Run Your First Scan

A scan is how MentionFox searches the public web for conversations about a brand, product, person, or topic — and surfaces the ones worth acting on. You start a scan yourself; there's no background or scheduled scanning. This guide walks your first one end to end.

Launching a scan

1. Click New Scan (top-right of the dashboard). This opens the scan setup — you don't need to be inside any particular section to start.
2. Enter a search term — a brand, product, name, or phrase. Toggle Any order (match the words in any order) or Exact phrase.
3. Pick your platforms — choose only the public surfaces where your buyers actually talk (for example Reddit, X/Twitter, Quora, review sites, news). Fewer, more relevant platforms means less noise and fewer credits.
4. Optionally add refine terms to narrow the search, and contextualize the scan to a client so the results land in that client's workspace.
5. Run a Quick Test first — a cheap preview to sanity-check your term and platforms — then Start Scan for the full run. A live progress panel shows per-platform progress; you can keep working while it finishes.

Let Smart Suggestions write your query

You don't have to invent queries from scratch. The Search Powers / Smart Suggestions in the New Scan modal propose ready-made, high-intent queries — like conversations from people frustrated with a competitor — that you click to populate.

Here's the key: the more competitors you add to your Company Profile, the better these suggestions get. MentionFox builds the suggestions from your Company Profile — your products, your win themes, and especially your list of competitors — so a richer profile produces sharper, more numerous, more relevant scan ideas (including “switching from [competitor]” angles). If your first scans feel generic, the fastest fix is to go fill in your Company Profile, add every competitor you can think of, and come back.

Understanding results

A finished scan opens to a grid of result cards — one per mention — with a relevance and intent summary at the top and platform tabs to filter. Each card shows the platform, author, a snippet, an intent score, and the sentiment. The high-intent results (buying signals, complaints about an incumbent) are your prime lead opportunities — sort and start there.

What to do with results

Hover a result for its action bar. Enrich finds a verified email for the author (you're only charged when an email is found). Once enriched, Email drafts a message that references the specific post, in your voice — and nothing sends until you preview and click. Dealflow pushes a contactable lead into your pipeline, Create Campaign enrolls reachable people into a sequence you review one lead at a time, and Foxtrails mines the repliers on a threaded post as extra leads. Dismiss anything irrelevant so it stays out of the way.