How to monitor what people say about your business online

Notifications only show you the people who tagged you. Plenty of conversation about a small business happens without a tag: a recommendation in a local Facebook group, a complaint on X that spells your name wrong, a photo of your shopfront with no handle, a question about you on a forum. If you only read your notifications, you miss the praise you could thank people for and the problems you could fix early.

Monitoring is simply looking for those conversations on purpose, on a regular day, with a list of what to search for. It doesn't need paid software to start. A short list of search terms, a few free tools and fifteen minutes a week will catch most of what matters for a local or niche business. Our explainer on social listening versus social monitoring covers the difference if you later want to go further.

Start with every way someone might refer to you without tagging you. Write the list once, keep it in your mentions log and add to it whenever you spot a new variation.

Each platform hides mentions in different places, and the untagged ones need a search. Work through the places that matter for your business, not every platform in existence. If your customers use Facebook groups and Google reviews, start there.

Two free tools do a lot of the searching for you. Google Alerts emails you when Google finds new results for a topic you choose. You enter a term, then use Show options to set how often you hear, which types of sites to include, the language, the region, how many results and which account receives it. Set one alert for your business name in quotes and one for each main product or misspelling.

On X, advanced search lets you combine exact phrases, words to exclude, posts that mention a specific account, places and date ranges. Save a search for your name and handle and run it weekly. It's a quick way to see posts that talk about you without tagging you, and to cut out noise if your name is also a common word.

1. Go to Google Alerts and enter your business name in quotes.
2. Open Show options and choose how often you want emails and which region to cover.
3. Create the alert, then repeat for your main products and common misspellings.
4. On X, build an advanced search with your name as an exact phrase, excluding words that cause false matches.
5. Save the searches you'll repeat each week in your mentions log, with the exact terms.

Sources: Google Search Help: Create an alert, checked 15 October 2026; X Help Center: How to use advanced search, checked 15 October 2026

Monitoring works when it's a fixed habit rather than something you do after a bad week. Put it in the calendar on the same day each week, ideally early in the week so you can act on what you find. Day-to-day notifications are part of your normal reply routine; this weekly check is for everything that didn't notify you.

1. Read your Google Alerts emails from the past week.
2. Run your saved searches on the two or three platforms that matter most.
3. Check new reviews on Google and Facebook, and any local groups you belong to.
4. Log anything worth acting on: where it was, what it said, and the link.
5. Act on it: reply, thank, correct, report or pass it to the right person.
6. Note any new spelling, nickname or product name to add to your term list.

Not every mention needs a reply. Jumping into every conversation about you can feel intrusive, especially in groups where people are talking among themselves. Use the table as a starting point and agree the rules with anyone who helps you.

A simple spreadsheet turns scattered mentions into something you can learn from. After a couple of months you'll see which products people talk about, which platforms they use to talk about you and which complaints keep coming back. That's useful for your content plan as much as your customer service: the questions people ask about you are ready-made post ideas.

Paid social listening tools search more sources, track sentiment and send instant alerts. They're worth considering when you have more mentions than you can read in fifteen minutes a week, several brands or locations, or a reputation that depends on catching problems within hours. Until then, a list, free alerts and a weekly habit cover most small businesses.

• Columns: date, platform, link, type of mention, what you did, follow-up needed
• Tag each row as praise, question, complaint, wrong information or other
• Review the month's rows in your monthly social media review
• Share good mentions with your team; it's motivating

Zolyp, which we make, plans, writes, designs and publishes your posts to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Business, X, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Threads after you approve them, and its Analyze feature gives you a written Friday report on how your published posts did. It doesn't monitor mentions of your business elsewhere or reply to them; the routine above covers that. Plans that create the posts start at $29 a month, Lite is $9 a month per brand if you only want to schedule posts you make yourself, team members are unlimited on every plan, and there's a 3-day free trial.