Media monitoring is your brand’s way to track its presence online. It reveals what consumers think about you and how you're positioned within your industry.
By effectively monitoring your brand presence, you can gather powerful insights about your brand. And learn where to boost your efforts to drive results.
What is Media Monitoring?
Media monitoring tracks a wide range of media channels to gather insights about a topic, brand, or industry. It involves monitoring across news, blogs, print, broadcast, social media, and forums.
Through media monitoring, you can-
- Stay ahead of the latest news and trends
- Track your brand reputation
- Identify emerging issues
- Monitor competitor activities
- Gain valuable insights for making informed decisions
Media monitoring is impossible without the use of a specialized platform to collect and analyze large amounts of data. Larger brands can generate thousands of mentions each day, which would be manually impossible to manage.
These tools help track keywords, mentions, sentiment analysis, and other relevant metrics. Providing comprehensive monitoring and analysis of your media coverage.
Types of Media Monitoring
Media monitoring covers a broad range of media types. The most common include:
Social media monitoring
Social media monitoring is the younger sibling of social listening. While the two terms are interchangeable, there is a difference between social listening and monitoring.
Both cover a comprehensive range of social channels, identifying mentions on Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.
However, social media monitoring is often more reactive, with brands responding to brand mentions. Social listening is proactive, using social media insights to adapt marketing campaigns or products to better suit consumers.
Why is it important?
Social media is where the world talks. Consumers freely discuss what matters in their lives, and often brands become part of those conversations. By monitoring social media platforms, you get an understanding of what consumers think about your brand, products, and reputation.
Monitor your, competitors, and industry pioneers' social channels for campaign inspiration. Talkwalker Media Monitoring
Broadcast media monitoring
Broadcast media monitoring tools help track TV & Radio content across the globe. Broadcast media shares the stories they think will interest consumers.
These could originate from your press releases or industry reports. But not all news is good news. News stories often include critical brand stories and potential crises.
Why is it important?
TV and radio are the 2nd and 3rd most popular sources for news consumption. Each story can potentially reach large audiences.
Broadcast media is often the catalyst for social conversations. One broadcast story can reach thousands of people, which leads to thousands of negative social mentions. Understanding where the story originates, and tackling it fast, can prevent consumer complaints.
Print media monitoring
Also known as news monitoring, this includes newspapers, magazines, and online news portals.
Like broadcast media, print media can be the source of good and bad news. With high competition, these outlets produce more content and are hungry for stories. Bad news sells, so watch for negative brand stories increasing here.
Why is it important?
Digital and print news are the two remaining main sources of news consumption. By tracking TV, radio, print, and digital, you’ll have a complete picture of how the press perceives you.
Much like broadcast, print media can be a story catalyst. Recent trends, see social stories used to create news content. Journalists track social media stories and then amplify them within their news content.
Monitoring social alongside print helps you understand how these types of stories originate.
Blogs and forum monitoring
Similar to social media, blogs & forums are where consumers share their opinions. With less restrictive word limits, you’ll find more in-depth conversations.
Forums, such as Reddit, cover wide topics through to niche communities. Within them, you’ll find industry experts and new users. Both can provide a better understanding of how consumers discuss your brand.
Why is it important?
There is a blog or forum for almost every community imaginable. By monitoring these sources, you can dive into the nuances of your target audience. And find the conversation drivers that engage them.
Look for inexperienced users asking questions, to uncover gaps in your communications. Or tap into industry influencers who have built an engaged community around them.
Review monitoring
Reviews are another way for consumers to get their voices heard. A recent Trustpilot survey found the three main reasons consumers wrote reviews were:
- To help others make a better buying decision
- To share an experience
- To reward a company for good performance
There is a wide range of review sites available, covering broad categories or specific industry-focused areas.
Why is it important?
Reviews typically focus on the best or worst of your product or service. Monitoring online reviews helps you understand what consumers hate about your brand, which you can resolve. Or, what consumers love, which you can promote.
