Yes, it is possible to set up keyword alerts on Facebook to notify you when certain keywords are mentioned in posts or comments. Facebook has a feature called “Notifications” that allows you to customize what types of notifications you receive from the platform.
How to Set Up Keyword Alerts on Facebook
Setting up keyword alerts on Facebook only takes a few steps:
- Go to your Facebook Notifications page by clicking on the bell icon in the top right corner of Facebook and selecting “Notifications.”
- Under the “Notifications” heading, click on “Keywords.”
- Enter the keywords or phrases you want to be notified about when they are mentioned by separating each one with a comma.
- Select whether you want to be notified when these keywords are mentioned in Posts, Comments, or both.
- Click “Turn On” to activate the keyword alerts.
Once you turn on the keyword notifications, you will start receiving notifications any time one of your selected keywords is mentioned in a post or comment on Facebook. The notifications appear like normal Facebook notifications with a preview of the post or comment.
Customizing Keyword Alerts
You can customize your Facebook keyword alerts in a few different ways:
- Add as many keywords as you want – there is no limit.
- Refine keyword phrases for more specific alerts (e.g. “brand launch” rather than just “launch”).
- Prioritize keywords to only get notified about the most important ones.
- Select whether to get notified for Posts, Comments, or both.
- Turn off notifications during certain times or days.
Getting too many notifications? You can always fine-tune your keywords or delete ones that are not relevant anymore at any time.
Benefits of Keyword Alerts
Here are some of the benefits of setting up keyword alerts on Facebook:
- Monitor mentions of your brand, products, or services.
- Keep up with discussions about competitors.
- Get notified when influential people mention you.
- Track industry trends and hot topics.
- Respond quickly to feedback, questions or comments.
- Find marketing opportunities, influencers or leads.
Keyword alerts act as an always-on listening tool for brands, businesses, organizations, and individuals to stay on top of relevant conversations happening on Facebook.
Limitations of Facebook Keyword Alerts
While keyword alerts are useful, keep in mind these limitations:
- You only get notified if you are mentioned directly in the post/comment.
- Alerts are limited to keywords and phrases, not images.
- Notifications only surface in your general notifications feed.
- Keyword matching is not 100% precise or comprehensive.
- You may get notified about irrelevant keyword mentions.
- Facebook searches do not surface all keyword mentions.
For broader social listening capabilities beyond keyword alerts, dedicated social media monitoring tools are recommended.
Keyword Alerts vs. Social Listening Tools
| Features | Facebook Keyword Alerts | Social Listening Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring Scope | Your own profile and page | Millions of public posts across platforms |
| Location Filtering | None | Filter by country, state, city |
| Language Filtering | None | Filter by language |
| Sentiment Analysis | No | Yes |
| Influence Scoring | No | Yes |
| Competitor Monitoring | Limited | Yes |
| Image Recognition | No | Yes |
| Analytics & Reporting | No | Yes |
As seen in the table above, dedicated social media monitoring tools like Brandwatch, Mention, Talkwalker, etc. provide much more powerful functionality compared to Facebook’s basic keyword alerts. But keyword alerts can still be a useful free addition for tracking brand and product mentions on Facebook specifically.
Conclusion
Facebook’s keyword alert feature provides an easy way to monitor key terms and conversations relevant to your brand or business on Facebook. While useful for social listening on Facebook itself, keyword alerts have significant limitations compared to full-fledged social listening tools that can track millions of mentions across platforms and offer robust analytics. Treat keyword alerts as a complementary capability for tracking Facebook conversations rather than a core social monitoring solution.
With the simple set-up steps outlined here, you can start leveraging Facebook keyword alerts to stay on top of brand mentions, customer feedback, industry trends, competitors, and more on the world’s largest social media platform. Just remember to customize your alerts carefully to avoid notification overload.
Staying tuned in to relevant social conversations can provide invaluable consumer and competitive insights. But investing in a social media monitoring platform takes your listening capabilities to the next level with expanded coverage, filters, analytics, historical data, image recognition, and more. The right tools empower brands to turn social data into actionable marketing intelligence.
In summary, Facebook’s free keyword alerts offer a basic listening capability for brands and individuals to monitor their owned social channels. However, for advanced social analytics across the social web, social listening tools deliver far greater scope, filter options, competitive benchmarking, and actionable data analysis. Determine the right mix of free and paid tools to build an effective social listening strategy tailored to your specific business needs and goals.
With the explosion of social media, online conversations contain a wealth of valuable insights for brands. But cutting through the noise to identify relevant and impactful signals requires the right tools and strategy. Use solutions like keyword alerts for monitoring your owned social real estate while investing in deeper social listening capabilities to uncover strategic consumer and competitive intelligence across the broader social web.