As a PR professional you must show your client that you are doing a good job. One way to justify your existence is to measure the results generated by your press releases, TV placements, and Internet articles. What is the best way to monitor and measure these hits. Yes you could do this yourself and all of the papers that you have sent a press release, use "Google Alerts", and watch check the TV news each night to see what aired, or was published. A better and more effective and efficient way do do this is to hire a media monitoring company to do this for you. Lets break each portion of the media down and examine exactly what can be measured.
Print Media:
In print specifically referring to daily and weekly newspapers, and monthly magazines, you can measure the article count, the circulation, the frequency, and the media value. To measure the count is easy enough, clipping services read All of the papers in a specific coverage area, and search for articles that mention your topics, then send them to you either hard copy or convert them digitally. Then, you must have all of the information about each publisher ready and available when you have an article printed. Next you must know whether that paper is a daily, weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly paper or magazine and tally that. Then count the circulation of each of those articles. Press Clipping Services gather this information regularly through media buyers, and get the national rate from each publication that they read. The circulation can often be found online, but may not always be up to date. Most modern clipping services use sophisticated bar coding and tracking systems for counting and measuring clippings count, circulation, and frequency. The hardest portion of this measurement is the Media Value. To calculate the media value for an individual article you mus know the rate and the length in column inches of the article. if you multiply that you get the Media Value. Clipping Services usually have a running tally of clippings and add them to a spread sheet, then at the end of the time period, a count if performed and a report is generated.
Television News:
Television News is similar to Print media in the fact that you can calculate media value, and obtain audience ratings through companies like Nielsen's. Media Monitoring services record the closed captions of each newscast and run queries in a database against those entries. Generated is a report that includes Audience ratings. Next is the 30 second ad value, which is used to calculate the real media value and thereby create the Publicity value too. The calculated media value takes into account the length of the video news clip and multiplies it times the 30 second ad rate generating a value which equals the advertising equivalency value. To get the Publicity value that A.E.V. is multiplied times the PRSA multiplier of x3, x5, or x7 depending upon the placement within the newscast. Some more advanced systems allow you to even assign a Tone (positive, negative or neutral) and Prominence (mention, feature, or focus)to each story. The raw data from these reports can be used in a variety of ways to display your effectiveness in diverting or spinning a story in the right direction.
Internet News:
There are a few aspects of internet news that will determine whether or not you wish to count them. Blogs for instance, is that counted as real journalism or not? You must consider the source, but you must keep in mind that a blog journalistic or not must still be counted and does have some influence, therefore you need to measure that. Google Alerts can do this, but it only crawls sites once a day at best. Media monitoring service have bots that crawl specific media outlets websites such as newspapers, magazines, tv stations, radio stations, aggregators, and online only, and blogs. The major goal of this is to count these stories. Using a media monitoring service to do this is the most effective way to do so since they have the search expertise and resources to pool all of the data into one aggregated searchable reportable source. Adding additional values to Internet stories is difficult. You can do a word count and count the "in-links" or pages that link back to that page or article. Anything other than that would require additional information from websites like Alexa.com or Google analytics.
Now that you have measured all of this data taking it and reporting it back to you boss, the board of directors, or the public affairs committee, is the next step. You will need to generate reports that back up the facts, and report to show that you have sent press releases to X number of sources and Y number of sources picked up the story, showing the total number of stories, audience/circulation, media value, and column inches/runtime/wordcount. A good media campaign should have a goal, and these measured results help to prove that goal was met.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
NACPCS.com is now live!
A Brief History
Press clipping service in the United States can be traced back to the late 1800?s in New York City. With the growing number of newspapers, it was difficult for anyone to keep up with all the news about their company. So the idea was born. Get subscriptions to as many newspapers as you can, read them for news that pertained to your clients and send them the newspaper clippings.
The industry, while always a specialized business, was even featured in a popular novel, ?A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.? In that book, one of the main characters talks about the challenges of her job in a New York City press clipping service.
