How to Track Media Mentions
Do you know what people are saying about you? When you issue a press release are you able to see who is talking about you and what they’re saying? What about your social media audience, your customers, and your prospects? Whenever you create and publish a piece of content, whether it’s a blog post, a report, or a press release, you create an opportunity for people to talk about you.
If you’re not able to track those conversations and media mentions, then you’re missing out on some key information that can not only help you prevent problems, but can help you create a stronger message and a more powerful business. Let’s talk about what media mentions are, whey they’re important, and then share a few tips and tools to track them.
What are Media Mentions?
A media mention is when someone mentions you online. Pretty vague, right? It’s actually a term that encompasses a lot of possibilities. For example, if a customer mentions your company on their Facebook page, that’s a media mention. The term “media” generally refers to the channel, not the entity that’s doing the mentioning.
So a prospect that says, “Have you ever used ABC Company” on social media counts as a media mention for ABC Company. Here’s where it gets fun. If you share a blog post on your Twitter page and include a link to your site, when someone retweets that it’s a “media mention.” And of course, if the media covers a press release that you distributed or someone shares your release, then that’s a mention too.
Now you’re probably realizing that you may have thousands of mentions each day, right? And that knowing who is talking about you and what they’re saying can be incredibly powerful. So how can you track this information and stay on top of it all?
Create Alerts – There are a variety of tools that will send you reports on keywords or scenarios. For example, Google Alerts lets you set up email alerts anytime someone uses certain keywords online. You can make those keywords your business name and track information that way. There’s also a tool called IFTT or If This Then That, which allows you to set up various tracking and action scenarios. You can create a “recipe” that scans RSS feeds of important industry websites and then sends you a daily email alert.
Google’s Me on the Web – This is a tool that lets you see when your personal data appears online. You can use it to set up notifications and monitor mentions about certain company employees or senior staff.
Social Mention – This tool helps you evaluate social sentiment on various social media networks. You can monitor several channels at once and learn not only what they’re saying about you, but the keywords they use when they’re talking about your company.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s available to you to track media mentions and to learn what people are saying. Find one tool and start using it. Integrate this type of data and analytics into your existing evaluation and marketing strategy. You can build on it once you get going.
