Media Monitoring: Why Brands Need It to Avoid PR Disasters

Quick, there’s an image crisis on the loose! Who you gonna call?

Take a step back, Ghostbusters; there’s another savior in town. And we call them media monitors.

How many times have you Googled yourself? Once? A handful of times? Whether or not you search your name online, most people already like to keep tabs on themselves and understand how their personal brand may be perceived. It could be something as simple as hearing about what your aunt had to say at the family cookout last year or knowing your boss’s perception of you at work.

Image matters – and companies understand this well. After all, how someone's viewed allows for opinions to be formed. And opinions sell ideas. But tracking every opinion in the world is close to impossible. So how exactly does a brand get a real sense of the audience's wants, likes, and dislikes about their business?

With the help of media monitoring tools, of course. Let's break down what media monitoring is and how a company can leverage it using the right set of tools.

Media monitoring isn’t a new concept. It’s been around for ages, dating way back to 1852 when the first press clipping agency in the world was set up in London. Celebrities at the time would enquire about any articles that mentioned them from time to time. Fast forward to the 21st century, companies, personalities, and agencies scour the media on a regular basis.

Monitoring mentions, sometimes referred to as social listening, is a key strategy in brand reputation management. It’s how organizations and individuals can visualize what people are saying about their brand in real-time. By doing so, companies can find out how the public perceives the brand and whether they feel positively or negatively about it. Not only can organizations discover key topics or trends associated with the brand, but they can also assess how it stacks up against the competition.

The term “media’ is quite vast and can mean many different things. In today’s digital landscape, online media channels keep switching their positions. What’s considered to be popular today could become obsolete tomorrow. Nevertheless, these are some of the channels that act as the main sources of information for media monitoring activities:

• Internet: This one’s going nowhere. If anything, the internet will only continue to grow at a breakneck pace. How we consume our content is dictated by the way the World Wide Web evolves. With search engines pulling in almost all the keywords in the world’s lexicon, tracking things like the online news, media mentions of your brand, online conversations, and trends on the internet are the way to go.
• Social media platforms: Social media is the watering hole of the 21st century, paving the way for brands and individuals to become influencers in their own right. Social media monitoring tools enable parties to listen to their audience across various social networks, connect with them, and steer the conversation in whichever direction they want.
• Video streaming platforms: Platforms like YouTube are teeming with content about anything under the sun. If TV channels controlled public perception years ago, YouTube shapes how people think about topics today. Content creators and channels on YouTube have commentary on a host of products. From skincare and makeup to video games and product launches – there’s a video about everything, and people love leaving their comments under each one.
• Podcast platforms: Platforms like Spotify and Apple Music host podcasts apart from music. Like YouTube, these podcasts touch a diverse range of topics and share a lot of information. For example, tech podcasts talk about the latest software and trends within the tech space. Since niche podcasts like these encourage listeners to form opinions after every episode, following podcasts can help companies get a pulse check and assess the situation.
• Traditional media: Most forms of traditional media have gotten a digital makeover. Leading newspapers now have dedicated news sites, and magazine spreads are now e-magazines. However, print media has some mileage left. There’s still a sizable chunk of the target audience that consumes content from newspapers and other forms of press coverage that aren’t in a digital format.

Why media monitoring is important

Media has an innate ability to have a life of its own. A piece of media coverage can either blow up and create a storm or drown in the sea of “breaking news”. Having the power to control the way media is presented is a strong weapon every business should have in its arsenal. 

Media monitoring is the key to holding that power.

When it comes to public-facing media, like press releases or maintaining public relations, perception acts as the backbone. The difference between a C-lister celebrity and an A-lister star is the public perception they garner. PR managers work tirelessly to ensure that their clients look good in the public eye. That includes watching what they say, how they behave, what their platform should be, and how active they are.

Companies might not have dedicated Hollywood managers to do the same for them, but media monitoring acts like a pseudo-PR manager. Let’s look at some of the benefits of media monitoring.

