Facebook Mentions now lets journalists monitor what’s being said about their stories

Facebook is expanding the capabilities of its Mentions app to now let journalists keep track of what people are saying about their articles — even if they’re not mentioned by name. To accomplish this, media professionals need to implement an author tag on their website that connects to their Facebook profile or page.

Available only to verified profiles, celebrities, and journalists, Facebook Mentions is the social networking company’s way to let these highly engaged and followed individuals better communicate with their fans. As journalists are churning out stories, being able to find out what people are saying about a particular breaking news-type story or feature that they wrote can be rewarding.

So for example, while internal metrics may show that my feature on Y Combinator had a large number of shares, that’s all it is: a number. If I want to examine the sentiment behind it, Facebook Mentions might be an opportune thing for me to look at. There are people who are sharing it without finding a need to tag me in their post — and why should they?

For publishers interested in trying this out, Facebook says an additional line of code in the header section of their webpage is needed. This will associate the author with their Facebook profile or page so the system will know when the journalist’s byline appears on the social network. Other capabilities are being planned to help enhance this feedback tracking capability within Mentions.

Facebook Mentions launched in July 2014.