Media monitoring has changed dramatically. Not only has it become highly computerized with AI, the cost has dropped even further. A business can now monitor media coverage of their brand for less than US$2,000 per year. Yes, you read that correctly: US$2,000 per year.
But one major problem still exists: what do you do with your monitoring results?
At Latin Media Monitor, we’ve seen first hand that a typical media monitoring campaign, covering say just one country in Latin America where we specialize, can produce more than 400 news items every day with your brand name or key words.
But how do you decide what’s important and what’s not? Who is going to read those 400+ news items?
The value of media monitoring
Monitoring the media is worth your investment only if it produces information that’s useful to your business. Executives use media monitoring to monitor their competition, sentiment about their brand, key events in their industry, and political and regulatory changes affecting their markets.
The landscape changes every single day and staying on top of what the media is saying is absolutely necessary.
There is the added complication of language: what if your market is in a region where you don’t speak the language or understand which media outlets have true credibility?
Analysis makes the difference
The only way to get what you need from your media monitoring is to analyze your results. You leverage the power of monitoring with results analysis which requires a careful reading, review and understanding of the most important media coverage every day, and by experienced news analysts.
Monitoring vs. analysis
Monitoring the media will tell you what the media is saying about your industry, competition and brand. But only analysis of your monitoring results will ensure you are focused on the most important news our executive team must know about to make the best, most profitable strategic decisions.
Analysis requires a careful reading of your monitoring results, separating out the chatter and focusing your executive team on events, trends, and key developments they have to know about.
Sometime the key results are hidden behind headlines, buried deep inside an article, or contained in coverage your monitoring campaign misses because the coverage doesn’t contain your keyword.
How you should invest in media monitoring
Extracting data and numbers from your media monitoring results is easy. The biggest and best media monitoring services will give you more data and numbers than you’ll even know what to do with. But what do they charge you to review and analyze your results so you see only the most important news, don’t miss importance nuance and coverage and avoid getting bogged down in the chatter?
Alternatively, you could dedicate full-time staff to reviewing your media monitoring results and have them produce summaries of the most important coverage for your executive team. But that, too, could prove costly. And they may not have the experience or the bilingual skills to do the job right.
At Latin Media Monitor we provide a cost-effective way to analyze your media monitoring results using bilingual veteran journalists who have years of experience monitoring the media in Latin America.
See for yourself what your monitoring is missing
Contact us today for a free sample of a daily news monitoring report in English so your executive team can see for itself the value of news analysis.
And when you have a moment, hear our CEO Mark A. Browne discuss the importance of leveraging the power of your media monitoring with news analysis. His interview is available here on YouTube.
