Automated reports, notifications about the brand mentions, analysis of mentions of the company - all of these instruments have long been used for tracking the effectiveness of PR campaigns.But does your company need all these tools? To understand this, let’s analyze some monitoring tools functions in the context of media analytics.

‍Budgeting

‍CaseA company's marketing department requests additional funding for the promotion and analysis of the brand's media field. The promotion plan has been approved, but the allocated budget is limited and it is not enough to buy personalized content analytics. The data volumes are large and it is impossible to analyze everything within a short period of time.SolutionTo provide top managers with a report, a communications expert does not have to analyze the mentions number in daily reports for the entire period of the communication campaign manually. As monitoring tools usually have dashboards reflecting analytics of mentions, where you can select the required period and download the graphs that reflect the impact of the work performed. Thus, an expert can promptly prepare personalized reports with minimal time and budget spent.

‍Media monitoring in the work of a marketer: 5 lifehacks

‍‍Managing negative mentions

‍CaseWhen a PR expert of a large "N" supermarket came to work in the morning, he decided to devote a few minutes as usual to analyze the media field in order to keep up with all the major events while making a cup of coffee before the meeting. He sees a surge in new publications about his brand. In order to understand mentions sentiment, the expert usually needs to read all the materials, and the larger the company, the more there is to read. Such a process is usually time-consuming and in case of negative mentions there is usually no time to search for the root of the problem. A quick response is needed.SolutionThe quick quality analytics can be made in a few minutes by choosing a period of interest and seeing the entire array of negative publications. Famous monitoring tools, like LOOQME, have such features in their platforms - where you can easily see the picture overall and by each publication in details just by clicking on an indicator on a graph and immediately go to the feed to view all the materials that are behind this indicator. In our case the PR expert could easily understand that the resources where the articles were published were low-rated, and the average possible number of views per publication was insignificant. Thus, he was able to analyze the media field quickly and fluently and to understand how to build further communications – all while the coffee was being prepared!

‍Competitor Analysis

‍CaseLet's imagine that a new player is entering the gas station market. Since this is a fairly competitive environment, a communications expert would need to constantly monitor the news not only about his company, but also about its competitors. He would need to understand what and where the competitors publish. One would also need to know how often they do it, how their target audience reacts, what problems they have and what their strong sides are.SolutionRealizing who the main players in their category are, the communications expert begins to monitor the recent competitors’ activity in the media. Based on data he received, the expert has an opportunity to analyze and develop the most optimal plan for entering the market and adjust the activeness of future communication.

‍Quality control of brand communications in the regions

‍CaseIt is not always possible to keep track of the quality of work in a large company. The head of the PR department of a large agricultural company needs to control activity in regional media and publications plan implementation on the official Facebook page.SolutionTo obtain this information quickly the expert can use a chart on regional media in a monitoring tool he uses, as they most have this feature. It will show the number of publications for each region as well as the source type. Regions that are currently not relevant can be disabled directly on the chart. Thus, the expert always has access to information with visualization and understands the quality of work in each region.

‍Evaluation of the brand position in the market

‍CaseThe company takes one of the leading places in the banking industry, but it is becoming more and more difficult for a communications manager to show that it is their communication that is more qualitative than that of a competitor. There is a perpetual dispute regarding the quantity and quality of publications, since a competitor bank always has the most number of mentions (while a greater number of them are negative). At the same time, the first bank has a clean reputation and communications are always made in the context of positive changes. SolutionThe media field effectiveness is not always measured only by the number of mentions. Every time management argued that competitors gain more influence from a huge number of mentions, the communications manager could not prove the opposite. Using the LOOQME monitoring platform, he saw that the number of mentions was significantly lower than that of competitors, but Media Visibility index was higher, due to the fact that mentions were published in more reputable and highly rated publications.The text was first published on Lumea SEO PPC and Blog de Olivian Breda.