The Power of News Monitoring
From the News app on my iPhone to daily Google Alerts, I find myself constantly immersed in breaking news, and I love it.
Some people still prefer to read the paper in the morning and be done with their news collection for the day, while others check CNN or Mashable to pick up some of the top stories throughout their day. If you’re working in the marketing world, you already know that’s not going to cut it.
Knowing your client and knowing them well includes staying on top of their share of voice. Seeing where your client fits into the big picture is crucial to staying relevant and ahead of the game in your marketing efforts. It’s key to find those stories that others may not have spotted and to make sure you’re taking note of any mentions, big or small, positive or negative.
In order to accomplish this, you must get yourself a news addiction or some serious FoMO. Luckily, I have both. Here are the tools I recommend for successful news monitoring:
This tool allows you to wake up with the news that you are looking for already in your inbox. Google Alerts allows you to easily follow recent news on a specific person, place or subject without having to conduct an individual search. Don’t forget to customize how often you want to receive these alerts and be sure to specify what news sources you prefer.
Tracking a popular story? This tool has your back. Google Trends will show you how often a specific search term has been entered online and its overall search volume. The best part, your search will come with multiple graphs showing the interest levels of each search term over time, as well as what the regional interest is and any related searches that are rising and falling in real time.
Every PR pro needs an awesome research tool. This LexisNexis software is a database of over 36,000 publications, purely for research and clipping purposes. You can do everything from dig into decade old newspaper archives or quickly grab headlines from competitor news stories. For hassle-free searching, use the results filtering tools to pinpoint your article.
They don’t call it the front page of the Internet for nothing. Before I started in my role as an account coordinator, I used reddit to quickly read the daily world news headlines. Now, I have subreddits for all industry verticals where my clients are aligned. This is a helpful tool to find articles on less popular websites and blogs, and to see industry news as soon as it breaks.
Google mastery is nothing to joke about. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the Google in less than 20 seconds, you’re doing something wrong. Laugh all you want, but treating Google like a sport will get you far and treat you well when it comes to finding information in a timely manner. Use the infographic in the link to perfect your skills.
Combine all the above and you’ll be a news ninja.
