On-Call Officer

Media monitoring sounds like it would be super helpful to you, but only in specific instances. Maybe you like to use it when you’re doing a SWOT analysis, so that you can get an idea of where your organization sits in the current environment. Or maybe you’re doing a perception audit and want an in-depth understanding of where your company stands in the media to use as a benchmark before making any other decisions. Perhaps you’ve got an occasional public relations campaign that involved a decent amount of media relations on your end, or you have a client or two who like to have a daily brief of their company in the media.

Whatever you’re monitoring, it’s on an as-needed basis, and doesn’t require any complicated measurement or analysis.

Expert Tip

Media monitoring can be used to inform strategic decisions, respond more efficiently to crises and put you one step ahead of your competitors. Being proactive about crisis situations and never being surprised by the competition is one of the greatest benefits of media monitoring, so it may be worth considering increasing your media monitoring activities in the future, or brainstorming ways you can optimize your media monitoring solution to help achieve broader business goals. Check out this Ultimate Guide to Media Monitoring to help get you started.

Your Solution: Self-serve tool

A solid self-serve media monitoring tool will allow you to get what you’re looking for here. Need to see how you’ve been doing in the last six months? Great. Want to do a bit of research here and there? There it is waiting for you. Need to do some basic daily/weekly monitoring? Whenever you need it, your tool is there for you and ideally you’ve got a support team from your vendor who can help you out if you run into any issues.

How to Step Up Your Game

If you’re not already, you might want to try:

• Talking to your provider about one-off reports that could be of use to you or your clients (i.e. annual reports, quarterly reports etc.)
• Integrating media monitoring into a crisis communications plan so that you’re prepared no matter what curve ball is thrown your way
• Regular media monitoring of competitors and industry to help make smarter decisions when it comes to strategic planning
• Getting in touch with your provider’s support team to make sure you’re getting the most out of your monitoring and reporting