Instagram notifies you when someone tags your account. It doesn't tell you when a creator writes your product name in a caption, or when their followers ask about it in the comments. Mentionfront searches Instagram for your brand, products and competitors, and sorts what it finds by who needs a reply.
No credit card. No Instagram login needed.
Week 3 wash day with the Merriclo leave-in. Definition is unreal, frizz is basically gone.
does the Merriclo leave-in work on 4c or is it more for looser curls?
the big Merriclo bottle leaked all over my suitcase, pump doesn't lock
A creator post that never tagged the brand, and two comments under it that need different answers.
If your team handles Instagram in the app or Meta Business Suite, you're already seeing part of the conversation. The gap is everything that happens on other people's posts without an @tag.
| Conversation | Instagram app / Business Suite | Mentionfront |
|---|---|---|
| Comments on your own posts | Yes, in your notifications and inbox | When they name a keyword. Instagram's own inbox is the better place to reply to these |
| Posts that @tag your account | Yes, as mentions and in the Tagged tab | Yes, if you track your @handle as a keyword |
| Captions that name you without a tag | No | Yes, when search surfaces the post |
| Questions about you under a creator's post | No | Yes, when the post itself names you |
| Posts and comments about competitors | No | Yes, tracked like your own brand |
| Sorted by buying intent and complaints | No | Yes, with a priority score on each mention |
The questions people ask under creator posts are the same ones stopping shoppers on your product page. Asked once, it's a comment. Asked forty times in a month, it's a missing line on your PDP.
Instagram is especially good for this because shoppers ask about the things photos can't show: shade match, texture, fit on a different body type, whether it suits their hair or skin.
Open Analytics filtered to the product's keyword and Instagram. The topic breakdown shows whether people mostly ask about ingredients, fit, price or packaging.
In the inbox, filter to that product, Instagram, and the Recommendation request and Objection intents. That's "does it work for…" and "is it worth the price". Product-level tracking is what lets you pick one product.
The same question in different words, five or more times, earns a line on the product page.
Save the inbox filters as a view and check it before your next product page update.
Topics: Merriclo leave-in on Instagram
Example · Analytics filtered to one keyword and Instagram · 30 days
Then answer publicly
Reply to the best version of each question under the creator's post, in your own words. The next shopper reading that thread sees the answer too.
Seeding programs usually get measured by who posted. What their followers said back is more useful, and it's sitting in the comments.
Posts whose captions name the product show up as mentions, with the creator and likes. A creator who only showed the product without naming it won't, so keep your own list of who you sent to.
Comments naming the product under a seeded post show whether that audience was ready to buy, confused, or skeptical. Two creators with the same likes can produce very different comment sections.
Rank seeded posts by the buying questions under them, not likes alone. A small creator whose followers ask "where do I get it" is often a better paid partner than a big one with emoji-only replies.
A merchant posted the full numbers from one gifting campaign to r/shopify. They're worth reading before you decide how many creators to contact — and before you decide how much of the result you'd be able to see without watching the comments.
Creators contacted: 4,266 … Responded to me: 1,440 (more responded on IG vs. tiktok) … Accepted my product: 341 … Created a video: 271 … Total video views: 4,266,860
I wanted to post this because I see people tying this, contacting 50 creators, and thinking its going to pay off. Look at my numbers, I contacted 4266!
One merchant's self-reported campaign, not a benchmark — and the same post links to a gifting tool they used, so read it with that in mind. What holds generally is the shape: a big drop at every step, and 271 posts you then have to find. Six percent of the creators contacted made a video, and only the ones who typed the product name in the caption are findable by search afterwards.
Instagram has no official API for searching other people's posts by keyword. The closest official route is hashtag search in Meta's Instagram Platform API, and its own documentation caps it: "You can query a maximum of 30 unique hashtags within a 7 day period." That's a quota for one brand's own campaign tags, not a way to watch a category. So every listening tool works within the public search Instagram itself offers. For Mentionfront that means:
Not collected:
Why a small creator's post can be missing
Instagram's search favors posts that are already getting engagement. A post from an account with a few hundred followers and a handful of likes is less likely to appear than a popular one naming the same product. That's a limit of Instagram search, and it affects every tool that uses it.
Your own comments
Mentionfront isn't a replacement for your Instagram inbox. Keep replying to comments on your own posts there, and use Mentionfront for the conversation happening on everyone else's.
Instagram captions tag accounts far more often than they spell out a brand name. "@merriclohair" and "Merriclo" are two different strings, and each one catches posts the other misses.
If you run a customer hashtag (#merriclocurls), make it a keyword. Posts using it are some of the easiest UGC to ask permission for, since the customer chose to share it.
Captions shorten product names. "Merriclo leave-in" will match far more posts than "Merriclo Curl Defining Leave-In Conditioner 250ml".
Brand names get stuffed into giveaway and "tag 3 friends" posts. If they flood your feed, exclude phrases like "giveaway" on that keyword.