There are so many dimensions to Media Monitoring and Measurement it was hard to know where to start this blog.  PRToolFinder.com does exactly what it says – it’s a pr toolfinder website that makes it easy to find the universe of PR tools in various categories to enable a robust and complete evaluation prior to making a buy decision.  Through the blog, we like to spotlight useful thought leadership articles and industry resources that can help in the decision-making process as well. This post explores why media monitoring and measurement begins with your needs assessment.

Measurement Assessment for Long-term Insights

That said, let’s start with a really useful article I read last month in Carma’s Measurement Standard Blog called Assessing the Long-Term Impact of PR Work.  Delivering clips to clients is always demonstrative of our work as PR professionals, but more and more clients want to better understand what the long-term ROI of PR is on their overall investment.  You need process and tools to be able to do that, and each decision (which process and which tool/s) will be unique to the company so the type of guidance the article provides is a great starting point to learn how to use media monitoring to help your organization determine the long-term impacts of PR efforts.

As the article suggests, if you’re starting a new program, you can set meaningful parameters and then evaluate what’s working.  You might also look through data already collected, but either way – approaching measurement with a deep analysis over time methodology will deliver valuable insights that will inform decisions and investments in PR going forward that will deliver lasting impact.

Another useful resource I’d like to spotlight is the April 8 podcast that Peter Woolfolk (producer and host) did with industry expert and undisputed “Measurement Queen” Katie Paine on his Public Relations Review Podcast – Mastering Data-Driven Public Relations: Insights with Measurement Expert Katie Paine.  I highly recommend making time to give it a listen because you will gain a real education into how to tie back to the organizational priorities.

Identify Organizational Priorities

The first step is to identify how communication contributes to the organizational priorities – building and protecting the brand comes to mind, but Katie points out that this effort takes brand research that comes from other research not associated with your traditional media measurement platform.  She emphasizes the importance of human understanding to draw recommendations and conclusions; Katie has seen it all and numerous times makes the point that all measurement metrics must absolutely tie back to your organizational priorities.

What role does Sentiment Analysis play?

Gaging how people are feeling doesn’t necessarily mean sentiment analysis.  You absolutely need to understand who your audience truly is first and foremost.  Katie says we should take a lesson from politics – people care about what happens outside their windows, in their neighborhood, their networks – their trust may not be in your media list but you can survey your audience and ask them what publications they do trust.  She says, “Sentiment is an algorithm applied to a bucket of words that you hope is correct. What’s important is making sure your tools and metrics are appropriate to whatever you’re measuring.”

For those who want to take a deep dive into Sentiment analysis, Datamation just published their “Essential Guide.”

Through her work she’s gained a lot of insights about human nature and how she applies this to measurement is a real gift to the rest of us in the industry.  If your audience thinks of you as a game company and you’re trying to reach them with an enterprise software message you need to…if you haven’t done a survey of your audience, you have no clue what’s happened.  What your audience thinks, feels and believes today is not anything like how they felt 3-4 years ago.  You really need to survey every quarter if you can, not every 1-2 years.  Or a sizeable study every six months to understand where people are getting their information.  You can learn a lot from your digital data if you’re measuring the right way and have the tools to understand where they are coming to your website from for example.  You can see how much a post on LinkedIn for example brought in, for example.  Getting buy-in from leadership on what information you want to know and agreeing on which indicators and metrics you’re going to evaluate will help you select the right measurement tooling for the job!

Circling back to where we started, Katie continues making the point that being convinced that getting a placement is the equivalent of success just because it gets placed doesn’t mean that anyone in your target audience sees it or cares about it.  You’re getting paid to get messages out to a particular audience. Did you reach the right audience with the right message at the right time? Isn’t that the ultimate goal?  How to measure this?  Katie has a handy guide to measurement tech that you can access from her website.

Putting all the data together

She closes with the concept that the answers are not in the tool – you really shouldn’t look at just one aspect or one data set.  “You have to combine different pieces of data that are going to be meaningful for you and your client or organization.  All of those things are braided together in a unique way that will reflect your actual goals. Most people don’t measure against what the actual goals are.”

Thanks for the podcast, Peter and Katie!  For more podcasts by Peter, visit his Public Relations Review website to see all of the podcast topics and guests he’s had on his show. To learn more about data driven public relations and available measurement courses, eBooks, newsletters, and more visit https://painepublishing.com/.

Measurement Categories in PRToolFinder

Media monitoring and measurement tools

Media monitoring and measurement tools offer valuable insights into the impact of your efforts and how your news is received. With the media landscape divided into traditional print and broadcast outlets alongside web-enabled platforms such as blogs and social networks, these tools cater to diverse segments, continually adapting to the evolving media landscape.

These tools enable users to track and analyze media mentions, brand sentiment, and audience engagement across various channels. In an era where information (and misinformation) is abundant and reputation management is crucial, media monitoring and measurement tools play a vital role in staying informed and effectively navigating the media landscape.

Social Media Monitoring & Analytics

Social media monitoring tools are the modern-day equivalents of traditional clipping services, tasked with sifting through vast amounts of data flowing through social media networks. These services play a pivotal role in tracking and analyzing petabytes of information to keep businesses informed about their online presence and reputation. The challenge lies in striking the right balance between inclusiveness and avoiding irrelevant details. The emergence of AI has further enhanced the capabilities of these tools, providing advanced analytics to guide decision-making and optimize social media strategies.  AI has also tapped social media to deliver toolsets that leverage social data for those measuring sentiment in specific areas.

Video/TV Search Engines and Monitoring Tools

Video & TV Search Engines and monitoring tools allow you to discover, track, and analyze video content. While general search engines may have specialized videocast sections, there are dedicated video searching services that focus solely on video or audio-video content. Factors such as reach, cost, submission policies, and ranking criteria must be considered when selecting the right tool. By utilizing these tools, content creators and marketers can make data-driven decisions to optimize their video strategies and overall digital presence.

To discover ALL of the PR Tool categories in the PRToolFinder database, download the free comprehensive guide to PR Tools eBook.