Media Monitoring vs Media Analysis

When speaking to organisations about their media strategies, we often find that there is some confusion around the difference between media monitoring and media analysis. Understanding the difference can put you in a much better position to manage your media reporting and gain meaningful insights in the process.

What is media monitoring?

Media monitoring is the clipping, tagging or collection of your media mentions. This can be done via a media monitoring platform or listening tool. You can also do this manually via Google depending on the scale of coverage that you have.

What is media analysis?

Media analysis and insights are the crucial steps beyond monitoring. It is the qualitative evaluation of your media coverage to provide real strategic insight to your team and managers.

Which option is better for my media strategy?

The process of media monitoring is important but it is essentially the counting of your media coverage. This ultimately won’t tell you anything about the quality of that coverage.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of believing that all media coverage holds the same merit, when in fact the opposite is true. Think about the reach a piece of coverage may have, the placement on the page and even the sentiment. Each of these metrics will help build a better understanding of the impact your coverage has on your strategy.

Media monitoring can help to gather data around your media coverage, but at the end of the day it will always need to be analysed by a human to really understand key drivers of success or failure of your media campaign. Metrics such as sentiment and key message delivery rely on the context of a media item to give accurate results. For example, an advanced form of Sentiment tracking is entity-based-sentiment, an exclusive feature offered by Medianet to understand the sentiment towards the top entities mentioned in an article and not just the sentiment of the article in general.

These valuable insights are derived from the analysis of your media data and bridge the gap between raw data (media monitoring) and actions you can take to improve your media strategy.

When choosing the option that works best for your business or organisation, it is important to consider if you are only after vanity metrics (derived from media monitoring) or are you looking for meaningful insights to drive your media activities further.

With Medianet’s advanced media monitoring tools, you’ll gain access to real-time insights, comprehensive media coverage, and customisable reporting to help you stay ahead.

Want to learn more about what you can gain from media analysis? Get in touch!

Curious about how media monitoring can boost your PR strategy? Check out our article, Media Monitoring: Your Questions Answered, and discover everything you need to know!

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