The need for monitoring mentions of your name or your brand’s name is continuously growing as more and more individuals “go social” and as more social media platforms emerge. Google Alerts has long been a standard form for discovering web mentions of your brand, but other free tools have emerged specifically for social search discovery.

3 Free Social Search Tools

Topsy – Topsy is a real-time social search tool that has an Advanced Search option that lets you enter specific words or phrases, Twitter usernames and dates, and provides you with the choice to sort results based on relevancy or time.

Kurrently – Kurrently’s search allows you to sort by Facebook or Twitter, adjust the speed of your results and sort by specific search engine. Kurrently also grants you the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of your search results if you agree to send out a tweet about the service.

HowSociable? – HowSociable tracks your brand’s Visibility Score, which is based on 3 factors: Presence, Brightness and Audience. A basic search will give you a count of mentions on 20 major social platforms. You also can track up to 3 brands for free each month.

For all of these social search tools, it’s important to search for variations of your brand’s name along with your Twitter username. Also, be sure to run your search with quotes around your name if your brand’s name is more than 1 word long.

How often do you check for mentions of your brand?