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Media Monitoring Tools Brands use to Stay Ahead of Competition

How would brands keep their audience satisfied if they do not know their needs, concerns and behavior? Feed them irrelevant content, that’s what. Posting without knowing what your audience is searching for or talking about is the same as watering a stone. You will yield no results whatsoever.

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What is media monitoring?

Media monitoring also called media tracking, is the process of tracking your brand’s marketing strategies to find out what people are saying about your brand, the products and services you offer on media platforms such as websites, blogs, forums, social media apps as well as the coverage you get on traditional media. Brands must find out why certain things are said about it and come up with strategic ways of addressing the messages in a positive light, as part of their online reputation management. Media monitoring stands as one of the most important ways brands use to engage with their audience, and it helps them find relevant conversations they can engage in for more exposure and authoritativeness.

When media monitoring, it is important for brands to listen attentively and collect the information they found to come up with innovative ways to communicate, produce better products and deliver services efficiently in the future. It shows their audience that they pay attention and they deliver according to what they need as their stakeholders.

 

Benefits of media monitoring for brands

  • Monitor their competitors – Knowing what your competitors are saying or doing gives you an advantage of coming with better strategies, making you the go-to brand for innovative solutions. You are able to avoid unnecessary mistakes other brands are doing, as a result, yielding trust and credibility in your respective industry. You will be set apart from the rest.
  • Stay ahead with customer and industry trends – Staying ahead means you are able analyze the economy, the emerging risks and opportunities in your industry. Giving your organization the advantage of making informed decisions about new developments in the products and services you offer, develop new price points that satisfies customers and optimize your marketing efforts. Communication between you and your stakeholders will be enhanced as you will have the best knowledge about the latest tools for effective and fast communication.
  • Protect brand reputation – Brands that knows what is happening all around media, especially the social media trends have an advantage of protecting their reputation from being tarnished as they know who to address and what to say. This reflects the integrity of businesses across all spectrums, whether good or bad. By doing this, brands are able to know what to improve for a better user experience be it website speed, new product launch review or the language use of an organization.
  • Easily recover from crisis – We all know the hardships of encountering a crisis, it leaves a dent in the brand reputation and uncertainty if not managed well. A good communications team will be able to spot a crisis emerging when monitoring, resulting in crisis avoidance or better yet, strategies to easily recover from the crisis without having to lose a lot of funds for relief.
 

3 Top Media Monitoring Tools Every Marketer Should Know About

Before you decide to use media monitoring tools for your organization, you first need to identify your marketing objectives, pick the most relevant tool for the type of media you want to monitor, know the important  and relevant keywords that define your brand and lastly have a budget.

 

Key social media metrics to track when conducting media analysis

  1. Google Alerts

    Google alerts is a free web monitoring tool that keeps you updated on current events, trends and topics you are interested in, your competitors and products or services. It is enabled to send the latest topic coverage that is posted on google directly to your personal or work email. It was launched on 06 August 2003, meaning it will be turning 21 years this year (2024).

    To use this tool, you need to:

    • Sign in to your google account
    • Type Google alerts
    • On the search box that appears, type in the topic or industry of your interest.
    • Then click a blue box written “create alert”
    • You can enter multiple if you wish
    • Where you see written “My alerts”, there is a settings icon
    • Click there to customize your alert delivery time, how often you want to receive the email and type in the email address you want to receive the alerts from.
    • Save the process and watch the magic happen.

Advantages

  1. It is free.
  2. Google Alerts allows businesses to monitor online discussions and reviews of their products or services instantly, making sure brand and marketing managers are aware of their digital footprint.
  3. You can uncover fresh, niche-specific content ideas by keeping an eye on the latest writings and discussions in your industry, feeding your website quality and engaging content only.
  4. With Google Alerts, companies can gain valuable insights into their top customers or clients by monitoring mentions.
  5. This tool serves as a strategic asset for tracking competitors’ activities, leaving brands competitive by staying informed on market movements and strategies.

Disadvantages

  1. Google Alerts might fill your inbox with too much information if you’re not careful setting up. If your keywords are too broad or common, you’ll get a lot of messages that aren’t really what you’re looking for.
  2. Unfortunately, Google Alerts is not specifically designed to monitor social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram in real-time. It can only capture content from publicly accessible web pages that social media platforms may publish.
  3. Google alerts does not have access to analytics. Therefore, it does not give insights into how many times your brand is mentioned, liked and shared.