1. Get to know your target audience better

How do businesses sell better? By understanding the target audience. There are many ways of going about this. Media monitoring is just another way of monitoring the market and all it has to offer. Tracking and gathering mentions about the brand through comments, reviews, or content like blogs and videos across various sources gives businesses a lot of insight to work with. Not only can they comprehend what their audience is saying, but they can also learn about how the target audience feels about the competition and what they’re currently doing. 

This also helps brands create messaging that resonates better with the audience. Using a topical event that still connects to your business can be used to build effective communication channels with prospective customers. This brings the target audience closer to the company. Being current and relatable is the universal language.

2. Quantifying your marketing efforts

Marketing is public-facing. Most of the activities around marketing involve interacting with people either directly or indirectly. One of the best ways for marketers to gauge the success of a marketing strategy is by hearing from the parties a campaign or activity was created for – “the people”. 

For example, if an event was planned and hosted by a company, attendees would be the first ones to praise or denounce the event. Observing how many people enjoyed attending the event and how far they found the agenda valuable helps marketers note down what works and what doesn’t. It also helps them prepare for future events keeping the public’s desires in mind.

Everything in marketing can be quantified. If the response to a marketing campaign – whether it’s an advertisement, a blog, an event, or a social media post – is overwhelmingly good or bad, that’s a metric that can be used to measure marketing success.

3. Making or breaking reputation

A happy customer may not say much, but a disgruntled customer can say a lot.

Your product or service is only as good as the reputation that your business holds. Too many negative reviews and people might be dissuaded from purchasing anything. No matter how hard you may try, there will always be a critic out there.

Mistakes can happen. Whether it’s a delivery service that delays sending a package, a makeup line that sold defective products, or a cloud server that had issues backing up files – every company hits a rough patch at some point. Perfection, while incredibly desirable, isn’t attainable. The key here is to be prepared for any negative views and come up with a strategy to overcome that. Make your weaknesses sound like opportunities for growth, and then act on them.

By swiftly responding to detractors and constructive criticism, organizations maintain the reputation of a business that listens to their customers and works on fixing issues quickly.

4. Identifying influencers that control public opinion

There’s always that one person everyone looks up to.

Public perception is a sum of individual opinions. But a public’s opinion can be swayed by someone revered within society. The way models and designers dictate the fashion trends for a season, journalists, and influencers affect how the public thinks about a topic or a brand.

Influencers could be experts within the industry, larger companies, analysts, or famous personalities. If a respected individual or renowned enterprise were a paying customer and gave a testimonial about the product, the business would instantly grab eyeballs and garner attention. Even if they weren’t customers, just brand advocates who believed in the company’s offerings and made a point to communicate this across their platform, they can boost a company’s reputation and credibility.

On the flip side, if these influencers or journalists don’t have positive things to say about the business, it can affect the organization. Bouncing back from bad coverage is a lot harder than people might think. Identifying both sides of the spectrum and establishing a relationship with an influencer or journalist can help a company grab some control over the narrative. 

5. Identifying the total share of voice

Share of voice (SoV) is a great way to benchmark a company’s market presence against its competitors. It’s a good metric to gauge how popular a brand is compared to others within the industry. Unlike the traditional sense of SoV, which depends on the number of ads and their reach, online SoV is based on real-time engagement, conversations, and behavior of the target audience. 

By exploring each conversation centered around a company or brand, businesses get access to feedback and reviews and use that information to enhance their offerings or messaging. These conversations can be measured in many ways, like hashtags or trending topics on social media platforms. One way of monitoring SoV and other activity around a company is by using Google Alerts. Creating a Google Alert for a brand name or nicknames associated with the company is a great way of getting updates and email alerts any time it’s mentioned across the internet.

6. Mitigating a PR crisis

As much as we’d like to be crisis-free, it’s an idealistic concept.

Media monitoring can help organizations mitigate an ongoing crisis or reduce the impact of an upcoming one. Let’s take a look at these situations in detail:

• Before a crisis: It’s usually calm before the storm hits. After an earthquake occurs in a coastal region, a tsunami usually hits the shore. Locals know this fact and keep a close eye on earthquake reports so that they can prepare for an evacuation before any major damage occurs. This philosophy is similar to the one that’s observed before a PR crisis. Some of the most telltale signs of an upcoming crisis are immediate competitors going through a PR disaster.

