In recent years, numerous debates have taken place on whether new media or online media poses a threat to traditional media.
As information research behaviours change and as more people use Internet or social networks to search for information, online media has gradually become mainstream. The Internet is giving people the power to voice their issues and encourage bottom-up communication that was never defined in the professional culture of journalism.
Members of the public are now playing an active role of collecting, reporting and disseminating information and shaping the future of news and information. As more user generated content changes the media landscape and this gives ways for media monitoring companies to assist brands in monitoring online sources globally.
Internet media monitoring and managing issues at the grassroot level that can possible damage a brand’s reputation is one of the most important part of any company’s public relations efforts. Brands need to understand that it is imperative to monitor online coverage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. They need to ensure that they are gaining access to relevant and accurate information as fast as possible, preferably in real time!
Internet media monitoring services normally get Internet content from 3rd party sources or internal harvesting procedures. Internal harvesting normally involves configuring computer programs like web crawlers (aka Web spiders, robots, etc). A Web crawler browses the Internet in an automated manner to retrieve content from any website.
Once the program has collected all the content, it then goes through syndication and duplication systems. Duplication systems ensure that no client is receiving content that has been duplicated from the original site. Due to clients being charged on a per Internet clip basis, they sometimes do not subscribe for syndicated repeats of articles. All articles go through the syndication systems to check specified parameters and determine if it was syndicated or not. Internet content syndication is the controlled placement of the same content on multiple partnering Internet destinations.
These news and blog articles are then sent to clients as per their search or keyword requirements. Unlike the traditional way of monitoring press or broadcast which is scanned through by humans, internet content is sent automatically to clients as the system reads the entire article word for word.
Vastly the problem with Internet news monitoring is “accuracy”. Free services like Google alerts are unable to flexibly scope to monitor only the most relevant sources, for example geographic targeting, etc. In this instance geographic targeting is used when you require monitoring tailed to a particular country, and most importantly can be further reduced to particular news sources you are only interested in. This targeted monitoring is beneficial for the separation and relevancy of results. Whereas if you are conducting a random search on Google.com.my then you would obtain results from sites that concentrate on the business relative to the keyword query within that country, so Google.com.my will return popular car dealerships in Malaysia, whilst Google UK will do the same for the UK and so on. No human expertise means no client services team to create search terms and maintain the client’s scope of monitoring. Free services also struggle to identify and filter syndicated repeats and they do not provide any online advertising rate calculation or audience data for the clips in question. This is where media monitoring services like ours come into play.
Information management specialists translate your monitoring requirements into sophisticated search strings which automatically prospect relevant content. With the use of Boolean search conditions, we create complicated, qualified and accurate requirements for clients. Instead of providing them everything under the sun for a specific keyword, we deliver much accurate, filtered and relevant content. For example if a client wants to monitor about Najib Tun Razak only when he speaks country development, economy and Islamic finance, then the boolean would be:
(econom* AND (gloomy OR better OR fiscal OR remain* OR budget* OR beyond* OR optimisti* OR stable* OR weigh OR release* OR dim OR dimmed OR grimer OR bleak OR bleaks OR worsen* OR general economic outlook OR rebound* OR deterior* OR increa* OR slump* OR declin* OR boost* OR stimulat* OR depress* OR rebound* OR rise* OR risin* OR jumps OR toppli* OR arise* OR consumer confidence* OR downturn* OR addition* OR fell* OR fall* OR slow down OR slowdown OR remain* OR measure* OR change* OR changin*)) AND ((najib AND razak) \\ (said OR says OR saying OR told OR tell OR according _to OR notify OR notified OR notify OR claim* OR annouc* OR statement).
Clips are then sent to clients which include audience and advertising space rate (ASR) data. ASRs are the cost an organisation would incur to buy an advertisement in a specific media outlet for a particular position (expressed as a currency). It is normally used a benchmark of performance represented as a figure (duration/size, audience, advertising cost). Please take note that ASRs are not a measure of any of the following:
- value
- impact
- influence
- engagement
- return on investment (ROI)
- ‘PR equivalent’ value
In summary, Internet monitoring services reduce information overload and ensure only relevant online content is delivered to you in a timely fashion. This includes the ability to filter out syndicated summaries of web content and nominate which individual sites you want to track. Internet monitoring ensures you are informed of online content important to you, whether it be news, social media or user generated content.
As we become increasingly time poor it is more difficult to filter through the large numbers of results. Managing numerous sources, duplicate results and generic term filtering becomes a full time job in itself. When clients reach out to hire media monitoring services, they should make sure it is robust and covers a range of variables they see as important in their monitoring and reporting. They should ensure that they go beyond a standard monitoring service to give the relevance, analysis and data required, based on the individual’s specific needs.
Image provided by mfophotos on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing