HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM MEDIA INTELLIGENCE

BY SARAH PHILLIPS

The value of media intelligence is vast - from tracking industry or company specific issues, to social listening, sentiment analysis, reporting and beyond. It’s vital a company or organisation knows how to harness the best data and insights, so we’ve pulled together the four top ways to make your media intelligence work harder.

1. Set clear objectives

Like everyone in the communications industry knows, setting clear objectives is imperative to any important program of work. And it will also help make effective use of your media intelligence. Understanding what you really want to achieve upfront, will help influence decision making and better inform communications.

When setting objectives, ask yourself what you want to get out of a search. For example, do you need to know about a specific mention of a company, brand, person, or product? Or, is there a broader issue affecting your industry you need to know about? Maybe you’re required to identify negative sentiment to determine the best response strategy? Or, perhaps you want to display your share of voice compared to competitors in the market. These are the types of questions that will help you to establish and set clear objectives.

2. Be specific

The corporate communications team at Apple isn’t interested in the state of this year’s fruit harvest in a foreign market.  That’s why it’s important to be able to use media intelligence in a way that helps you cut through the noise and gather specific  and relevant information.

To achieve this,  monitoring key terms and industry and competitor information is required and is often costly and time consuming. Truescope has taken the hassle out of keyword management and has enhanced the prospect of returning specific, real time insights via pre-curated feeds of information aligned to a popular issue or industry.

Instead of receiving unrelated information, you’ll be able to better understand breaking issues in relation to your industry, your competitor’s customer needs and opinions to help identify trends and potential gaps in the market as well as gaining insight to key authors in your industry, influencers and their opinions towards competition (to name a few).

In doing so, you’ll be kept up to date on your business environment, helping you to make informed decisions and drive strategy.

3. Listen to the data and use the insights.

Individuals can sometimes get caught up in trying to steer data in a favourable direction when really, they should be listening to what the data is saying (even if it doesn’t champion the angle you hoped for).  An open-minded approach can lead you to uncover the insights that actually matter to your company, brand or organisation. In doing so, you’re allowing the data to drive the story, rather than driving your story with the data.

Truescope’s media intelligence platform makes understanding data and insights easy by translating them into clear charts showcasing media types, authors, sentiment and channels (to name a few).

It’s also not enough to tick the box and say you have data, it’s what you do with the data that can set you apart. For example, if you’re a product based brand and social listening data suggests a new trend emerging in your industry, or that your target audience is shifting in their specific wants or needs, perhaps you should be using this information to inform your next step when it comes to your product innovation strategy.

Put simply, relevant big data doesn’t lie. By listening to it, you’ll be able to use rich insights to make decisions, inform strategy and help problem solve.

4. Report back in real time

Often we simply don’t have the time for reporting. By having the capability to collate comprehensive (and easy to understand!) reports, we’re able to ensure stakeholders are informed and can see what’s happening inside and outside a business.

Whether sharing the result of a successful campaign, informing the team about an opportunity for improvement or even a potential crisis management issue, by using the reporting functions you’ll be able to disseminate the information that matters to every member of your team, when and how you want it.

There are so many other ways to ensure you’re maximising your media intelligence, but hopefully this provides a brief guide to starting the journey. Media intelligence doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be smart. Your provider should make being informed easy and provide the right information and insights that truly help guide your strategy.