For instance, if there are reports about a popular aerated beverage caught having impurities, other beverage companies should take note and work on campaigns that emphasize how carefully each bottle is manufactured before public outrage diverts its attention toward the rest of the players in the beverage industry.

• During a crisis: If a company is embroiled in a PR crisis, the best thing to do in this situation is to monitor what people are saying and really listen to them.  A business can only address a crisis if they know what kind of questions the public has. 

For example, if a skincare company fell into controversy for having fungi growing inside the packaged containers, the audience’s trust is broken, and they’re understandably hurt. After the initial backlash, questions will arise about the product’s safety, its efficiency, the ingredients, and the packaging. PR professionals will need to track all these questions and comments before releasing a statement that answers them appropriately.

• After a crisis: After the crisis has passed, there’s still a lingering doubt surrounding the brand and the product. PR pros and marketing teams need to work together to create new campaigns that rehabilitate the brand’s image and push forward the message that the company has learned from its mistakes.

While media monitoring helps brands and individuals alike to formulate a crisis mitigation strategy beforehand, what really helps stick the landing is a thorough press release distribution plan. Whether companies need to do some damage control or push out a new and reformed narrative to the wider audience, having a PR distribution tool can help communications professionals spread their message efficiently.

Top 5 media monitoring software

Media monitoring software or media monitoring services enable users to create personalized feeds that cover a range of media channels and constantly update these feeds in real-time to include current activity and content updates. PR professionals utilize such software to track any mentions of a brand or organization, observe who’s talking about the company, and figure out which outlets to reach out to build public relations.

To qualify for inclusion in the media monitoring category, a product must:

• Monitor several digital media sources
• Gather and save hyperlinks or publications that mention referring a business or individual in archives or buckets for future use
• Deliver information and notifications based on predefined channels
• Evaluate reported data, including the magnitude and type of certain publications, content, and organizational impact
• Allow users to select buzzwords, mentions, or subjects and personalize dashboards according to their preferences

*Below are the five leading media monitoring software from G2's Summer 2021 Grid® Report. Some reviews may be edited for clarity.

1. Meltwater

Meltwater is the leading media monitoring solution that tracks online news sources and monitors and analyzes media coverage from sources like online publications, print, social media, TV, and radio stations in real-time with the help of its listening tools. The platform sends email alerts of any critical mentions to its users and enables them to find the right influencers within the space.

What users liked:

“The news aggregator and the social media tool, Engage. I have a good user experience. The user interface itself is enjoyable and easy to use. The news aggregator is easy to set up with a new search and to edit the search if something different or a variation comes up. I am not only a user of the tool, but I also train new employees on the tool when they join the Communications team. Meltwater is by far the easiest tool we have to train people with. With Engage, posting is done with ease. Our users do not use the monitoring tool in Engage, but from the minimal amount of interaction I have had with it, it is a tool that I can see our Communications team using. My favorite thing about Engage is the reporting tool. I have been able to see old posts on LinkedIn in Engage that I was not able to find in LinkedIn itself. I would recommend this tool to others.”

– Meltwater Review, Sasha G.

What users disliked:

“The reach on some social media outlets is somehow limited. When monitoring social media outlets such as Instagram, sometimes the metrics don't seem comprehensive.”

– Meltwater Review, José Gregorio C.

2. Cision Communications Cloud

Cision Communications Cloud is a leader in media intelligence with AI and machine learning technology and deep social listening. Cision Communications Cloud® monitors news, social, and broadcast channels and enables users to gain access to automated insights. It acquired Brandwatch in 2021 and has added social and data analytics to its roster of abilities. 

What users liked:

“Cision Communications Cloud has up-to-date contact information and excellent UI for media monitoring. It catches stories my team misses through our daily searches.”

– Cision Communications Cloud Review, Tommy O.

What users disliked:

“I have not found anything that I don't like. There was one time I tried to post a PR web, but they flagged the content as too much of a sales pitch. Yes, at the time, it was frustrating, but looking back, I appreciate that. We have a VERY strong brand, so it's nice to know that other competitors can't pitch a cheaper price on their services and get exposure. It has to be good, valuable, brand-related content.”

