These days it seems like there is a new platform for exposure available everyday to PR professionals looking to increase outreach. While traditional forms of print and television continue to be the optimal forms of media for certain kinds of brand awareness, PR professionals are now tasked with implementing and measuring strategies that incorporate a number of new platforms. It goes without saying that media monitoring is one of the most important things a professional must do in order to accurately review campaign effectiveness.

How to start your media monitoring

First of all, to start optimally monitoring your media presence, you need to devise a structure to do so. Simply scanning channels waiting for a name drop or waiting for an email that something has aired can mean missing out on the crucial time when a publicity spot still is still fresh. One of the key mistakes PR professionals make is assuming that this process will be easy – but remember, you want the goal to be regular coverage, so you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you lose track of mentions or coverage.

Media types: Web

While traditional media forms are still the ideal way of boosting brand awareness and reputation, chances are you will have a lot of content that is posted around the web. Whether or not these are major news sources or blogs, you’ll need to monitor everything to make sure that a consistent – and positive – brand image is being displayed.

Of course, monitoring your web mentions also means that you can learn other important information for future strategies. For example, you can keep an eye on what keywords your content is attracting, and see how they fit into an overall brand strategy.

Media types: Social Media

These days, social media is truly its own media source, and needs to be watched just as carefully as your web presence. If you plan on monitoring all of your platforms through their notification systems, then you’ll be spending too much time watching and not enough time acting. When you reach a high enough level of user engagement with your content, it is nearly impossible to keep an eye on everything without the use of a company’s services or third-party software to consolidate, organize, and arrange appropriate mentions – keep in mind a lot of social media content is susceptible to infiltration by spam bots.

Media types: Print

PR professionals used to keep press clippings of notions when news was available only in print form, and that is still one of the things that most clients look for. Print continues to be one of the media forms that will help significantly boost a company’s image in the eyes of a potential consumer, and so most professionals know that a steady percentage of a campaign is still often dedicated to print. That being said, oftentimes current news and print outlets also have web presences, so you’ll want to be sure that you record both instances under your appropriate measurement rubric.

Keep in mind, locating print copies can be time and resource consuming, so consider working with an agency that can help you streamline the process while getting the results you want.

Media types: TV

For the near future anyway, clients will still see a feature on broadcast television as the ultimate in brand recognition. You work hard to secure these features, and your client wants to enjoy them, but a downloadable-size file or YouTube video won’t make the cut when it comes to publicity package needs.

Keep in mind that your TV media monitoring will need to take into account different measurement parameters, such as Nielsen ratings and program ranks. A national feature means a great deal more exposure than a local news spot, and should be ranked in your measurements accordingly.

How to store your media

A huge concern for modern PR professionals is how to compile all the coverage into accessible formats. While booklets of press clippings from print are relatively easy to share, they’ll likely require different storage and presentation needs than video reels. You certainly don’t want to spend your time implementing a campaign and monitoring your media sources only to present a haphazard press kit to your clients.

It is essential that you have appropriate ways to maintain this information. There are a number of companies out there that can help you both monitor and preserve your coverage, so that your client never has to worry that their information isn’t easily accessible.

Client communication

Clients are usually as excited to see coverage as you are, and they may not be patient when waiting for it! Monitoring your media constantly and consistently can mean that you can provide regular updates. Keeping all of your information in easy-to-store and easy-to-share formats (as well as full-length archival copies) can help you feed this information to eager clients.

For this reason, many professionals find that consolidating monitoring and preservation of media coverage into the same process. Again, there are a number of systems available that you can adopt to make this process seamless for you and your team, and you’ll find that doing so makes communicating success to your clients far easier.

A final word

It can’t be said enough that appropriate measurement strategies are essential to show the success of a campaign, and your media coverage files are one of the key things you will use to streamline these analytics. Obviously coverage means audience exposure, so you want to spend your time finding out if your audience is being reached and how, not searching through the web for any mentions of your client. Figure out if this is a process that you can integrate in-house, and if not, you may find working with a consultant in the field can help you focus on what matters: getting your client’s name out there.