With accurate media intelligence, your team can create data-driven plans, go after goals, and evaluate the impact their communications efforts are having on the company’s KPIs. But first, you need to make sure you’re asking the right questions about your media campaigns and messaging.

Some of the questions that PR/communications teams should be asking include the following:

Questions to Ask About Your Messages and Campaigns:

Is our media message pulling through?

Communicators should determine what outcomes they are trying to accomplish with their messaging and measure campaigns accordingly. For instance, are you trying to improve customer perceptions, strengthen investor relations, or demonstrate thought leadership? Collecting accurate data from both traditional and social media is an important first step. But understanding message pull through means you need to analyze the context of the stories you or your peers are appearing in. Did the author or our spokesperson convey the thought leadership message clearly or favorably? Do we need to adjust our strategy if it’s not working?

Are we over-allocating team resources to push an already successful message or topic?

This will be particularly important for teams that are resource-constrained or experiencing “initiative overload”. You need to accurately allocate resources to the campaigns that need them the most. Still not gaining traction with your efforts around increasing positive SOV for your workplace environment topics? Use media intelligence to determine new publications and influencers who have not yet covered your brand but have written about a competitor. Even with limited resources, this approach of using data to adjust allocation helps your communications team realize the value of using data to drive outcomes and not just output.

How successful was the media campaign or event? Who did we reach?

If you’re not already asking how your campaigns are performing, chances are someone else will ask you. Top performing communicators track how their efforts are impacting the goals of the business  What are the brand and reputation drivers that the business is hoping to impact this year? Executives want to see real results and determining outcomes such as whether you improved not only SOV in your industry but also increased positive tone for your brand, products or executives. Have you earned more positive coverage from authors not previously talking about you? Being able to show a report with data backing up the success of your efforts makes all the difference to leadership.

Is this a PR crisis? Are we helping or hurting the situation?

You know all too well that dealing with a potential PR crisis can be stressful because the crisis can widen if it’s not responded to correctly and in a timely way. Figuring out how and when to respond comes with experience, but wouldn’t it be helpful to have a proactive way to set strategy? The cornerstone of every crisis response strategy is strong data. Good media intelligence not only brings potential PR crises to your attention early, but can also provide a roadmap based on any previous crises. Does this crisis look the same regarding volume and tone? How quickly can we gauge media reaction as we respond so we can course correct? Sometimes a quick look backward can help chart your forward course.

Which messages or topics should we include or avoid in our content creation?

When developing content, you already know it’s important to be in tune with industry keywords as well as current news, trends, coverage, and social media sentiment relating to your industry or brand. Analyzing the tone and sentiment of various topics and subtopics will provide guidance as to what messages are resonating in the market. Adding in data points also available in each article like authors, outlets and influencers will help you more narrowly target your efforts.

Where is there whitespace for message expansion?

This question becomes critical in noisy or volatile industries. Finding a topic in your industry that your audience cares about but isn’t yet “owned” by any of your competitors can be a game changer. You get to jump-start a new conversation with a receptive audience – and offering up new content always gets the attention of the media. A win-win for everyone.

Feel Confident in Your Media Campaigns and Messages with On-Point Answers

The intelligence your media analytics provides should give you confidence that you’re presenting senior leadership with credible reports documenting accurate data tied to outcomes.

Pairing human analysis with technology gets you the story behind the story. Your communications team gets the benefit of accurate and timely media intelligence to inform strategy and measure progress without wasting precious effort on manual clean-up tasks. More importantly, you get to make data-driven decisions that will make your CEO take notice.

PublicRelay developed a human-hybrid media intelligence solution that gets you the data you need. Contact PublicRelay to learn more.