What’s the Difference Between a Project and a Keyword in Brandmentions?

Understanding the distinction between a project and a keyword is essential for effectively using BrandMentions. While they are related, they serve different purposes in the monitoring process.

A project is the highest-level container for your monitoring efforts. It's where you define the overall scope of what you want to track. Each project has its own set of keywords, sources, languages, and other settings. You can think of a project as a dedicated workspace for a specific brand, product, competitor, or topic.

For example, you might create a project to monitor your own brand, another project to track a key competitor, and a third project to follow a specific industry trend.

Each project contains:

•Multiple keywords: The search terms you want to track.

•Source settings: Which platforms to monitor (e.g., X/Twitter, Instagram, news sites, blogs).

•Language and country filters: Which languages and regions to focus on.

•Historical data settings: How far back to collect mentions.

•Real-time monitoring settings: Whether to enable faster data updates.

•Exclusion rules: Which domains or social accounts to exclude from tracking.

All keywords within a single project share the same settings. This makes projects ideal for organizing your monitoring by brand, client, or campaign.

Project Name: "Nike Brand Monitoring"

Keywords tracked:

•Nike

•@Nike

•nike.com

•#JustDoIt

A keyword is a specific word or phrase that you want to track within a project. Keywords are the building blocks of your monitoring, and they tell BrandMentions what to look for. You can have multiple keywords within a single project.

For example, in your project for monitoring your own brand, you might have keywords for your brand name, your products, your CEO's name, and any branded hashtags you use.

•Specific search term: A keyword is a single word, phrase, hashtag, or handle.

•Match options: Can be set to "exact match" or "broad match."

•Filter and excluded keywords: Can have additional terms that refine or exclude results.

•Counts toward total limit: Each keyword counts toward your plan's total keyword allowance (e.g., 15, 30, 50, or unlimited).

Within the "Nike Brand Monitoring" project, you might have:

•Keyword 1: Nike

•Keyword 2: @Nike

•Keyword 3: nike.com

•Keyword 4: #JustDoIt

Each of these is a separate keyword, and all four count toward your total keyword limit.

Here's a simple way to think about the relationship between projects and keywords:

•Project: The "who" or "what" you are monitoring (e.g., your brand).

•Keyword: The specific terms you are looking for related to that project (e.g., your brand name, products, etc.).

All the settings you configure, such as sources, languages, and filters, are applied at the project level. This means that all the keywords within a project will be subject to the same settings.

To make the distinction clear, here's a side-by-side comparison:

By organizing your keywords into projects, you can keep your monitoring efforts organized and ensure that you are getting the most relevant results for each of your tracking goals.