We tried three media monitoring tools, so you don’t have to.
Media monitoring tools are used to keep track of features, mentions, and coverage, but, are they worth the price tags that come with them, and just how effective are they?
We’ve used a fair few of these in our time, so here’s an honest review of the most popular ones, and a solution if you’re not ready to press ‘GO’ on an order with one just yet.
Media monitoring
If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s a website or piece of software used to track mentions and features automatically, so you don’t have to. Many of these tools have other features beyond the monitoring, which means that they can be on the expensive side.
Does your brand need one?
If there are multiple people working on your brand’s PR, or you’re part of a team looking after PR and marketing, then it can be useful to have one central source of truth for coverage, but smaller brands or smaller teams can often see this as an added cost that they don’t need.
The top three media monitoring tools
Agility - built in database
One of the most popular pieces of software and known for its database above all. Databases can be guarded behind a big paywall (we know all about that) but if you have an affordable database of press contacts as it is (it’s us, hi), then Agility can be a big price to pay purely for the monitoring side of things.
Vuelio - global markets
Currently under a little scrutiny in the PR world for its accuracy on monitoring, and again it is known for global coverage and tracking features in print, radio, and TV, as well as digital. This would be a good option for brands that have a big media spread and presence, and are struggling to keep track of the different channels and coverage.
Cision - insights and trends
CisionOne from the brand offers media monitoring and insights that share future trends and predictions to help users plan their stories. This would be great for bigger teams with complex strategies and global markets, but functionality is still being tested for the product.
Pricing for these services is always upon request, but from experience we can tell you that they are typically around the few hundred pounds a month mark, with other features that come with the monitoring side.
Doing it yourself
The good news is that there is a way to do it yourself, if you don’t have the need for a piece of software like these.
Google Alerts
Our favourite way is to set up Google Alerts for brand name mentions, so you can catch pieces of coverage as they come through. While some features do slip through the net due to spelling or simply being at the mercy of Google, it is a strong way to capture most of the coverage.
Google Analytics
You can use GA4 to track online press, by looking at the backlinks, known as referrals, that your website is getting. It’s located under Reports > Traffic > Acquisition, and you can see which referring domains are listed. If you have had a mention but no back link, remember it is always worth asking (politely) for the link to be included.
Backlink tracker
There are a range of different websites and services to use but one like ahrefs.com is free and easy to use, so you can check which domains or websites are linking back to yours. You can also check the domain authority of them, too, so you can see the impact that the coverage will have on your overall SEO.
Search
Setting time aside each day to search for your brand name and variations of, to pick up any features that might have been published. Google the name and flick to the news tab to find new pieces, and do the same on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and any other platforms that might be relevant for your PR.
Readly
A subscription is £9.99 a month and gives you access to all of the major publications. You can search your brand name in the search bar and it will pull up any mentions. Tracking print coverage can feel trickier without having access to every single magazine, but Readly is a big help, and for the more niche publications, you will likely get more of a heads up if you focus on building great relationships…
Relationships
It isn’t the norm that editors or journalists will email to tell you that they featured your brand after a pitch, as they have so many emails and content to get through. However, if you build a strong relationship with them, there is a good chance they will send you a note when it’s gone live. Always email to thank an editor or journalist for the feature, and remember that this is human business, so treat it like it.
Does your brand need media monitoring?
The truth of it is, unless you’re a big company with a lot of outreach and uptake, monitoring your coverage should be relatively easy to keep in-house, without the addition of a subscription like these. As the business grows and the PR function gets bigger, then maybe the time will come when you need some help in picking up the pieces, but, for now, we’d recommend keeping it as an ad-hoc task. Automation and AI that we mentioned earlier comes in handy, and setting up a coverage tracker is a sure way to keep on top of what was featured and when - and also by who.
Saving coverage
A quick one on saving coverage, if you’re looking at digital PR, make sure you screenshot and save the piece as a PDF as well as the link, so you have a reference of the coverage even if the URL changes or the piece gets moved on the site. This will help build your PR portfolio, and you get to keep everything in one place instead of searching for lost and broken links.
Saving coverage, or clippings as they’re known, are useful to not only share value to managers and stakeholders of PR, but also to keep track of what topics, features, products and stories got picked up, so you can use this information to inform your future strategy.
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