Media monitoring ceases to be a tool used exclusively in marketing and PR activities. In business, it can be used for business development, forecasting market trends and supporting customer service. More and more frequently monitoring is also used by foundations and public benefit organizations, which can thanks to it increase the range of their actions, seek volunteers, or solve community problems.
- Media monitoring is usually used to measure the effectiveness of PR activities or to manage communication during image crises. However, this tool may have other applications. For example, social media monitoring can be effectively used by foundations to increase the reach of community campaigns. Thanks to this tool they can precisely deliver a message to people who are interested in it,' says Newseria Biznes Magdalena Pawłowska from the Media Monitoring Institute.
Media monitoring is generally used by companies and enterprises which want to monitor on an ongoing basis the results of their PR and marketing activities. The analysis of information that appears in social media, blogosphere, portals, press, radio, or television allows to examine how a brand is perceived. The company can immediately respond to the entry of a dissatisfied customer or forecast market trends based on the analysis of published information. Therefore, most often monitoring is a tool that supports marketing, PR, market research or customer service departments.
Magdalena Pawłowska points out that this tool is applicable not only in business. It also works well in social campaigns. Foundations and Public Benefit Organizations use monitoring to increase the reach of the action and precisely target their message.
- A good example is also searching for potential volunteers or people willing to take part in a given social campaign. Blood donation organisations are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find blood donors for people in need. In July alone, 1.5 thousand social media posts were published on this topic. In this case it is important for foundations to react quickly to any signals coming from Internet users and answer their questions on e.g. how to prepare themselves and where to donate blood,' says Magdalena Pawłowska.
As he stresses, monitoring is also useful as a tool to support the work of public institutions. For example, facebook profiles are checked by ZUS on an ongoing basis. At the beginning of this year, the company refused to pay the maternity benefit to a woman who had her new boss among her friends on the portal, which aroused suspicion of a fictitious employment.
In mid-July, the Ministry of Health announced a competition for a media review on mental disorders and suicides. Such monitoring is intended to help fight against incorrect and harmful phrases that have become widespread in all types of media, in particular social media.
- Following this path, social media monitoring can also be treated as a prevention tool, allowing to react on an ongoing basis to disturbing entries and prevent suicides. Such solutions have been developed, among others, by Instagram, creating a tool that draws attention of specialists to disturbing words and hashtags used by users - says the IMM expert.
