Instagram mentions: how brands find and track them
Somebody posts your product and types your name in the caption without the @. Instagram does not tell you. Here is what the app shows, what it leaves out, and how a brand team finds the rest. Type a brand to see the posts we found.
What are mentions on Instagram?
Strictly, a mention is an @handle written in a caption, a comment or a story. A brand team counts more than that, because customers talk about a brand in four ways:
- A tag on the photo or video. It notifies you and files the post under the Tagged tab on your profile.
- An @mention in the caption or a comment. It notifies you and stays on the poster's account.
- A hashtag, such as #glossier. No notification. Findable by searching the tag.
- The name as plain words in a caption. No notification, nothing to click, and the hardest of the four to find.
The first two are covered side by side in Instagram tag vs mention.
How to see mentions on Instagram
In the app: your notifications show posts and comments that tag or @mention you, and the Tagged tab on your profile collects posts that tagged you. That covers the first two of the four.
For the other two you search. Search your hashtag and open the recent posts. Search your name as words and scroll the results. Do the same for each competitor, because their hashtag is as public as yours. It works, it takes a while, and nothing is saved for next month. The longer version is in finding posts that mention your brand without tagging you.
An Instagram mentions viewer for brand teams
Every brand in our catalogue has a public page listing the Instagram posts that mention it, with the account that posted, the caption, what it earned, and the term that found it. Signed out you see the last 7 days; a free account opens the month. Try the Glossier, Nike or Starbucks page, or the trending brand mentions board for this week's posts across every brand.
To find who keeps posting about a brand, the creators pages list the accounts our searches turned up, and this guide walks through doing it by hand.
How to track Instagram mentions over time
Tracking is the same searches run on a schedule, with the results kept. We search each brand's hashtag and its tagged posts, and for higher-priority brands the name as words in captions and the extra hashtags Instagram suggests for it, approved by a person first. A brand on the paid plan is searched every six hours and the new posts arrive by email.
Kept results are what turn mentions into numbers a team can report: posts per week, how that compares with competitors, and which posts gained the most. Category pages such as beauty brands put every brand in an aisle side by side.
The limit: we read captions and hashtags, not audio or text inside a video. If your brand is only said out loud, it is not caught. And Instagram is the only social network we search; for the rest, see brand mention tools.
Every Instagram mention, including the untagged ones
Brand pages show the posts we found for free. Daily monitoring with mention alerts by email is from $29 a month for one brand and 2 competitors.
Brands named on this page
Questions people ask
What are mentions on Instagram?
A mention is an @handle written in a caption, comment or story. It notifies the account named. Brands also count tags on the photo itself, posts using their hashtag, and captions that type their name without the @.
How do I see my mentions on Instagram?
Your notifications show posts and comments that @mention or tag you, and the Tagged tab on your profile collects posts that tagged you. Neither shows a post that types your name or uses your hashtag without tagging you. For those, search the hashtag and the name.
Is there an Instagram mentions viewer?
For any brand in our catalogue, the public brand page lists the Instagram posts that mention it, with the term that found each one. Signed out you see the last week; a free account opens the month.
Can I see Instagram mentions of a competitor?
Yes, if their posts are public. Tags, hashtags and captions on public posts can be searched by anyone, so a competitor's mentions are found the same way as your own. Their notifications and Tagged tab are theirs, but their hashtag is not.
Does Monitor Mentions catch mentions in reels that say the name out loud?
No. We read captions and hashtags, not audio or text shown inside a video. A brand spoken in a reel and never typed is not caught, so our counts are a floor.