They’re also a great example of social proof. Adding genuine consumer reviews in your marketing materials helps boost your brand credibility and lowers buyer angst.
Podcast monitoring
There are around half a billion podcast listeners across the world and increasing. They’re the ideal media for engaging with whilst doing other activities, from housework to commuting. And they can cover any interest, topic, or theme, and help educate, entertain, and inspire.
The medium makes it easy for content creators to dive deep into a topic, with new ideas or insights. For your brand, this can mean a detailed discussion about your company or products.
Why is it important?
Podcasts provide industry experts with a voice and an audience. By understanding which podcasts are relevant to your brand and industry, you can find new ways to connect with consumers. That could be through podcast ads or sponsorship, or by engaging podcast influencers.
Much like blogs, podcasts also provide a soapbox with a potential global audience. Podcast monitoring should be part of your crisis management, to detect any negative stories heading your way.
An example podcast mention, uncovered a story from Bloomberg that positively discussed Verizon's stock. Talkwalker Media Montoring
Owned data monitoring
Own data covers a broad category of sources you could also include in your media monitoring strategy. Everything from internal customer data to website analytics is additional data that can enrich your understanding of your consumers.
Why is it important?
The ultimate aim of media monitoring is to get the most comprehensive vision of your consumers as possible. Adding your owned data helps complete that picture, and get detailed consumer insights.
By combining all that data into one platform, it can also uncover causes. A drop in stock price might have been unexplained until you discovered a negative news story that went viral. Or unlocking social media conversations might help explain why your NPS (Net Promoter Score) has suddenly dropped.
Why is media monitoring important?
Media monitoring services offer several benefits for organizations:
Stay informed
By monitoring various media channels, you’ll stay updated on the latest news, trends, and developments in your industry. This helps in identifying opportunities and challenges.
Reputation management
Media monitoring allows organizations to track mentions and discussions about your brand, products, or services. It helps in managing brand reputation and addressing any negative sentiment or issues.
Analyze competitors
Monitoring competitor activities and media mentions provides valuable insights into their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. Use this to identify areas of improvement and stay ahead in the market.
Media monitoring helps you benchmark against competitors, and understand your brand share of voice. Talkwalker Media Monitoring
Prevent crises
Media monitoring software helps in the early detection of potential crises or issues that may affect your organization. By being proactive, you can take necessary actions to mitigate the impact and protect your reputation.
Market research
Media monitoring provides valuable market insights by tracking customer opinions, preferences, and trends. Ideal information for market research and product development.
These are just a few of the benefits that media monitoring offers. You can leverage insights to make data-driven decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
Best Practices for Effective Media Monitoring
To ensure effective media monitoring, organizations should consider the following best practices:
Define clear goals and objectives
Determine the specific goals and objectives of media monitoring, such as tracking brand mentions, monitoring competitor activities, or identifying industry trends.
Select relevant keywords
Choose keywords and phrases that are relevant to your brand and the topics of interest. Use these keywords to track and analyze media coverage.
Put all your data in one place
A single platform can offer a comprehensive coverage of media channels. The capability to add additional data integrations can help you create a single source of truth.
Establish monitoring frequency
Determine how frequently to conduct media monitoring. This could be daily, weekly, or in real-time, depending on your needs. You can also automate this for constant monitoring.
Track your share of voice
Share of voice (SOV) measures your performance against your industry competitors. Increase your SOV and you should see an increase in sales. You need comprehensive media coverage for accurate results.
Analyze and interpret data
Media monitoring generates a vast amount of data. You must analyze and interpret this data for meaningful insights. Then take actionable steps based on the findings.
Stay updated on emerging trends and technologies
Media monitoring is an evolving field, and new trends and technologies emerge regularly. Ensure your media monitoring platform is industry-leading, to keep ahead of the trends.
Talkwalker Media Monitoring
To discover Talkwalker’s comprehensive media monitoring, and get the most from every mention of your brand, click below.