As American business grew and newspapers flourished in the 1900?s, so did the need for press clipping services. Clients? focus became more national in scope, and so more newspapers had to be monitored. In the 1940?s magazine coverage was added and 30 years later, press clipping services began monitoring television news stations upon our client’s request.
Press clipping services have evolved into media monitoring services which monitor and analyze every type of media: daily newspapers, non-daily newspapers, magazines, trade journals, television and radio news as well as the internet.
Today there are media monitoring companies which provide broad national service and many who specialize in regional or state coverage. And media monitoring companies have responded to the growth of on-line newspapers by offering coverage of the internet.
Press clipping service in the United States can be traced back to the late 1800?s in New York City. With the growing number of newspapers, it was difficult for anyone to keep up with all the news about their company. So the idea was born. Get subscriptions to as many newspapers as you can, read them for news that pertained to your clients and send them the newspaper clippings.
The industry, while always a specialized business, was even featured in a popular novel, ?A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.? In that book, one of the main characters talks about the challenges of her job in a New York City press clipping service.
As American business grew and newspapers flourished in the 1900?s, so did the need for press clipping services. Clients? focus became more national in scope, and so more newspapers had to be monitored. In the 1940?s magazine coverage was added and 30 years later, press clipping services began monitoring television news stations upon our client’s request.
Press clipping services have evolved into media monitoring services which monitor and analyze every type of media: daily newspapers, non-daily newspapers, magazines, trade journals, television and radio news as well as the internet.
Today there are media monitoring companies which provide broad national service and many who specialize in regional or state coverage. And media monitoring companies have responded to the growth of on-line newspapers by offering coverage of the internet.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
People are Still Necessary to Provide the Best Media Monitoring
ALTHOUGH THE CLIPPING SERVICES HAVE UNDOUBTEDLY MADE A GREAT PROGRESS SINCE THE TIME WHEN ARTICLES WERE CUT OUT FROM THE PAPERS WITH SCISSORS, CLIPPING IS STILL JUST PARTLY DONE BY SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGY. GOOD SOFTWARE AND STATE-OF-ART EQUIPMENT ARE A VITAL PART OF CLIPPING SERVICES TODAY, BUT IN THE SELECTION OF RELEVANT CLIPPINGS, PEOPLE STILL HAVE THE LAST SAY.
At one of the conferences organized by FIBEP, an international association of media monitoring bureaus, one of the delegates expressed his concern about the increasing number of internet search engines and their complexity, as well as an increasing number of media that, apart from their printed edition, also have an online edition.
However, what seems to be a potentially dangerous area for clipping agencies is, in fact, an advantage. An increasing number of media and their availability
online means that it has become a lot harder to find the right information and that there is an increased need for a professional service in selecting the abundance of information.
Selection of information is the part in which software, no matter how good it is, still can’t entirely replace people. Nobody can deny the important role that technology plays in media monitoring and information processing. That role includes a
whole spectrum of functions: from the selection of clippings to generation of clipping reports, as well as a variety of value-added services such as the generation of different statistical reports, online clipping delivery etc. Clipping process consists of several important stages, and the first one is, of course, to define topics and key words. Key words tracking is usually not a problem, but topic
monitoring is a bigger challenge, especially in the case of general topics such as news from tourism, legislature etc. For example, an article wholly about, let’s say, a visit of a state official to an institution or company can have a sentence or two containing very important information for a client. There are countless examples illustrating how hard it is sometimes to assess if an article is important for a client or not. The next stage in the clipping process is the input of data into the database. In this stage it is necessary to type in basic information about every clipping.
At one of the conferences organized by FIBEP, an international association of media monitoring bureaus, one of the delegates expressed his concern about the increasing number of internet search engines and their complexity, as well as an increasing number of media that, apart from their printed edition, also have an online edition.
However, what seems to be a potentially dangerous area for clipping agencies is, in fact, an advantage. An increasing number of media and their availability
online means that it has become a lot harder to find the right information and that there is an increased need for a professional service in selecting the abundance of information.
