The process can be overwhelming. It’s hard to differentiate between the advantages and disadvantages of all the options. And while the platforms for gathering metrics are many and vary widely, when all is said and done, you have to pick the solution that works best for your company.

Asking the right questions (of yourself and of the provider) can help you avoid the headache of being in a service agreement that doesn’t suit your business.

Here are 5 pitfalls that can be easily avoided:

1. Short-sighted purchasing decision

Before you engage service providers, it’s important to do a bit of a self-audit. Ask yourself: “Are my requirements now the same requirements I’ll have five years from now?” What if something controversial happens in your industry? Can the platform grow with your constantly-changing business?

2. I have to be at my desk to manage my portal

Is it important to you to know when something’s happened even if you’re not at your desk? Ask the service provider how their solution supports a travelling practitioner. Maybe you want real-time alerts sent to your smartphone. Does the provider offer that as an option?

3. Unexpected transactional fees

Budget certainty is important to many businesses. How important is it to your business? After the implementation costs, what other fees might be incurred? This one’s like getting locked in a cell phone service contract where you signed up for a $45/month plan but your bill always comes in at $75/month.

4. Having to pay for extra searches

Change is inevitable and flexibility in your search terms is paramount. Things may seem quiet right now, but maybe you have a product launch in a few months. Would the number of search terms you purchased be enough to monitor an influx in chatter? Does the provider offer unlimited search terms? If not, what will those extra ones cost?

5. I can’t preview my clips before purchasing them

In the end, engagement is usually what you’re trying to measure. Numbers can help tell the story, but the difference is in how your audiences are talking about you. If you’re tracking an issue, wouldn’t it be nice to preview some of the content so you can decide whether or not it’s worth including in your analysis? Ask the provider if they allow clips to be previewed before you purchase them.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Before you sign a service agreement, make sure you’re evaluating the provider from all angles. There’s a lot to take into account but you can avoid these pitfalls by asking the right questions.

What would you add?

Your PR department has been collecting clips for your company for a while and you’ve even managed to come up with some metrics to trend for tone. But how do you know you’re capturing all the coverage that’s meaningful to your business? How many sources do you examine?

Have you ever really considered the cost of doing this kind of thing manually?

We did.

Made a few assumptions, adjusted for inflation, and voila! We figured out what a North American company spends on average per year on monitoring its media coverage. When trying to justify a monitoring service, consider these figures.

How much time would it take to compile a clipbook manually? This depends on the size of the company but, on a regular day (no issue to be managed or crisis to quell), let’s assume (if you’ve had your morning coffee)…it takes:

• ~ 2 hours every morning to scan the news sites, broadcast sites, video sites, RSS feeds, and collect news clips
• ~ 1 hour to manually generate a clipbook
• ~ 1 hour converting the information into manipulate-able data…if you’re an Excel wiz
• A few hours for tone analysis and reporting brings you to your full 8-hour work day

Some days will be worse than others. You might be sluggish because it’s a Monday or maybe your company recently released its earnings and there are a higher volume of mentions.

Now let’s talk money. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics website, in 2010, the hourly mean wage for a Public Relations Specialist is about $33.50 per hour. The Living in Canada website, in 2010, cites the average wage for a Public Relations professional working in Toronto at about $25.00 per hour. Landing somewhere in the middle, we’ll use $29.00 per hour as our yardstick wage.

Let’s say that he/she spends about 95% of their time working on media monitoring-related things. So, based on a 40-hour work week, your company pays about $1,000.00 per week toward manual media monitoring – which rings you in at about $52,000.00 per year.

Now, if you’re a larger company, you could be paying 2 or 3 staff members to share that work. Or consider if your PR pro is at the higher end of the pay scale and makes closer to $40.00 per hour – now it’s costing your company about $80,000 yearly.

When you consider that your company pays somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 annually on manual media monitoring, it might be time to consider a full-service provider.

If you’re still not sure of the difference between each type of media, here’s a bit of a breakdown:

What you pay for. This includes paid advertisements, TV spots, radio spots, news releases (you paid for distribution and you own the content), web banners, paid searches, etc. This type of media is often targeted at new markets or “strangers”.

What you own. This includes your corporate website, microsites (your Twitter account, for example), your company’s Facebook page, branded collateral, a live event you put on for clients, etc. This is often targeted at current and future customers.

What you earn: This includes focused social media content (retweets, for example), organic blog posts (this means a blogger talks about your company or product without incentive), videos, cover stories, etc. This is often targeted at existing and potential brand advocates or fans.

