Media monitoring is one of the top priorities many large companies focus on today. Staying on top of what the media, your target audience and the public at large say about your brand and your competition, can give you the edge for engagement, reputation management, and increasing sales. Therefore, a lot is on the line when you hire a media monitoring company. Here are 5 things that your media monitoring company should do for you.
1. Identify and then track all the types of media you need covered.
A media monitoring company should be able to help you identify the types of coverage and issues you want to track. In many cases, you might already know what you want to track. You probably have customers that do some or all of: watching television, spending time online, reading newspapers and listening to radio. Also, your competitors may be active in all those media, and your industry issues might be discussed. Therefore, you need to make sure your monitoring provider can actually cover television, online, radio, newspapers and magazines. In many cases, you will want to break down television and print coverage to regional specifics, as well, depending on where your markets are. Once you have agreed upon the types of media coverage your company needs, then you can determine which media monitoring company has the ability to provide you with the services you need.
Assist in setting up media monitoring briefs and creating the right searches.
Once the media monitoring scope in our #1 is defined, then it is time to set up that monitoring. This is a critical step in the process. The company you hire should help ensure that you have the right searches set up. Media monitoring won’t be useful if your tools aren’t set up properly. Irrelevant search returns just waste valuable time. Your media monitoring company should have the expertise and customized client service to help you create your set up and keep an eye on it to ensure that it is up to date and changes with the times as different issue might arise. Setting it once and then leaving it will not help you for the long term. Before signing with a media monitoring provider, ask them to detail what type of support they provide so that you know what to expect.
2. Offer different speeds of monitoring delivery with filters.
Some media monitoring providers have different speeds of delivery. Some may provide a daily email with your mentions for that day or maybe you only need a weekly summary of mentions. Some providers will give a real-time feed, but with only minimal filtering and lots of irrelevant content. The combination of speed, accuracy and scope provide the fundamental benefit of media monitoring. Filtering helps with the accuracy, and therefore the effectiveness, of your media monitoring service, and you should make sure your monitoring provider can demonstrate their ability to provide both accuracy and speed before you sign up. Some media monitoring companies will try to lock you in to a long term contract without letting you even see how their platform works in real time with real issues.
3. Guide you when you need assistance.
Just as you are an expert in your field or your industry, your media monitoring company needs to be an expert in this arena. If you aren’t sure about what you should be monitoring, then you should be offered advice and assistance in figuring out what you should be tracking in the way of keywords and key phrases as well as where the company should be looking to monitor.
4. Offer concise reports on coverage.
This is especially important if you need to report your media tracking findings to a manager, board or directors, or other team members. A great media monitoring provider can make this easy by having a report function that quickly and easily prepares regular media coverage reports for you.
Summary
Media monitoring can be a big advantage for your company and help you stay one step ahead of your competition. Local and regional monitoring is one important way to hone in on media monitoring and ensuring that your media mentions apply to your company. Isentia media monitoring would be an excellent example of this. When you are looking to hire a media intelligence company, make sure that you can check our 5 things off your list that your media monitoring company should be able to do for you.
Written by Elizabeth Victor
Photo Credit / Isentia
