Twenty years ago, businesses were asking why anyone should bother monitoring blogs. A few years later, some similarly asked what the point was in scanning social media. After all, the only reason people used Twitter was to post photos of their lunch—or so the jokey comments went.
It did not take long before the power of social media became readily apparent. News, a comment, or an ill-timed joke could all “go viral” and do genuine damage to a brand or personality. Or, on the positive side, a small niche product could see skyrocketing sales off of a single celebrity mention online.
Most brands now understand the value presented by both social listening and media monitoring. The question these days is how to effectively monitor both when budgets are tight.
So, spoiler alert: the answer to the question “do you really need both?” is an emphatic yes. However, there are ways to determine what the balance and intensity between the social vs. traditional media monitoring should be, if you are asked to find savings.
It is also worth mentioning that monitoring and analysis have further subdivided social content, as now there is a real distinction made between social monitoring and social listening. Social monitoring is considered reactive (reviewing content for mentions and sentiment) whilst the intent of social listening is proactive (assessing content in an effort to shape messaging, narratives, and trends).
There are a few questions that can help you to determine where and how to allocate resources if you are asked to make the case for one or the other.
Where is your audience?
At the heart of most monitoring programs is the need to understand how a brand is perceived by its target audiences. Knowing where your core audience is online is crucial.
A core audience of 65 and over will have different media consumption habits than an audience that is predominantly 21 to 30 years old.
Most brands, when asked, will say they want to monitor everything. In a way, this makes sense as no one wants to miss something big. But if the product is a makeup brand that wants to capture a young and predominantly female audience, Instagram and TikTok are more likely to yield key consumer insights than The Economist or the Wall Street Journal.
Does this mean the brand can skip traditional media monitoring? No, of course not. Coverage in either of those two publications would likely be very important to, say, the brand’s investors. Different focus, different audience.
How frequently is your brand covered in mainstream media?
Consumer-focused products receive more varied coverage on different media platforms than business-to-business products. When you think about the audience size, this makes perfect sense. A brand that sells shirts and shoes is different from one that sells jet engines. Not only are there far fewer potential buyers for jet engines, but there is also a very different cost scale.
Monitoring traditional, mainstream media channels is important for both of the example companies. Both may be publicly traded, which means earnings reports, product supply chains, and key leadership changes are the types of news items that can directly impact corporate reputation.
Because the company that produces jet engines is not selling directly to consumers and the one that sells shirts and shoes does, the ratio of traditional media results to social media results will differ considerably. People do not generally hop onto Facebook or Instagram to share their thoughts on the most recent new engine rollout from Pratt & Whitney. And even if they did, Pratt & Whitney is more likely to be attuned to what the CEO of Boeing thinks about the engines than someone from the general public.
Companies that sell business-to-business will have different monitoring needs and objectives than those that sell directly to consumers. Your media and social monitoring “mix” will reflect this differentiation.
How vulnerable is your brand to a large-scale crisis?
Any brand can have a crisis, and any crisis can feel large-scale. The amount of time spent recovering a reputation from a brand crisis will differ, in part, based on the scale of the issue.
Loss of human life, an ecological disaster, or pet food contamination that leads to veterinary hospitalisations and deaths are examples of the types of brand crises that will last for days or weeks and be heavily covered in both traditional and social media channels.
Contrast that with criticisms that a small business is using AI slop photos in its marketing materials, instead of actual photos of its products (an issue I saw blow up on social media just last week).
All of these are crises, by definition. However, it is far easier to course-correct by apologising and committing to using actual photos going forward than it is to restore a reputation of providing safe pet food after family pets have died. And, the story about the business using AI-generated photos is unlikely to even get covered in traditional media unless it is part of a larger story.
Much of determining where to put monitoring and analysis resources will be governed by a company’s exposure and reputational risks. Spending the time to analyse where a brand’s audiences are, what coverage generally looks like, and the potential scale of crises are three key pillars that can help guide where to spend limited time and financial resources.
