Mentions and Merit AI are two different (but similar) tools available inside your account. While Merit AI is included with every Merit subscription, Mentions is an account upgrade that adds media monitoring services to your Merit subscription.
This page will discuss the differences between the two features.
About Mentions
Mentions is Merit's media monitoring tool that scours the web for your organization's chosen keywords. It will scan more than 350,000 websites daily, looking for mentions of your institution in the news. Merit will also identify any students included in these mentions. You can view and manage these results inside your account.
About Merit AI
Merit AI is an artificial intelligence tool that lets you repurpose stories your institution has already published on your website. Every day, it will scan the RSS feeds that you added to Merit, looking for stories about your students. When a name in an article matches the name of a student in Merit, you will be able to quickly turn this online discovery into an achievement, Newsroom press release, or post a link to the story on the student's Merit pages.
Mentions vs Merit AI
While these platforms both search for and identify news about your students, they are tools that accomplish two different things. Here are some of the key differences:
Sources and Keywords
Mentions uses your customizable keywords to locate mentions of your institution on external news websites. Your keywords can contain a variety of words and phrases, including your institution's name, abbreviation, athletics mascot, president's name and more.
Merit AI will search your institution's internal news feeds for mentions of your students. These RSS feeds are managed by your institution and contain a collection of stories published on your website. Merit AI does not require keywords and instead identifies names in each story and compares them to students in Merit.
Repurposing Content
You cannot repurpose articles found through Mentions. This material was typically not written by someone at your institution, and therefore, you won't have permission to reuse it as an achievement or press release. However, you can still add links to these articles to students' Merit pages.
You can repurpose content discovered through Merit AI. This material was originally published on your institution's website and therefore, you have permission to turn it into a Merit achievement, Newsroom press release, or post links to the articles on students' Merit pages.
Student Discoveries
After locating each external mention of your school, Mentions will scan the article and attempt to identify students within the story. A student does not need to be included in a story found through Mentions. The presence of any one of your keywords is enough.
Unlike Mentions, students are critical in Merit AI. It will scan the articles in your organization's RSS feed and let you know every time a student is discovered. A student must be found in a story in order to repurpose it as an achievement.