Selection of information is the part in which software, no matter how good it is, still can’t entirely replace people. Nobody can deny the important role that technology plays in media monitoring and information processing. That role includes a
whole spectrum of functions: from the selection of clippings to generation of clipping reports, as well as a variety of value-added services such as the generation of different statistical reports, online clipping delivery etc. Clipping process consists of several important stages, and the first one is, of course, to define topics and key words. Key words tracking is usually not a problem, but topic
monitoring is a bigger challenge, especially in the case of general topics such as news from tourism, legislature etc. For example, an article wholly about, let’s say, a visit of a state official to an institution or company can have a sentence or two containing very important information for a client. There are countless examples illustrating how hard it is sometimes to assess if an article is important for a client or not. The next stage in the clipping process is the input of data into the database. In this stage it is necessary to type in basic information about every clipping.
Media Analysis more than just another tool in the belt.
If you want to be successful in THE 21ST century, certanly the most important predisposition is to have an accurate and timely information. It is important to know if you APPEAR in the media and in what context. Not knowing the situation can reflect on your reputation and your business. Apart from all kinds of officials and artists WHO MAKE A LIVING ON their reputation, today it is also true for business subjects companies and brands). Influence is measured by how far someone’s message penetrates.
GATHERING AND EVALUATION OF MEDIA CONTENT
Magnolia Clipping Service has long-time experience in monitoring and analysis of media reports in Mississippi. We are a member of NACPCS (North American Conference of Press Clipping Services). The membership enables us to exchange experience, improve our work and keep pace with the newest trends. The basis of media analysis is coverage, collection of media reports clipping during a certain time period.
There are two basic functions of analysis to describe and to explain. An analysis report written in an understandable and clear way shows the quantity and quality of media presence. For this we use precisely defined and relevant variables. All analysis reports are always tailor made for our clients.
MEDIA LIST
Press clipping’s media lists are created according to the following criteria: readership ratings / viewer ratings / listener ratings, demographic reach,
relevance and quality of some media based on their specific coverage. Those are:
ECONOMY, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, QUALITY OF LIFE, CHILDREN AND FAMILY, LIFE STYLE, SOCIAL EVENTS, IT, AUTO, & SPORTS.
This is important to know when choosing a type and dynamics of an analysis (Simple, Advanced, Comparative, Qualitative, Qualitative etc.) Media lists are updated regularly adding newly launched media or removing the ones that ceased to exist. The media lists are also updated taking into consideration changes in the broadcast
media. We keep an eye on the changes of the media reach (figures pertaining to the consummation and demographic data).
GATHERING AND EVALUATION OF MEDIA CONTENT
Magnolia Clipping Service has long-time experience in monitoring and analysis of media reports in Mississippi. We are a member of NACPCS (North American Conference of Press Clipping Services). The membership enables us to exchange experience, improve our work and keep pace with the newest trends. The basis of media analysis is coverage, collection of media reports clipping during a certain time period.
There are two basic functions of analysis to describe and to explain. An analysis report written in an understandable and clear way shows the quantity and quality of media presence. For this we use precisely defined and relevant variables. All analysis reports are always tailor made for our clients.
MEDIA LIST
Press clipping’s media lists are created according to the following criteria: readership ratings / viewer ratings / listener ratings, demographic reach,
relevance and quality of some media based on their specific coverage. Those are:
ECONOMY, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, QUALITY OF LIFE, CHILDREN AND FAMILY, LIFE STYLE, SOCIAL EVENTS, IT, AUTO, & SPORTS.
This is important to know when choosing a type and dynamics of an analysis (Simple, Advanced, Comparative, Qualitative, Qualitative etc.) Media lists are updated regularly adding newly launched media or removing the ones that ceased to exist. The media lists are also updated taking into consideration changes in the broadcast
media. We keep an eye on the changes of the media reach (figures pertaining to the consummation and demographic data).
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