Growing importance of Media Monitoring for CXOs
Media is the first and foremost source of such information for CXOs because it forms a right vehicle to reach the stakeholders of an organization. When messages interpreted wrongly, it can affect the company’s growth.
Information can be…….
1. What’s said about you in the media? – Either positive or negative, this directly affects the company’s growth, image and employee motivation
2. What’s said about your competitor in the media? – You can monitor the growth of your competitor and track their strategies
3. What’s happening in your industry? – Get an overall report or analysis of your industry.
An organization or a CXO should gather information to run a successful business in the competitive industry which on a daily basis is impractical. Because, in a country like India there are a number of mainline, financial and regional dailies, and business and trade magazines.
Any information published irrelevant to the company can spread rapidly as a wildfire and affect its image. The outcome, in the initial stage, also cannot be measured. The response time given to the media department is much less and here needs the help of the expertise of a media monitoring agency to analyze its consequences.
A CXO can utilize the media information in these ways.
1. Identify the Journalist (Influencer) who writes about your industry
2. Monitor the reporting style and other area of interest
3. Monitor the stories reported on your competitor by the journalist
4. Develop a rapport with the journalist
5. Make a direct connectivity
Now all these can be accomplished with the help of a media monitoring agency. The media monitoring agency stores a large number of media articles of various industries. You can search the articles on the basis of journalist and publication by specifying the date.
In case of crisis, you can get the whole history of the journalist’s past stories, analyze the reporting style and arrive at a point about the tone of the interview you have on the next day.
For example – if you are the CEO of a company and you have an interview with a journalist of a top financial daily. To make the scenario even worse, your company is in a crisis situation.
How would you prepare for the interview……. is a big question in front of you? Luckily, your media department has subscribed to the services of a media monitoring agency. What you can do is….
- Sit with your Corporate Communication dept., and search the past stories of the journalist
- Find the reporting tone of the Journalist whether it is positive/negative/neutral stories
- Depending upon the tone of the reporting style, now ask your Corporate Communication Head to jot down the expected questions of the journalist
- Make a mock interview with your Corporate Communication Head and prepare for the interview
