Another Look at Media Monitoring and Why it MATTERS

By Queen Nwabueze

 

Even a baby with a lisp could speak fluently about how the media have changed recently. Thanks in particular to online media. Never before have brands been scrutinized and scrutinized so closely. Monitoring their interactions with the media, both online and offline, has become more important than ever.

What is Media Monitoring?

Let’s not get too serious. The act of professionally listening to what the media, both traditional and digital, is saying about your business is known as media monitoring. Notably, it involves keeping an eye on your industry, competitors, and other issues crucial to the operations of your business. Then, do we need to explain why it matters? It is immediately obvious in the previous functional demo. It all simply means that, when done correctly, media monitoring should provide you with a broad overview as well as more detailed information about public perceptions of your business or person.

To put it bluntly, brands, companies, and people all profit from a sound media monitoring strategy, especially one that is informed by research. Media monitoring, when done properly, enables you to learn what your target market and consumers are saying about you in their offline and online articles, blogs, videos, comments, etc., as well as how they feel about it.

Media Monitoring: Capsule History

For many brands, media monitoring is not a novel tactic. In Nigeria, media monitoring services are not new or novel. The business of monitoring the Nigerian media has existed for some time. Did you know, for example, that P+ Measurement Services has been providing media intelligence and public relations research/evaluation for almost ten years? What progress the agency has made, using human-curated skills supported by cutting-edge methods, such as artificial intelligence, to continuously monitor brands and issues online and in traditional media. “We recognize the relevance of ethical and standardized media monitoring in the process of brand’s media performance audit reports,” says Olufunke Mohammed, Chief Operating Officer of P+ Measurement.

Advantages of Media Monitoring Services

Here are some ways that expert media monitoring services might help your company:

• To track brand mentions or even complaints, which you probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, use customer service. The organizations that provide media monitoring actually have the necessary equipment for the task!
• Media analysis to track what consumers are saying about your goods and services as well as those of your rivals, as well as crucial public affairs that are relevant to you. For instance, P+ Measurement Services in Nigeria carries out this activity utilizing internationally recognized standards established by The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC).
• Brand teams can identify important market trends that can be included in advertising campaigns. Organizations may pretend to know how, but the services that watch the media truly have the resources.

Phew! If we keep reeling out the necessity of media monitoring, get ready to read a full-length book.

One cannot express it strongly enough! Intriguingly, if your company or brand faces a PR crisis, you would want to take every precaution to limit the harm and address the situation as soon as possible. The only Midas touch you require to make your proactivity pay off is media monitoring.

On the other hand, if you find yourself in a crisis, you still need to monitor the media every step of the way to get your organization’s reputation back on track and emerge even stronger.

Did you ever realize that keeping an eye on the media can help you foresee a problem before it occurs? Often, there are warning signals of anything trending negatively, whether offline or online, before a problem turns into a full-blown disaster. There are frequently smoke signs that shouldn’t be disregarded — before they develop into a raging fire, similar to how a fire begins as sparks. But that’s media monitoring’s inescapable quality for you!

You might be wondering how the company got there, but PPlus’ extensive media monitoring services continue to blend human judgment with cutting-edge technology to bring you curated news from local and national print, broadcast, social media, and online sources. This ensures that you see all the coverage that is most pertinent to you, your business, and your PR objectives.

The election year 2023 is upon us. How successfully are you observing the media? Consider the results of your public relations activities as you plan your next course of action.

You have a choice between automated and customized interactive reports. Given that Nigeria will soon have a new administration and new legislation, PPlus analytics gives you the capacity to quickly examine market trends and extract insightful data. This is the araldite to etch corporates at the top.

To begin your professional, data-driven media monitoring right away, please get in touch with a media monitoring service.

 

Queen Nwabueze is a Media & Content Strategist, based in Lagos.