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More than just PR: A holistic approach to media monitoring

by | Apr 11, 2017 | Media database, Media Monitoring, Social Media, Traditional Media

Though media monitoring and analysis has traditionally been used for public relations purposes, there are many ways that other departments can leverage the system. This multidisciplinary approach to the practice allows businesses to receive a higher ROI from their media monitoring and analysis provider.

Public relations and communications professionals typically employ a media monitoring and analysis routine for the following practices:

  • Monitoring media pick-up on press releases and media pitches;
  • Understanding which journalists and publications have the most influence on their coverage and their industry’s coverage;
  • Finding and analyzing trends in coverage;
  • Monitoring sentiment in key publics with regard to reputation and brand;
  • Identifying issues with key publics and implementing issues management strategies;
  • Tracking mentions of a specific brand or brand executives;
  • Demonstrating to stakeholders the value of public relations and communications efforts;
  • Mitigating reputation damage by quickly and effectively responding to negative brand mentions;
  • Ensuring quotes are being properly attributed and, if not, ensuring a press release or retraction is issued.

And these strategies are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using media monitoring and analysis services to strengthen public relations and communications efforts. But did you know you can also use a media monitoring and analysis provider for the following?

Marketing

A company’s marketing department is responsible for feeding the sales pipeline of a specific product/service through external communications efforts—but creative applications are most effective when they’re based on compelling insights! In order to increase the effectiveness of these efforts, marketing can employ a media monitoring and analysis strategy for:

  • Monitoring current target demographics and getting a better understanding of their attitudes towards a specific brand, product, and/or industry;
  • Pulling insights from established target demographics to strengthen current and future marketing campaigns;
  • Identifying new and potential target demographics through traditional and social media channels;
  • Identifying positive brand advocates and negative brand influencers;
  • Tracking hashtags and brand mentions during campaign periods;
  • Following content marketing trends and implementing new strategies;
  • Establishing benchmarks for future marketing campaigns.

Your business can leverage media monitoring and analysis for growth hacking your marketing efforts.

Internal Communications

Those who work in internal communications know that in order for employees to stay productive, work collaboratively, and communicate openly with one another, everyone needs to be “kept in the loop”. Good news for internal communications professionals, this can easily be done by circulating a curated media briefing—but this department can also use media monitoring and analysis for:

  • Staying ahead of external crisis by identifying potential risk and communicating it internally right away;
  • Understanding your brand’s reputation and working together with your team to create a unified brand voice for external communications channels such as social media;
  • Identifying issues that may impact your industry and working quickly toward implementing internal policies (ie. computer usage standards and policies);
  • Understanding pain points of employees hired by similar companies and improving workplace conditions and communications;
  • Understanding changes happening in similar organizations and communicating potential impacts to employees.

Human Resources

When looking to grow a business and hire new employees, individuals who work in human resources are constantly on the hunt for the best and brightest talent in their industry. It’s also responsibility of human resources to ensure that employees follow proper conduct and uphold a company’s reputation externally—both of these tasks can be daunting! For this reason, human resources can use media monitoring and analysis for:

  • Screening current prospects in preparation for interviews;
  • Headhunting new prospects by keeping an eye on keywords related to hiring qualifications;
  • Monitoring social media to ensure employer reputation is being upheld on social channels;
  • Understanding where your competitors are prospecting candidates;
  • Identifying new developments in the HR industry and leveraging them to create new employee training initiatives.

Related: HR: Search for the best and the brightest.

Sales

The sales department is responsible for an organization’s bottom line. To increase productivity and produce a healthy pipeline—and keep the C-Suite happy—the sales department can use media monitoring and analysis for:

  • Gathering qualified leads and mitigating risk by monitoring brand mentions of prospects;
  • Getting a better understanding of how a prospect is currently being perceived in the media in order to better align your company’s products with your prospect’s pain points;
  • Monitoring social media for customer/prospect sentiment—understanding how their current customers feel about them can help customize your sales pitch;
  • Monitoring traditional and social media channels to have a better understanding of which geographic locations/demographics are currently talking about your product, making them more likely to purchase.

Client/Customer Services

Those who work in client/customer services know that one of the main reasons a business is successful is due to customer satisfaction—and they are responsible for just that! To keep the smiles flowing, client/customer services can use media monitoring and analysis for:

  • Identifying which channels your customers prefer to use to communicate through;
  • Understanding what current customers are saying on these channels;
  • Quickly addressing customer queries and concerns;
  • Identifying customer pain points and using them to leverage product development and communications efforts.

Related:  Using social media for exceptional customer service.

Risk Management

Understanding and mitigating potential risk is usually the responsibility of several internal departments. However, hiring a third-party media monitoring and analysis provider can centralize the workload by:

  • Identifying supplier-related risk by monitoring media mentions of new/existing suppliers;
  • Monitoring media to research policy precedent in different areas and industries, allowing your business to understand the potential risk associated with implementing the policy;
  • Keeping an eye on competitors to mitigate potential risk associated with operational management;
  • Having a better understanding of the risks potentially affecting your clients and customers;
  • Staying up-to-date with the latest security breaches and scams to ensure your IT team is constantly keeping your valuable information safe and sound;
  • Setting up real-time alerts to monitor key signals in the media.

Agility PR Solutions offers options when it comes to monitoring coverage and measuring impact.

Whether we do it for you, or help you do it yourself, we’re here to help your organization realize its full potential.

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This post was first published on March 3, 2016.

 

Agility PR Solutions
Agility PR Solutions provides powerful, yet easy to use media database, monitoring, and analytics solutions for tomorrow’s communicators. Since 2003, clients have trusted our tools and services to help them identify and connect with influencers, capture coverage, and measure impact of everything they do. Whether we do it for you or help you do it yourself, our team of media experts make it easy to monitor and measure traditional, broadcast, social and online coverage.

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