MEDIA MONITORING / MEDIA TRACKING & ITS ADVANTAGES - EDUCATION

Media Monitoring

Media monitoring is the technique of continuously keeping the track of media activities by watching, reading and listening to the leading editorial substances of media sources on a regular basis, and later recognize and analyze substance that contains particular keywords or terms that the viewer looks forward to be associated with.   In today’s competitive business markets, Media Monitoring plays a significant role in placing and promoting a product. The question that generally triggers in mind is to know- What Media Monitoring is and what is their impact in Media Communication?

Media monitoring is a regular practice through which the monitoring agencies/bodies regularly keep a tack of media resources and keep updating them through reading, listening and observing the specific keywords or contents that are communicated through media. There may be variety of reasons for which media monitoring can be done- some may be social, political, economic, scientific, and commercial or many more. Media monitoring is been used as a tool to analyze the accomplishments of a particular organization, company, sector; government or private, profit or non-profit bodies and agencies. The basis purpose of monitoring is to identify the impact of various promotion activities done by varied domains of communication, its success rate, its impact on their clients and competitors. It also helps individual and organizations to do SWOT, improve its business strategies and develop innovations to capture better footfall in brand building and restructuring an organizational/individual’s image. There are two prominent ways through Media Monitoring is done; first through NEWS Media and second by SOCIAL Media. 

NEWS Media Monitoring: When the monitoring is conducted to review the Editorial substances through various commodities such as Television, Radio, Print, (Newspapers, Magazines, Journals-Academic/Trade) etc. to review the rate of pace of success or failure it is called NEWS Media Monitoring. With the help of the News Monitoring many TV channels have understood the competitive edge over the other and now all channels show the advertisement all most at the same time to remain at the same wave length.

Monitoring editorial content of news sources including newspapers, magazines, trade journals, TV, radio stations and the Internet is by far the most common type of media monitoring. This form of media monitoring is called “news monitoring”. In addition to monitoring news, many organizations now also monitor social media on the Internet, tracking word of mouth mentions about their organization in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, message boards and forums. This is commonly known as social media monitoring, word-of-mouth monitoring, or buzz monitoring.   

  

  

Outline of Media Monitoring, Relevant Key Terms & Media Monitoring Support 

To search the outline or profile Media Monitoring looks for the Key Words or Key Terms that are exclusive and specific. It may also include the service requisites. It monitors various type of information, article time, duration, views and its ratings. The key words add much range/coverage and help the article to connect better coverage of press clippings. To have wide popularity this is further transmitted via written communication through Emails or by the help of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) feed. 

Today Media Monitoring is processed through two major agencies- In-house and Outsource. Many marketing companies are strongly supported by their In-house support system which builds the image of a brand or organization using the advantage of Google free online support to create social spaces in the Social Media and popularizing the spread of information range. Some organizations also outsource Media Monitoring agencies to enhance their market credentials and up rate their status and provide better Rich Site Summary(RSS).

Online Media Monitoring is one of the most popular forms of monitoring tool used these days. It is basically done through specific designed software named Robots, spiders and bots. The key functioning of these software is to swiftly assemble all the informative communication that is in the text format and identify the key elements or key terms/keywords that need be indexed for online communication and they automatically examines potential clients and robotically transmits it in social media reallocating each client. 

The advantage of online media monitoring helps news media in gathering information from nooks and corners of the world in any geographical conditions, languages, religion, culture, markets and people. Apart from news, blogs, websites, groups, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Forums, Youtube, MySpace, Google etc. are all helping individual and organizations in promoting their goodwill in the social context and create brand value and recognition in very low investment.
  

Co-Authored Kavita Thapliyal & Manjul Thapliyal

Business Communication & Soft Skills Trainer

& Principal Consultant Visions Ahead

Web: www.visionsahead.com