First stop, Media Monitoring Valley

The first stop in our journey is a valley known as media monitoring. You may already be familiar with media monitoring but let’s take a second to cut down the grass around us, wade through the mud and really understand what it is.

Debunking media monitoring

Taken right back to its core, media monitoring is simply a tool for collecting mentions of your brand in the media. Media monitoring providers will constantly watch the media for any mentions of the keywords you specify and report these back to you.

Boolean, what?

Boolean searches are required for media monitoring to function and simply tell the AI which keywords to look out for within certain parameters. Whilst some providers make it easy to set up keyword searches, more advanced boolean searches are often required to get accurate results.

Limitations of AI

Given that media monitoring relies on AI to gather and ‘interpret’ the media data it collects, it is not always accurate or relevant to what you are searching for. The way that AI interprets data and ‘analyses’ metrics such as sentiment is prone to misinterpretation due to the complexity of the human language and lack of external context. Whilst AI is constantly improving, there are some things that a human will always be needed for.

Without context, numbers by themselves are often meaningless. Successful PR takes more than just raw numbers and requires human understanding to interpret data and give the numbers meaning.

If media monitoring is simply the tool for collecting media data, then where do you go next and what does the future look like? Let’s jump on the express cable car and see what we can find at the top of this mountain.

Going beyond data - the future beyond PR Success Mountain

As you might have guessed, AI programs are great for gathering data but will always be limited in their ability to analyse and interpret it. This is where a human expert steps in to analyse the data within the context of your media goals to provide valuable insights needed to drive your strategy further.

What's next?

Is media monitoring still relevant in today’s media landscape? To some extent, yes. For a long time media monitoring was one of the only solutions to capture brand mentions in the media but with the introduction of services such as consultative insights, a PR professional is no longer required to manage or even rely on a media monitoring provider.

Your own company goals are a great indicator of which software or services you should rely on. Take a step back and have a good look at what you need and why you need it. You may find that some things can be skipped altogether.

Once you’ve made your decision and found the perfect solution to match your goals, it’s time to strap on your backpack and continue with your PR journey.