Choosing keywords

The keywords you choose determine what ForumScout finds. This guide covers how to select keywords that capture relevant mentions without generating too much noise.

Quick setup vs manual keywords

ForumScout offers two ways to set up keywords:

Quick setup — Select a goal (brand monitoring, finding customers, or competitor tracking), enter your website URL or description, and ForumScout suggests keywords using AI. You can select, deselect, or add your own.

Manual setup — Enter your own keywords from scratch. Use this when you have specific terms in mind or need precise control.

Keyword length guidelines

General rule: Start with short/mid-tail keywords. They're specific enough to be relevant but broad enough to capture variations in how people phrase things.

Common mistakes

Too narrow

❌ ForumScout social listening tool for SaaS companies

This is too specific. People rarely use your exact product description when discussing it. You'll miss most mentions.

✅ ForumScout or social listening tool

Too broad

❌ software

This matches millions of posts. You'll spend more time filtering noise than finding relevant mentions.

✅ project management software or CRM software

Marketing language vs customer language

❌ AI-powered customer engagement platform

This is how you describe your product. It's not how customers talk about it.

✅ help desk software or customer support tool

Think about how someone would describe their problem or ask for a recommendation, not how you'd pitch your solution.

Keyword examples by use case

Brand monitoring

Monitor your brand name and common misspellings:

Acme Inc
AcmeInc
Acme software
@acmeinc

Include product names if they're distinct:

Acme CRM
Acme Analytics

Finding potential customers

Focus on problem-focused and recommendation-seeking phrases:

best CRM
CRM recommendations
"looking for" AND "CRM"
customer management
affordable CRM

These capture people actively seeking solutions.

Competitor monitoring

Track competitor brand names:

Salesforce
HubSpot CRM
Pipedrive

Using negative keywords

Negative keywords exclude posts containing specific terms. Add them when you notice irrelevant results.

Example: You're monitoring Apple for the company, but getting posts about fruit.

Add negative keywords:

recipe
orchard
fruit
pie

Negative keywords can be set per-scout or globally (applies to all scouts) in Settings.

Using exact match

Enabling Exact match is highly recommended for 99% of scouts.

Turning exact match off will use 'broad match', which will return posts that contain synonymous keywords to the ones the scout is tracking.

If you want to track mentions of a specific keyword, always keep exact match turned on.

Boolean expressions

For advanced filtering, use boolean operators:

Example: Find people asking about CRMs but exclude Salesforce discussions:

(CRM OR "customer management") AND (recommendation OR suggest OR best) NOT Salesforce

Note: Boolean expressions are supported on Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, News, and Forums. They're automatically disabled on platforms that don't support them (Instagram, Bluesky).

Iterating on keywords

Your first set of keywords are rarely perfect. Review your results after a few days:

1. Too much noise? Add negative keywords or make keywords more specific
2. Missing mentions? Add keyword variations or make keywords broader
3. Irrelevant platforms? Disable platforms that aren't producing useful results

Use AI filters to further refine results without changing keywords. See AI filters for details.

Tips

• Monitor your competitors' keywords too — If you sell CRM software, you should know when people complain about Salesforce
• Include common typos — People misspell brand names frequently
• Watch for new slang — Communities develop their own terminology over time
• Check multiple platforms — The same topic is discussed differently on Reddit vs LinkedIn
• Use the AI keyword generator — It suggests keywords based on how customers actually search, not marketing language