OK, you may have heard about media monitoring, but never really understood what it was all about. Well, welcome to Media Monitoring 101.
So what is media monitoring?
Media monitoring is the process of tracking the media for mentions of keywords, topics or issues that (predominately) companies are interested in. Traditional media monitoring requires scanning press publications, or listening to radio or TV, or scouring the internet to find articles or on-air mentions that match a client’s brief. Once a match is made, a copy of the article, or a summary of the broadcast transcript, or a link to the webpage is sent to the client.
Why monitor the media?
Think about it for a moment - mass media coverage has been shown to affect stock prices; lead to corporate collapses; reduce sales; result in the resignation of senior officeholders – even bring down Presidents. Even on an everyday level, mass media help shape brands and reputations; inform (or misinform) consumers about products; raise issues in public debate; and influence governments to change policy, regulate or legislate in certain areas (1).
So given the power of the media, it’s pretty important we track what’s being reported!
Who monitors the media?
Governments and corporations will monitor the press, tv, radio and online to gain information about how they are being presented in the media. Public relations, communication and marketing professionals usually drive the process. They track the media to measure and analyse their coverage in a number of ways (2) :
The audience reached by media coverage (circulation or audience size)
The ‘share of voice’ of various organisations or spokespersons;
The number of mentions of particular issues or messages.
Placement of articles eg. front page, early pages, middle of paper or edition, at the back;
Positioning of content such as key messages eg. headline, prominent mention, passing mention;
Images such as photos, illustrations, charts, cartoons, etc;
Issues discussed and reported and their relative importance to the client organisation;
Messages communicated in articles – favourable and unfavourable;
Sources quoted – including their organisation or affiliation which can affect their credibility;
Tone of content eg. extreme language, figures of speech that denote meaning such as sarcasm, metaphors or similes that are favourable or unfavourable, etc;
Contextual factors such as prevailing economic conditions, major natural disasters occurring around the time, etc which might affect audiences’ reading and interpretation of the content.
Why use a professional media monitoring service?
Professional media monitoring services monitor thousands of newspapers, magazines, trade journals, radio shows, television broadcasts and websites around the clock, and deliver your news to you directly. Professional services will deliver your news clips in a consistent format, through a unified channel, often with circulation and/or demographic information.
New services such as www.slicemedia.com.au offer even the smallest of businesses the opportunity to access professional media monitoring, with packages starting at around $70 per month.
For a tour of how a media monitoring service works, check out:
www.slicemedia.com.au/tour
(1) http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/documents/CARMA%20White%20Paper%20-%20Analysis.pdf pg 4
(2) http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/documents/CARMA%20White%20Paper%20-%20Analysis.pdf pg 8
Tracking the media, monitoring the message
