Media monitoring tools are essential for tracking coverage, but getting meaningful insights requires more than just signing up and running a few searches.
Here are 5 quick tips we’ve picked up over the years for using these platforms more effectively—especially when you’re putting together PR reports:
1. Narrow Your Focus
Searching across millions of websites is tempting, but it often creates more noise than insight. Instead, limit your searches to outlets that genuinely reach your target audience and align with your PR or business goals. Identifying these key outlets and tailoring searches accordingly is always one of our top priorities when working with a new client.
2. Manually Review Results
Don’t assume every article the platform finds is relevant. False positives are common—ambiguous company names, sidebar content, rogue html etc. can inflate your (or your competitors’) results. While it’s labour-intensive, sanity-checking your data is essential for accuracy.
3. Use Filters to Cut Through the Noise
Here’s a major time-saver: search string filters. Through years of trial and error, we’ve created filters that remove 70-80% of the irrelevant results most companies encounter. These filters tackle the common reasons for false positives and work for most clients who target the main national, business and tech press. This instantly cuts down the time required to clean up search results.
4. Don’t Rely on Automated Sentiment Analysis
Most tools assess sentiment of an article overall rather than towards your company or competitors specifically. This can skew your understanding of how the media perceives you. Once platforms introduce more AI functionality this will improve, but for now, manual review and coding are necessary to ensure sentiment data you can trust.
5. Export Your Data—Don’t Rely on In-Platform Dashboards
Built-in dashboards are convenient, but what happens if you can’t access the platform right before a major report is due? Exporting your coverage data ensures you have an offline backup, plus it allows you to create customized charts in your company’s style. Bonus: it also helps avoid vendor lock in should there be any unexpected price hikes or changes in functionality.