We’ve come a long way from the days when “media monitoring” involved a ream of paper clippings and transcripts turning up on the boss’s desk each morning. Technology has changed everything.

Media monitoring has evolved into “media intelligence”. To help us understand what that can do for our brands, the BNR team is joined by MyMedia Intelligence co-founder, Paul Chapman.

Here are some key take-outs:

• • According to Paul, “media intelligence is the identification, selection and delivery of smart, relevant news content”.
  • Aggregation software is used to find news, voice-to-text software follows broadcast media, and real people then sift through it all to give the most important items to their client. It means media monitoring services can get to clients much sooner than they used to.
  • Some clients monitor themselves; some monitor their competition, too. Others also monitor the issues they’re interested in.
  • Monitoring social is more important than ever, but many clients still don’t do it because of their own cultural reasons (they’ve only ever monitored newspapers, for example) or because they don’t have social media accounts so don’t think they need to.
  • It’s now important to monitor influencers, too. And media intelligence can help brands be on the front foot with this — by identifying influencers brands should be working with.
  • Media intelligence isn’t just looking at the coverage that has been received, it’s forward-looking, too. The analytics now available can be used to help brands make decisions going forward.
  • Traditional media mentions help legitimise a brand. Once you’ve been mentioned, you need to amplify it.
  • Knowing they’re about to be mentioned in the media, using media intelligence, brands can respond in real time, rather than being behind the eight ball.

On My Desk

• • • Paul took a look at the latest West Australian radio ratings and noted that talkback radio ratings were down during the recent State Election — so where were people consuming their news on that event? There’s a take-out for that for every brand: know where your audience is consuming its news.
    • Nic mentioned the success he’d had selling tickets to his Meet the Media event by advertising it on Facebook, even though he didn’t put a call to action in the ad. Awareness, he said, was enough to encourage people to buy because the event is a good value proposition.
    • Sarah’s recommendation was a service called Mention, which is useful for smaller brands that might be interested in media monitoring but don’t have a big budget.
    • James recommended NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast.

Here are the links you might need

• • • You’ll find Paul Chapman’s MyMedia Intelligence here.

 Have you heard the one about…

Recently James and Sarah took a close look at the questions brands should ask before they engage an agency.

And here’s a discussion about how virtual reality is opening up new ways for brands to connect with their audience.

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