In a way, none of the media you garner is free. The planning and management of the campaign itself could be labour intensive and costly. And, more often than not, you’ve paid for a conversation starter (beware: you might get in to hot water if you try to buy the entire conversation).

The advantage to paid and owned media is that mentions are more predictable. You control the owned outlets, and you likely produced the content you’ve bought. It’s the aftermath of that campaign initiation – the earned media – that comes littered with nuances and subtleties. This is likely because earned media is often based on trust. Journalists and bloggers are often hesitant to talk kindly about a brand if they don’t fully believe in the cause. If they don’t trust your product, they won’t promote you. And, don’t forget, it doesn’t count as earned media if it’s incentive-based mentions (like sending a blogger a freebie to get them to talk kindly about your product).

It’s not always easy to differentiate between the different levels of media mentions. Especially when it comes to earned media. If you use a media monitoring service here are some first steps to take once you’ve performed your searches:

• Categorize your content: organize your clips based on paid, owned and earned.
• Clean it up: go through the earned media to make sure the “earned” really happened organically; that the mention happened without incentive or payment; re-categorize if necessary.
• Scrutinize: be sure that if you’ve categorized a clip as “earned” that it’s more than just a name drop – did the mention result from your campaign? Was the earned media positive or negative? Did that mention lead to more sharing? If not, does it make sense to keep it in the “earned” pile? Is it worth reporting on?

In the end, a solid campaign is built around successful engagement. No engagement, no sale. You’ll have to take time to monitor what’s being said about your brand. And the levels of engagement should be the focus.  Don’t forget some of that media can be negative. So be honest with yourself – knowing the true landscape will give you a better chance to improve.

Brent Carey, Director of Communications for Mattamy Homes tells us how their company uses MediaVantage to do just that.

Q: Why did Mattamy Homes start using MV?

We needed a solid foundation for our external communications strategy going forward – policies, monitoring, training and outreach. We knew we needed to start taking a more planned, deliberate approach, and that this needed to start with the essentials – getting a handle on the reach and perception of the Mattamy brand with key external audiences, as a lead-in to more proactive work down the road. In the end, it was an easy decision to start using MediaVantage to help us do that.

Q: How do you use the MV suite daily, weekly and quarterly?

On a daily basis, we monitor references to the Mattamy brand and our competitors, to see if there are any issues or emerging trends that we need to watch or respond to.

Weekly, we generate clipbooks of company and competitor information for our Senior Management Team. We add our own commentary and post the results to the company intranet.

Quarterly, we use MediaVantage to produce detailed metrics reports and trends for tone over time. We also track the sources of our coverage.

Q: What’s been your experience with MV services and support?

The training and setup was perfect. The staff was very, very helpful. If I have questions, they’re always answered right away. I really have nothing but great things to say about the service and support.

Q: How does using MV help your business?

As I enter my budgeting phase, I need to answer: “What does it enable us to do?”

Because we use MediaVantage, we now know how our brand is perceived in mainstream media and in social media. It has helped us move from a reactive, ‘no comment’ organization to one that is starting to engage our audiences with tailored communications.

Brent says MediaVantage helped their team put in place a foundation to be able to move forward strategically. And when asked if Mattamy Homes has considered alternate solutions to CNW’s MediaVantage suite, Brent responded: “I didn’t even think of anyone else.”

This was certainly a crisis situation and VIA Rail responded. How they responded and whether or not the communication was effective or timely has all been up for debate.

Regardless, there’s always PR impact in these types of crisis situations. Immediately following the accident, the public turned to Twitter and other media outlets to find out what happened. They wanted answers. What went wrong? How did this happen? How many people were affected? What will happen to other scheduled trains?

The VIA Rail communications team did a lot of things right. Seemingly, they tried to get the facts before engaging in social media. Here are some highlights of what VIA Rail did following the initial crisis:

• Identified the deceased and notified their families
• Made sure all survivors from the scene were properly cared for
• Made sure everyone on their team used clear and consistent messages when “speaking” publically
• Issued a press release once they had the facts
• Answered all questions and concerns from the public on social media sites after the communications plan was aligned
  • Even went as far as answering each individual’s concern or question
• Set up a special toll-free number for anyone seeking information about passengers
• Made alternative plans to accommodate already-scheduled trips

With every crisis there is something to be learned and there’s always room for improvement in case of another potential crisis. Here are a few of our suggestions:

• Although all traditional media were part of the communication crisis strategy, social media needs to be more than an after-thought.
• With social media being a massive source for people to get their news, there needs to be a “voice of authority” present as soon as possible – even if the message is “we don’t have answers yet, but we’re working to get them.”

