Today, a brand has its own media presence. From consumers to commentators, or even opinion leaders, there are many people who could be talking about your company publicly, so it is essential for brands to learn how to manage their image. Therefore, many companies pay close attention to their media presence. The reasons for this scrutiny are well-defined.
Respond to crisis situations
In times of crisis, the media plays a key role: its power is enormous, as it has the potential to impact (positively or negatively) public opinion. Active media monitoring makes it easier to be alerted when your brand is being talked about. This gives you the opportunity to act more quickly to manage the crisis situation in the best possible way, by anticipating the actions to be taken. Therefore, if you consider everything the media says about the current crisis, it will be easier to understand public opinion.
Find the right influencer
Influencer marketing is on the rise: by digitizing the word-of-mouth principle, influencer marketing is proving to be a particularly effective strategy for businesses to improve their visibility, reach an ever-growing audience and acquire new prospects. The key to a successful influencer strategy lies in the choice of influencer.
“8 consumers out of 10 have made a purchase due to the recommendation of an influencer.”
(Rakuten Marketing, 2019)
Through media monitoring, you can analyse the profile of different influencers, paying particular attention to their content, audience, image, and personality. All these characteristics will help you choose the most relevant influencer to represent your company, the one that best matches your brand values. Social media monitoring is undoubtedly a particularly powerful technique in the search for influencers.
Knowing your competitors
From a strategic point of view, it is always worthwhile to look at your competitors and, more specifically, to analyse the way they communicate with the public: in particular, by examining the techniques and channels they use, to draw inspiration from their strategy or not, based on their success. Media monitoring will be of great help in this regard, as it will allow you to gather data to understand their strategy and avoid making the same mistakes later. Knowing your competitors is therefore essential to the development of your brand and its communication. This will allow you to define your brand positioning in more detail and identify the most profitable market segment. This orientation will allow your target audience to associate your brand with specific attributes, thus distinguishing it in the market.
Building a strong brand
Media monitoring will help you build a strong brand image. Your media presence can be a showcase for your customers and monitoring it will help you identify whether the brand image you want to project is the same as the one that is reflected in the media. This will allow you to improve so that you can communicate in the best possible way to your target audience and thus strengthen your brand to the public.
Be aware that to build a strong brand image, you need to continually analyse and update your strategy to ensure that you remain aligned with the brand image you wish to convey. It is also necessary to always be aware of trends and new developments to use them (or not) for your brand image. Brand images are an essential element in staying competitive and media monitoring is one of the ways that will help you build a strong brand image.
Measuring the results of your communication
Media monitoring plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of your communication. Measuring the media attention and performance of your communication will allow you to adapt your strategy if necessary. Measuring the media impact of your communication provides you with valuable information to help you in the production of content, allowing you to plan your content and actions according to what is performing or not. This work should be done on a regular basis to maintain effective communication with your audience. The aim of media monitoring is to help you stay competitive, so it is necessary to tune your strategic plan according to the results obtained.
DIMITRI VANDEN EYNDE, MONITORING OPERATIONS MANAGER
Finding ideas for content
Media monitoring also has other benefits: like to inspire you, by helping you to find content ideas. You will be able to find inspiration by looking at other pages and their different publications, making it easier to come up with content ideas using your creativity or new ways of communicating. It is also a way to find out what customers want to see on different media, but also which audience corresponds to which type of content.
Your communication will be more relevant and better adapted to your target audience and will therefore bring you more benefits. Simply look at the branded content that inspires you to find ideas to adapt to your business. By being active on social networks, you will be able to find content that your customers might like more easily.
Media monitoring is therefore an essential element in achieving your marketing and communication objectives, but also in affirming your brand image to the public. However, it is important to focus on the information that could be useful to you and not consider everything that circulates in the media sphere, as this could be misleading. Every company aims to be present in the mind of the consumer: it is, therefore, essential to monitor the media to know what is being said about your brand, but also to adapt to trends and thus remain competitive on the market.
