What is Media Monitoring?
Have you heard the term, “Media Monitoring”? In the world of public relations, knowing things ahead of time is critical to the job. Being able to see and manage media engagement on one platform is a must. Media monitoring is a tool every company should be using to improve their PR and stay on top of their brand image.
Take a look at why you should be using it to advance your PR and marketing:
Media Monitoring Defined
Media monitoring is monitoring all forms of media: print, social, broadcast, radio. etc. for mentions of your business, brand, services, or anything else related to your industry. This allows you to be aware of things happening in “real-time”. It allows companies to act on any PR related matter before it spirals in different direction.
Essentially, it is a way for you to stay on top of what the media, your audience, and the general public are saying about you or about your industry.
Why Monitor?
There are many reasons why you may want to create a media monitoring division within your company or to hire a provider.
Here are a few reasons why you should monitor:
1. Helps you engage with customers and prospects.
You know that timing matters. When you leverage media monitoring, you’re able to respond in real time when someone mentions you online.
For example, if a customer is complaining about your products or services you can engage them immediately and resolve the problem. If they’re providing a positive comment, you can thank them and engage them online. If someone has a question related to your products or services, you can answer their question quickly.
2. Helps you stay in tune with your audience needs, goals, and pain points.
Media monitoring can be about more than simply tracking brand mentions in real time. You can track keywords or your target audience as well. This helps you stay on top of what your audience needs so you can provide it and engage in solutions.
3. Helps you build relationships with the media.
It can helps you discover who talks about you, your industry, and your products and services. By doing so can lead to solid media relations campaigns. You can reach out to specific outlets and representatives and begin to build relationships with them. It helps you know who to connect with. Of course, hopefully you already have a media relations campaign. But monitoring the media can help you grow it.
How Do You Get Started with Media Monitoring?
You can hire a service. One of the easiest ways to initiate a media monitoring campaign is to outsource it and hire a company to take care of the process for you. This is a good idea because you can cover more outlets than if you’re trying to do it on your own. However, it isn’t free and there may be a small time delay between a mention and you learning about it and being able to act on it.
You can set up alerts and leverage technology. The technology exists for you to be able to manage media monitoring on your own.
Media monitoring should be part of your business systems. Whether you outsource the service or manage it in house, it is always good to know what is being said about your business.
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