What would you add to this list?

When our business leaders communicate publically, how can we, as communicators, make sure what they’re saying means something and adds value to the conversation? And ultimately contributes to our trust-building efforts?

The 12^th annual Edelman Trust Barometer global survey results were recently released. In the report, one particular finding stood out:

• Credibility of CEOs and government officials plummeted, whereas credibility of peers and regular employees saw a dramatic rise.

In his foreword, President & CEO Richard Edelman talks about businesses needing to “earn a license to lead.” He identifies four ways to do that:

1. Exercise principles-based leadership
2. Recognize that the operational factors responsible for current trust in business won’t build future trust
3. Practice radical transparency
4. Shape the public discourse

Considering the survey results, this is great advice for communicators to keep in mind when advising our senior leaders. But it seems like we’ve heard it all before. So why are we hesitating to heed the call?

Sometimes I think it’s that we’re not exactly sure how to frame what it is we want to say. We don’t always understand the full breadth of what’s being said about our company and we don’t want leadership to speak, just to speak – we want it to be meaningful.

So, we must first study the landscape. Simply put, in order to influence and shape public discourse, we have to monitor what’s being said about our brand. And although trust is difficult to calculate, there are other things we can measure more concretely, like media and social media mentions, for instance.

Knowing where your company and its leadership stands in the eyes of your audience means that you, as a communicator, will be able to better gauge the impact of a specific communications campaign. This will help you guide strategic planning. And, if you can drill it down and pull out what’s being said about your CEO specifically, for example, then you’ll be able to better position your trust-building efforts.

If we know how and when our publics are talking about us, we can respond and, more importantly, engage, in more meaningful and timely ways. That’s the first step to building future trust.

You know it’s bad. All signs are pointing to a corporate crisis.

Now’s not the time to lay blame. And until time travel’s perfected, it’s up to you – the PR pro – to help your organization weather the storm.  

You’re used to leading teams and guiding organizations down the right path. You try to keep a clear head about the whole thing but the office uproar is distracting.

To help you stay focused, here are some simple Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind when dealing with your crisis:

The last thing you want to do in the throes of a crisis is make things worse.

Remember to always refer to your crisis communications plan. But, if it gets lost in the chaos, you can fall back on these 5 reminders.

But what should an organization do when a competitor is hit with a crisis or issue? What if the crisis is significant enough to affect not only the competitor’s brand but the reputation of the entire industry?

Although these types of catastrophic events are rare, such moments present significant challenges to a company that is not equipped to deal with the situation. It’s not enough for companies to have crisis management strategies in place so they can manage their own issues; companies should also have them ready when a competitor is hit with a crisis.

On January 13, 2012, a catastrophic event took place as the cruise ship, Costa Concordia (a subsidiary of the Carnival Corporation), ran aground and partially sank on the western coast of Italy. Although most of the 4,200 passengers and crew were rescued by the heroic efforts of the Italian Coast Guard, several people lost their lives and many are still missing.

Oil recovery workers pass in front of the Costa Concordia cruise ship Photo: REUTERS

Within hours of the tragedy taking place, Costa’s Communications team deployed their crisis management plan, setting up an assistance hotline and an information feed directly on their website. However, Costa has a major PR task ahead of it as it deals with the embarrassing revelation that the vessel’s Captain abandoned ship early claiming he “tripped into a lifeboat.”

Unsettling images of the tragic event have been broadcasting on TV stations, appearing in newspapers and streaming on news websites across the globe. This media coverage will have a destabilizing and potentially negative long-term effect on the reputation of not only Costa, but the cruise line industry as a whole. Consumers that were previously considering a cruise vacation may now seek the perceived ‘less risky’ choice of an all-inclusive resort or hotel getaway.

The fact is: this issue won’t just affect Costa and the Carnival Corporation; it has serious implications for all major cruise lines.

In response to this event, the Communications teams from Carnival Corporation’s competitors should be proactively communicating their commitment to safety to the media, their agency partners and their customer base. As tragic as this event is, this crisis presents an opportunity for competitors in the cruise line industry to unite, review and take group action to ensure the enforcement of safety regulations and evacuation best practices so that events like this never happen again.

A similar response was taken during BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010, when industry competitors Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips, teamed up to put together $1 Billion USD in funding to develop technology and response plans for capturing and containing oil spills.

Communications teams are responsible for managing the reputation of their organization and must not ignore the impact that a competitor’s crisis might have on their reputation. In situations like the one above, Communicators cannot solely rely on media monitoring tools and clipping services to effectively manage the impact of a competitor crisis.

