Just as a pilot needs accurate information to navigate through clouds a communicator needs accurate feedback to navigate through the fog of a crisis. For most crises, that information can be obtained through media monitoring.
Media monitoring provides a look outside your organization to learn what people important to it – your stakeholders – are saying about the crisis and your performance. Providing this external perspective, especially during a crisis, is one of the most important functions the public relations, communications or corporate affairs staff of any organization, from a Fortune 500 corporation to a local charity.
This critically important management tool is a product of collecting and analyzing media reports and community web sites covering and commenting on your organization and the situation in which it finds itself.
Gathering this data is fairly simple. Many marketing-oriented organizations already have systems in place to monitor and analyze media and community web sites. Media monitoring firms, also called “clipping services” can tailor collection and analysis packages for individual situations. If you don’t require such intensive, and sometimes expensive, analysis Google and Yahoo news search sites can bring the raw data to your desk and someone in the organization can be tasked to collect, analyze and report this material.
Whatever collection and analysis method you will use arrangements must be made prior to a crisis and specific information must be included in your response plan.
Effective media monitoring provides the following:
- What are people saying about our organization and its response to the crisis?
- Do our messages resonate with our key audiences and stakeholders?
- How effective are those messages?
- Are there developments or issues we are not addressing?
The key elements of media monitoring are:
Coverage
The number of television stories, radio reports, newspaper articles, commentary/editorials and community web sites provides a snapshot of how much attention your crisis is generating and where.
Ask your spokespeople to keep track of the interviews they perform; specifically the reporter and his/her contact information and media outlet.
You might be surprised at how much coverage what seems to be a local story receives, especially when the media needs to fill the 24/7 news cycle.
Storylines
List the most common storylines and comments the media uses in the coverage and commentary and how often they appear in the material you’ve analyzed. This data is key to determining how the situation is perceived.
For example, customers need to know what to do with potentially contaminated peanut butter and your organization has yet to disseminate data information. That storyline is in 72-percent of the stories you’ve analyzed.
Common questions
What are reporters asking and do your statements or press releases address those questions or issues? Your spokespeople can take a moment after every interview to jot down this information.
Effectiveness
How many media reports include your organization’s messages, or at least parts of them? If the answer is “not many” you may have to tweak your messages or rewrite them.
Analysis
Provide a dispassionate analysis of the coverage/commentary you’ve collected. Rate the stories as positive, negative or neutral.
Emerging issues/topics
Are there any emerging issues or topics? For example, the crisis may have started with a chemical leak in your plant however, on Day 2, your monitoring and analysis might detect some reporters are zeroing-in on your maintenance program.
You may also wish to monitor unofficial blogs, message boards and other sites your employees use.
Presentation and staffing
Graphing this data provides a visual map of how the crisis is unfolding and how well your response efforts are working. Those graphs also serve as the basis of your Crisis Response Team (CRT) updates.
Don’t forget, someone must be responsible for updating existing messages or creating new messages to address issues identified from your analysis.
If this process sounds labor-intensive, you’re right. The amount of resources devoted to media monitoring depends on several factors including the size and/or importance of the crisis, people available, time constraints and budget.
Remember, if you neglect media monitoring you will be flying blind, heading for a crash.
