Why you should monitor the media
Your business will survive without media monitoring! Or at least until the first image crisis. And it's easy to have one today. Someone will post something, someone else will pick it up and the disaster is ready. How to stop it? Keep abreast of the situation. React in time. And this is what media monitoring will help you do.
What is media monitoring?
Imagine a spider web. There is a spider in its heart. That is your business. The spider releases its threads - the thickest of them are services and products. Thinner threads are there too. The company organizes events and participates in others. It recruits and fires employees. It runs social media channels. This creates a whole web of various actions.
The web finally starts to vibrate. The spider must know what moved it. A juicy fly - a popular Facebook post saying that your product worked well? An insignificant small leaf, just a comment about late delivery? Or a pebble that punctured the web like an article suggesting that you easily fire employees.
It is worth knowing why your web is moving. And that is what media monitoring is for.
How does professional media monitoring look like
Do you think you are already monitoring the media? After all, you're checking your company social media accounts. You read the industry press. You ease disputes with difficult clients. Likewise, you feel more or less what people say about your company. Just like you feel your general health wellbeing. But is that enough? It’s easy to overlook the first symptoms of some serious diseases. Only thorough examinations can detect them.
Proper media monitoring is such an examination, one of many, of your company's image.
It can detect even the slightest symptom. This means publication. All you have to do is use a programme that will capture every mention of your company from the web and then examine its content.
Here is what information a professional media monitoring tool will provide you with on each publication:
- where it comes from - the website, the newspaper, the radio, etc,
- when it was published,
- what is its title,
- in short, what is its subject,
- how many people it reached, how many reactions were collected.
You can purchase access to tools such as Coverage Book or Brand24 and then use them by yourself. You can easily outsource media monitoring as well. Go for it if you are short of time or need an in-depth media monitoring analysis.
What are the benefits of media monitoring
Let us assume that, from now on, you will manage fish up mention that concerns your business from the media ocean. This creates many opportunities. Let us take a look at some of them
Thanks to media monitoring you will:
Plan your actions more effectively. You will notice, for instance, that your recipients are more likely to share a post about sale that is planned in your shop than about another award which your shop gathered. Maybe from now on you will organize sales more often and make sure online portals write about it.
Research the market. You will find out what media reach more of your potential customers. Do you know which portal of many should write about the sale in your shop? The one that has already been visited in large numbers by your customers.
Get to know your customers. It's not just what media they visit that's important. You will also check whether they are satisfied with what they have bought from you. What is their opinion of your services. After all, they share their impressions on online forums or Facebook groups. Maybe they exchange general comments about their expectations. It is then good to see them and meet them.
Deal with the crisis more quickly. And fire is easy to ignite. One unfortunate step and suddenly everyone is talking about your brand. Just like you do not want them to talk. What to do about it? Explain the situation as soon as possible. Correct the misunderstanding and if necessary, apologize. Say goodbye to the PR crisis by answering every unfortunate remark. Address the smallest portal that has written about you and ask them to add your comment. After all, thanks to media monitoring, no unflattering note will escape your attention.
Watch your competition. What attracts most media attention? How do others deal with crises? Where is it not worth to advertise, because your competitors have already seized the area? Why not try communication strategies that work well for others. Or, what’s even more important, avoid other brands’ mistakes.
You already know that your company, even if stationary, exceeds one specific point on the map. The services, the products you offer, your business traffic goes further into the world and... It's worth knowing what's happening to them. Lack of this knowledge can cost you. At best, you will miss the moment when they speak well of you. At worst, it is when they speak badly. You certainly know the stories of businesses that have fallen, because they did not react in time to an affair. Avoid their fate. Monitor the media.
