What it does
Mentions covers the off-site half of AI visibility. The Reddit tab monitors threads where your store should be part of the answer and drafts a reply for each. The Digital PR tab finds review sites, blogs and industry pages that AI assistants cite when recommending products, and drafts the outreach email. Sphen never posts and never sends — you review, edit and publish from your own accounts.
Why it matters
AI answers cite third-party sources far more often than they cite shop pages. The Sources deep dive, opened from the AI visibility deep dives dropdown on Analytics, shows exactly which domains beat you to the citation. Getting mentioned on those domains — and in the Reddit threads the engines read — is what moves your citation share once your own catalog is clean.
Setup
Open Mentions. Monitoring is set up for your store as part of onboarding — it does not switch itself on at install. Once it is running, the first qualified threads and drafts take a few days to accumulate.
On the Reddit tab, open a thread's Response draft. Check Relevance, Google position and whether it is one of the AI-cited threads before spending time on it.
Edit the draft to sound like you and press Save edits. Saving resets the approval, so approve afterwards with Approve — or Reject if the thread is a bad fit.
Press Open Reddit thread, post the reply yourself from your own account, then paste the link into Posted comment URL and press Mark as posted.
On the Digital PR tab, review each opportunity's Subject and Outreach draft, adjust them, and press Save draft. Use Open target to check the site first.
Send the email from your own inbox, then press Mark contacted. When coverage goes live, paste the link into Live coverage or proof URL and press Mark live.
Reading the results
The counters at the top of each tab are your pipeline. On Reddit: Opportunities, Drafts, Approved, Posted and AI-cited threads — the last one is the number to grow, because those threads already feed AI answers. On Digital PR: Opportunities, Ready, Contacted and Live wins.
Digital PR opportunities are typed: Review, Editorial, PR portal and Reclamation — the last meaning someone already mentions your brand without linking to it, which is the cheapest win on the list. Work reclamations first, then reviews.
The realistic rhythm is slow and compounding: a handful of posted replies and one or two live placements per month, checked against the Sources deep dive to see whether the domains you worked start citing you.
Troubleshooting
There are no drafts at all.
Give it a few days first — qualified threads and opportunities accumulate slowly. If both tabs are still empty after that, monitoring has most likely not been switched on for your store yet: contact support and ask for it. If the tab reports a load failure instead, press Retry and check Activity.
Marking something posted or live is rejected.
Both actions need a valid proof URL. Mark as posted only accepts a link on reddit.com, so paste the permalink of your own comment. Mark live accepts any http or https URL. Paste the complete link, not a shortened or partial one.
An item's status changed while I had the page open.
The entry was updated elsewhere since the page loaded. Reload to see its current status, then repeat your action.
Frequently asked questions
Will Sphen ever post or email on my behalf?
No. Both workspaces are draft-only by design. Reddit replies are posted from your account, outreach emails from your own inbox.
How do I find the right outreach targets?
Start with the Sources deep dive on Analytics, which ranks the external domains AI answers cite when your prompts are checked, and flags the ones that cite a source but not you. That is your target list.
Is off-site work worth it before my catalog is fixed?
Rarely. Fix the catalog first via Recommendations — a citation that leads to a thin product page converts badly and won't be repeated.
Still stuck?
Support answers installation, catalog sync, audit, billing, privacy, and account questions for the SPHEN.AI Shopify app.