is No Longer Optional
Every day, people talk about your brand online — in reviews, social media posts, blog comments, news articles, and forums. The question is: are you listening? Missing these conversations means missing the chance to respond to criticism, amplify praise, and spot opportunities before your competitors do.
That's exactly where brand24 comes in. It's an AI-powered media monitoring tool that tracks mentions of any keyword — your brand name, product, founder, or competitor — across the entire web in real time.
This guide walks you through every step of setting up and using brand24 effectively, even if you've never used a monitoring tool before.
What Is Brand24?
brand24 is a real-time brand monitoring platform that scans social media, news sites, blogs, podcasts, forums, and reviews for your chosen keywords. It then aggregates all mentions into a single dashboard, scores their sentiment, and alerts you instantly when something important happens.
It's used by solopreneurs, marketing teams, and agencies who want to stay on top of their online presence without spending hours manually searching Google and Twitter.
Step 1 — Create Your Brand24 Account
Head to the brand24 website and sign up for a free 14-day trial — no credit card required. Once you're inside the dashboard, click 'Add New Project' to get started.
You'll be asked to name your project and enter the first keyword you want to track. Start with your brand name exactly as it appears publicly. For example: YourCompanyName.
Step 2 — Configure Your Keywords
This is the most important setup step. brand24 lets you track multiple keyword types within a single project:
- Required keywords: The core term that must appear in every mention (e.g. your brand name).
- Optional keywords: Additional terms that expand your results (e.g. product names, hashtags, CEO name).
- Excluded keywords: Words that filter out irrelevant noise (e.g. a common word that shares your brand name).
Pro tip: Also add common misspellings of your brand name. People make typos — and those mentions matter too.
Once configured, brand24 immediately starts pulling in historical mentions from the last 30 days so you're not starting from zero.
Step 3 — Explore the Mentions Feed
Your main workspace inside brand24 is the Mentions Feed. This is a live stream of every place your keyword has appeared online, sorted by date.
Each mention shows:
- The source (Twitter, Reddit, news site, blog, etc.)
- The author and their estimated reach
- Sentiment score (positive, negative, or neutral)
- The full context of the mention
You can filter by source type, date range, sentiment, influence score, and language. This makes it easy to prioritise what actually needs your attention versus background noise.
Use the 'Mark as Important' flag inside brand24 to tag mentions that require a reply or follow-up from your team.
Step 4 — Set Up Real-Time Alerts
Don't wait to check your dashboard manually. brand24 supports instant email and in-app notifications so you're alerted the moment a new mention is detected.
To configure alerts, go to Project Settings → Notifications. You can choose:
- Real-time alerts — triggered immediately for every new mention
- Daily digest — a summary of all mentions from the previous 24 hours
- Weekly digest — ideal for lower-volume keywords or competitor tracking
For high-stakes brands or crisis situations, real-time is the smart choice. For quieter keywords, daily or weekly keeps your inbox clean.
Step 5 — Analyse Your Reports and Metrics
brand24 goes far beyond just showing you mentions. Its analytics section gives you actionable data including:
- Mention volume over time — spot spikes that signal a viral moment or PR crisis
- Sentiment analysis — see whether your brand perception is improving or declining
- Share of Voice — compare your mentions to competitors in the same niche
- Presence Score — an AI-generated score that benchmarks your online presence
- Top Sources and Influencers — identify who's driving the most conversation about you
You can export these reports as PDFs or connect brand24 to tools like Slack, Zapier, or Microsoft Teams for full workflow integration.
Bonus: How to Use Brand24 for Competitor Monitoring
Create a second project inside brand24 using your main competitor's brand name as the keyword. You'll instantly see where they're being mentioned, what sentiment those mentions carry, and which influencers are talking about them.
This competitive intelligence is invaluable for refining your own positioning and catching gaps in the market before anyone else does.
Final Thoughts
Brand monitoring used to require expensive agencies or hours of manual searching. With brand24, the entire process is automated, visual, and surprisingly affordable — even for small teams.
Whether you're protecting your reputation, tracking a product launch, or doing competitor research, brand24 gives you the visibility you need to make smarter decisions faster.
Start your free trial today and have your first project running in under five minutes.
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