2. Meltwater

This is a media monitoring company that operates globally, with technology that captures content from more than 270 000 global news sources which includes forums, blogs, print media, social media, broadcasts and podcasts. Their dedication is seen from the partnerships they have with well-known brands such as H&M, Google, Ogilvy among others. Meltwater’s media monitoring software helps track volume of mentions, share of voice per platforms, trend analysis, sentiment analysis, top publications, top locations and journalist plus influencers who mentions your brand. It is your go-to brand monitoring tool.

Advantages

  1. Meltwater’s media monitoring tools scan through a variety of sources across the internet, including news sites, blogs, and social media platforms. This ensures you capture almost every mention of your brand or keywords, giving you a broad view of your media presence.
  2. You receive instant notifications when your brand is mentioned, allowing you to react promptly to both positive and negative mentions. This real-time feedback can be crucial for managing your brand’s reputation and capitalizing on timely opportunities.
  3. Meltwater offers in-depth analytics and customizable reporting options. This means you can track your media mentions over time, measure the sentiment of these mentions, and understand the impact of your PR and marketing campaigns. These insights can inform your strategy and help you make data-driven decisions.

Disadvantages

  1. According to prowly.com, Meltwater only has yearly contracts subscriptions, with an estimated price range of R111 609.12 to R372 111.00 depending on the service features your brand needs.
  2. Meltwater tailors its pricing based on what each brand needs, so they don’t list their prices online. To find out your personalized price, you’ll need to speak with a representative directly.
  3. According to trustradius.com, most reviews given by meltwater’s customers complain about their negative experience of using Meltwater website/platform. With comments such as “The platform is a bit complicated to navigate. It takes quite some time to learn and it can be frustrating and time consuming”.

3. Hootsuite

A social media management tool that allows organizations to enhance their customer’s social media experience by using features that helps with content planning, automatic scheduling of content, media monitoring also called Hootsuite Insights, viewing of multiple streams at once and many more. Brands such as Coca-Cola and Ikea trust their services, so we believe you should too.

Advantages

  1. Hootsuite excels in providing a unified dashboard that integrates multiple social media accounts which makes monitoring, posting, and scheduling across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
  2. With Hootsuite, users can effortlessly schedule posts in advance. This feature is best for maintaining a consistent social media presence, allowing for strategic content distribution that enhances engagement.
  3. It offers broad analytics tools that deliver deep insights into social media performance. Users can track engagement metrics, analyze trends, and generate very detailed reports.

Disadvantages

  1. New users may find Hootsuite’s features and complex interface terrible to use. The setup needs time investment so you can enjoy all it benefits.
  2. Although Hootsuite’s basic services are free, their more advanced features and the ability to manage multiple accounts are gated behind premium plans.

4. Mention

Mention is a media monitoring tool that employs a bot to crawl through various web sources, identifying mentions of specified keywords about your brand. It offers monitoring and listening features to track mentions and sentiments across blogs, review pages, news sites, and social media channels.

Advantages

  1. Affordable with a good balance of PR and news gathering tools.
  2. It allows real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, and competitive analysis that resulting in enhanced marketing strategies.
  3. Easy setup with a friendly user experience.

Disadvantages

  1. It cannot monitor non-text sources like for traditional media such as broadcasts, which limits the information gathering from all sources.

5. Prowly

Prowly is a software tool founded in 2013, trusted by brands such as LG, Asus, Unicef, dentsu among many more. It is known for its budget-friendly subscriptions and a broad Public Relations (PR) automation experience.

Advantages

  1. Transparent pricing with a budget-friendly model.
  2. Free 7-day trial and dedicated training available, meaning you can give it a trial run and if not happy, you can always leave.
  3. Supports a range of PR tasks beyond just media monitoring such as media monitoring, press release creation, and managing email pitches

Disadvantages

  1. According to the reviews gathered by Capterra.co.za, Some users have experienced issues with Prowly, noting that it can be buggy and support may be lacking. Complaints include a complex cancellation process, difficulty obtaining refunds, and limitations even on paid plan compared to more established tools in certain functionalities.

6. Brand24

Brand24 is a digital tool designed for monitoring and analyzing online mentions of your brand across various digital platforms. It helps in understanding public sentiment towards your brand and measures the impact of your online marketing campaigns.