– Cision Communications Cloud Review, Michelle A.

3. Semrush

Semrush is an online visibility platform that offers brand monitoring, post tracking, and a social media tracker that allow users to stay alert to their audience’s sentiments, changes made by their competitors, and analyze the business’s competitive landscape with PR monitoring tools.

What users liked:

“The depth of information that is presented about my business' website and SEO rankings is very helpful. I am regularly analyzing the data and suggestions presented to me and implementing the recommendations to generate better results for my business. We have various arms of the business, so I am able to track the performance right across the organization. In addition, we benefit from being able to see a clear picture of our social media following and engagement with several of our channels.”

– Semrush Review, Ash S.

What users disliked:

“There are a few things I don't like; the first is the pricing, other platforms with similar functionality come at half the price. But, for me, the real limitations of the platform are that we are a large agency, and the price is per "seat" or per user. Meaning that when you have multiple sales reps and SEO team members, the price can get high. The number of projects you can track is also limiting; we keep increasing our level but never can get enough projects to handle the number of clients we have. We are rapidly approaching a time when we will not be able to store data long term but will instead have to set up clients each month as we need scans then delete them to make room for the next client.”

– Semrush Review, Connie S.

4. TVEyes

TVEyes is an international broadcast media monitoring company designed for television and radio. It helps users keep clients and leadership informed when they’re on TV, conduct media research, media train executives, create reports, and alert account teams to new coverage. With the keyword and phrase alerts, users can address emerging issues quickly.

What users liked:

“I think TVEyes is incredibly thorough - it doesn't miss anything. We also like how it monitors TV and radio. It's also very easy to cut clips and create reports, which we use in interacting with our clients. We make weekly reports from TV Eyes to show our media coverage - it's easy to watch any story that mentions our team. In addition, it is easy to accumulate our viewership, as well as our publicity value. We've also found it very simple to isolate different topics and create specific reports on those. Sometimes, those are sponsors, and other times, those would be a specific story or subject we are monitoring.”

– TVEyes Review, Scott K.

What users disliked:

“The main things I don't love about TVEyes are from a design perspective -- I don't like how many windows TVEyes uses when editing clips. If you're not careful, you can easily end up with 8+ windows open on your desktop. The homepage design could be modernized a bit to enhance the user experience. Otherwise, I've run into a few stations that TVEyes doesn't monitor, but that issue is typically few and far between.”

– TVEyes Review, Lauren W.

5. AlphaSense

AlphaSense is an AI-powered search engine for market intelligence used by financial firms and corporations. Users can apply sentiment analysis to earnings transcripts and quickly identify inflection points in sentiment using an advanced sentiment score to see shifts in sentiment from previous quarters.

What users liked:

This is an excellent tool for competitive analysis. The user design is intuitive, the search options allow for customization (boolean search, intelligent search). The results are highlighted for ease of review. There is also a chat function with quick turnarounds, and the team is overall responsive and constantly looking for feedback and improvements. The export function for financial tables is very convenient (hopefully will be implemented for Cdn Banks as well). A big differentiator is its sentiment analysis features - it is a big plus for analyzing earnings transcripts, and I'm looking forward to the further additional features.

– AlphaSense Review, Stephen F.

What users disliked:

“I would say it is expensive, but the price is lower than competitive offerings. My only gripe right now is that fine-tuning the email alerts was not very straightforward. But this is largely on me since I set them up once and haven't endeavored to fix them to reduce inbox hits.”

– AlphaSense Review, Ricky M.

Curiosity didn’t kill this cat

Finding out what an audience is saying about a company empowers a business to do better. While keeping track of every opinion, comment, or viewpoint isn’t feasible, media monitoring tools have made the lives of PR professionals and marketers much easier. Whether you're a startup, a small business, or even a large enterprise, a customer's perception fuels a company's reputation. It’s a customer’s market, after all; maintaining a healthy dose of curiosity and regularly asking yourself what the customer’s sentiments about your product or service are can help you ride the waves when they’re high, mitigate any potential PR disasters, and not drown when the tide gets rough.

Media monitoring should be part of any digital marketing strategy. Check out our guide on digital marketing to figure out where and how to start.