With a brand management solution, organizations can effectively manage multiple issues at the same time and Communicators can strategize, develop and implement an effective crisis management plan to mitigate the negative impact on their corporate reputation – even if it’s in the wake of a competitor’s crisis.

So who is fundamentally responsible for corporate reputation? Traditionally, organizations have delegated this responsibility to their Corporate Communications or PR teams. However, corporate reputation isn’t solely determined by PR pros (although they’re major influencers) – it’s more often shaped by the business decisions made every day by an organization.

Reputation management is all about understanding perceptions and using that insight to shape a company’s actions and decisions. Let’s look at an example.

Recently, a Papa John’s employee was fired for printing a racial slur on a customer receipt at one of the chain’s NYC restaurants. The customer, Minhee Cho, posted a photo of the receipt and tweeted about it. As expected, Papa John’s took swift action – publicly apologizing for the incident and firing the employee in question.

In situations like the one above, it will be the after-the-fact business decisions made that will greatly affect an organization’s corporate reputation. The entire organization, from the top-down and the bottom-up, needs to understand these decisions and the follow-up actions being taken to address the backlash.

Corporations use logic in the boardroom to make business decisions but consumers use emotion to make judgments about businesses. Companies must identify this gap and understand the implications when developing their corporate strategy. When an issue arises, companies must provide assurance to its customers that the company can exercise judgment and will act in their best interests.

Papa John’s needs to deal with this issue on a broad scale, reiterating to its employees their customer service protocols and best practices. Most importantly, the organization should focus on preventing this sort of thing from happening again.

In today’s fast-paced world of information delivery, companies need enterprise tools to help them identify and figure out whether stakeholders trust them; what drives this trust; and what leads to customer outrage. To properly build and protect corporate reputation, organizations need to fully utilize these tools to allow them to focus on building enterprise-wide reputation competence.

An organization’s corporate reputation exists in the actions of its employees and the perceptions of its customers. Each corporate action should focus on securing trust equity in the mind of its stakeholders and the impact of these decisions should be closely tracked, measured and understood by its executives and Communications professionals.

Organizations need to continually focus on the role that trust plays in revenue and reputation. Only by recognizing that corporate reputation exists in the many and not in the few will companies be able to truly protect their brand. Corporate reputation is hard to build and easy to destroy.

Why use a media list

First rule of everything: Know your audience. The action of building a media list allows you to think long and hard about who will be receiving your news, and how you might approach each individual differently to ensure they see value in covering it. A media list also ensures you haven’t forgotten someone essential and it is a handy reference for follow-up purposes, or subsequent related campaigns.

How to put together a media list

Create your media list once you have identified the campaign’s objectives and the ultimate audience you are trying to reach.  Depending on your news, you can use an online media directory to target your list by media outlet, type, geography and beats covered. Contact information in media directories is usually up-to-date, giving you one less thing to worry about. But remember, you need to supplement the information you can pull from a database with your own research.

Aim to collect the following information:

• Name, Title and Publication name
• Contact information: email, phone number, Twitter ID if you have it
• What story angles would be of greatest appeal?
• How does the journalist prefer to be contacted?
• What materials does he or she usually need or like? (video, photos?)
• What’s the best time to connect?
• What story angles are of greatest appeal?

Enhance your media list by:

• Reading each journalist or blogger’s body of work to determine whether your news is appropriate for their beat, their publication or their interests. (Refer to any articles that seem relevant to your news – but don’t pitch a journalist on a story he or she has recently written.)
• Learning whether anyone in your organization already has a relationship with anyone on your list

• Reviewing your organization’s past lists for similar campaigns. Recheck and update old information.
• Taking a look at who has written about you in the past and who has covered your competitors.
• Determining which contacts will require multimedia assets with your news.
• Considering a media group, like local or ethnic media that you haven’t before.
• Refining to ensure you only have one person from each media outlet or beat that you will contact.

Now what?

Well, get going!  Start some conversations!

Using a newswire to distribute a news release ensures all media outlets have simultaneous access to your news, so don’t feel compelled to replicate this service with a mass email to your whole media list.  Besides, the most effective pitches are individually prepared for each journalist or blogger on your list and should be handled separately according to their preferences. To save time, you can prepare any outreach emails in advance so you only need to hit ‘send’ on each one when ready.

Once you reach out, don’t forget to track your interactions in your media database. This information will come in handy next time.

Here are some resources for effective media relations that cover the next steps:

• Getting on the Radar: Tried & True Media Relations Best Practices
• 13 Ways to Keep Your Pitch From Getting Deleted