Cheatsheet To Fully Utilizing Your Media Monitoring Tool

Nothing could be more frustrating than realizing you have been underutilizing a tool. To avoid this and ensure you get the most bang for your buck, this article will guide you on how to make the best use of your current media monitoring tool.

(Hint: If you're still deciding which tool to get, our Ultimate Media Monitoring Buyer's Guide is designed to help you make the decision. Read it before you sign that contract!)

Tip 1: Strategically Structure Your Onboarding Training Sessions

As intuitive as media monitoring tools and platforms can be, it is not realistic to aim to master them in a few sessions, or worse, hop around asking questions haphazardly. Here is some advice from Cision PR Newswire’s Manager of Media Monitoring and Insights,

First session: Aim to start navigating the platform independently

At the end of this session, you should be able to create a new search, alert, an analytics dashboard and generate reports in the different desired formats.

Second session: Get into the details

Here, you can start getting a little greedy! Ask yourself the following questions

• How do I build a better search that covers the key markets that I want?
• How do I highlight or find results from my key media?
• How do I remove irrelevant results?
• How do I make past year comparisons in my dashboards? 

Typically, each client will have 1-2 onboarding sessions to discuss your issues with your account managers. If you have more questions beyond the onboarding sessions, all clients will have access to Cision PR Newswire's continuous support throughout the lifetime of their subscriptions.

Tip 2: Determine Your Key Objectives

Feeling a little lost when navigating a new media monitoring tool at the start is completely logical! To avoid going around in circles, you should be clear on what you would like to achieve. One common objective from our clients is to effectively monitor brand reputation. They would like to be notified of both positive and negative news immediately.

To effectively identify meaningful mentions, especially the negative ones so appropriate actions could be carried, monitoring meaningful mentions is important. However, the bigger the brand, the larger the number of mentions in different channels. As such, brands usually require help to aid them in sifting out valuable mentions.

We utilized Cision’s Boolean capabilities, worked together with the client to have the full list of their top media outlets, and create a separate search that specifically pulls results from that dedicated list of media, for example: "Client's Brand" AND ("nytimes.com" OR "yahoo.com" OR "scmp.com"….)

We understand that each business is unique and has its own needs. As such, these exercises are great for your account managers to understand the business better and tweak customizations accordingly.

Tip 3: Define Your Monitoring Parameters Clearly

While we are on the topic of setting clear goals, defining monitoring paramters is also equally critical. This is not the time for you to be shy!

To ensure that you are on track toward your monitoring goals, we recommend the following keyword categories :

Insider Tip 1: 

Cision’s media monitoring tool supports multiple search variations. It can monitor an unlimited number of keywords and searches so that communicators have the freedom to zoom into different aspects of their searches. In this instance, less might not be more! 

Voice out all requirements down to the specifics to build a monitoring process that would deliver refined results.  Examples of specifics are: 

• Entities or names that may share a similar name to your search parameters (E.g., “Apple,” the tech company and "apple" the fruit)
• Jargons or niche terms that are industry specific should be highlighted 
• Decide if you would like your keywords to be grouped into one singular search or listed individually. (Our tip? We usually recommend the latter to ensure ease of viewing of the results as you can see the performance of each individual keyword)
• If required, prepare keywords in local languages as this would allow for more accurate results. 

Insider Tip 2: 

Filtering results using location and language would allow for more accurate results. The good news is that Cision’s media monitoring tool has just it!

Our Thoughts

In conclusion, we hope that this starter guide has supplemented you with more confidence in knowing what solutions are available when dealing with a media monitoring tool, how to define monitoring parameters clearly and best structure your onboarding sessions in an efficient manner.

Cision’s reliable and extensive media monitoring tool has much to offer, from having access to unlimited searches, easy set-up of automated alerts to account managers that are constantly on the ball! As for analytics reporting, our team will often recommend using Cision's easily accessible interactive report. Click this link to have a look at our intuitive interactive report. 

Find out more about what Cision’s media monitoring tool has to offer by reaching out to us for a complimentary consultation today.