Advantages

  1. Brand24 segments mentions into positive, negative, and neutral categories, providing a clear overview of your brand’s public perception. It is good for changing strategies for brands that are underperforming.
  2. Allows online reputation management by tracking mentions, you can quickly respond to feedback, address any negative comments and by responding with positive ones.
  3. Its pricing structure is considered accessible for small PR agencies and freelancers, making it an attractive option for businesses with limited budgets.

Disadvantages

  1. Lack of Traditional Media Monitoring: It doesn’t track mentions in traditional media like print and broadcast, which could be a limitation for comprehensive media monitoring.
  2. Brands with common names might find the search results too broad and less relevant, making the monitoring process more difficult.
  3. It focuses mainly on PDF and Excel reports might not meet the diverse analytical needs of all brands, especially those requiring more dynamic or interactive reporting formats.

7. Talkwalker

Talkwalker operates as a social intelligence tool, excelling in the vast landscape of social media monitoring. It’s designed to uncover trends, analyze sentiment, and offer insights across various media formats, aiding in strategic decision-making.

Advantages

  1. It can analyze sentiment across different media formats, not just textual content, offering both a specific and broad view of public opinion.
  2. It provides capabilities for detecting historical and current trends, and importing real-time data for a timely analysis.

Disadvantages

  1. The platform can be difficult to understand and use, which might make it take longer to learn and work with efficiently.
  2. They have an unclear pricing, and the necessity to contact the company directly for pricing information can be a barrier for some businesses, making budget planning more challenging.
  3. Learning Curve: New users might face a steep learning curve due to the platform’s comprehensive features and capabilities, new users might need extra time or training to get used to all the features the platform offers.

 

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  • Sentiment Analysis: Also known as opinion mining, is the process of examining text used online to determine how people feel about your brand. It analyses the tone and attitude in messages to know whether it is positive, negative or involves confusion. This metric enables companies to improve their customer service, use the correct tone to address audience concerns and alter approach on their campaigns as the results will be real-time.
  • Engagement Metrics: Engagement involves the number of likes, shares, and comments your post/s receive on social media, which adds to the overall awareness your brand gets. They are important as they determine the interest people have in your brand, how they respond to it and how they choose to affiliate themselves with you. This metric is vital for effective social media monitoring.
  • Reach and Impressions: Monitoring the reach and impressions of your social media posts helps assess their impact and visibility among your target audience. Both these metrics goes hand-in-hand as they both have a goal of brand awareness and building an audience. The difference however is that reach measures how many users saw your posts and impressions measure how many times your posts were viewed. By understanding this information, your company can create and share posts that the audience desire and resonate with.
  • Customer Satisfaction: Your organization can do wonders when they know their customer feedback and reviews on the products and services they offer. It helps identify areas that needs improvement and as a result increases customer loyalty and increased purchases. It solidifies that your target market’s needs and expectations are met.
  • Return on Investment: This is a financial metric used to assess the profits generated through an investment compared to the cost. It is important to see the gain or loss your company has experienced, providing a roadmap for effectiveness and efficiency of the investment. Companies are able to assess their strengths and weaknesses, evaluate new strategies to take on their next investments which must be realistic and attainable to avoid wasting money.
 

Common mistakes to avoid when using social monitoring for brand management

While media monitoring can be incredibly beneficial for brands, there are some common mistakes that brand managers should avoid:

  1. Ignoring Negative Feedback: Failing to address negative feedback or complaints effectively can damage a brand’s reputation as it will give an impression of not caring to your audience. Brand managers should prioritize addressing customer concerns and resolving issues in a timely manner as a good online reputation management tactic.

  2. Overlooking Data Accuracy: Relying solely on automated sentiment analysis without human oversight can lead to inaccuracies in data interpretation. Therefore, it is essential to verify sentiment analysis results manually to ensure accuracy, it also shows that your team has accountability and responsibility towards matters that concerns your brand.

  3. Focusing Solely on Brand Mentions: While monitoring brand mentions is important, brand managers should also pay attention to broader industry conversations, competitor activities, and emerging trends to gain a holistic understanding of the market landscape.

  4. Lack of Actionable Insights: Simply collecting data without translating it into actionable insights and strategies is a common pitfall. Brand managers should analyze media monitoring data to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities, and use these insights to inform their marketing strategies and decisions they will take in their up-coming projects.

In closing, brand and marketing managers must consider or reconsider their current media monitoring tools and work on upgrading their communication tactics to better preserve their brand reputations.

Contact us on: 010 065 2667 /+27 73 375 6375 or email: info@twelvemarketinginc.co.za and don’t miss out on our media monitoring tools.

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