Media & Social Media Monitoring Tips & Tools

social media monitoring

Media monitoring & research tips

Thanks to the internet, there are some excellent free tools for monitoring news media and social media. They can give you basic news coverage on your company, product or your competitor as well as let you know when you need to move to a paid service to ensure you track results.

We’ve put together these media and social media monitoring resources to help you get ahead of what’s being said about you, your company or your brand in the media and online. We’ve also got links to some of the commercial monitoring services as well.

Other PR Research resources you may like:  Communication Audits, News Content Analysis, PR Measurement Tips & Best Practices, PR Research Tools and Social Media MonitoringSites with  W are PR Coach “winners.” Note, some links are pdf or other larger documents, so patience may be needed to view them.

Media & Social Media Monitoring Tips & Tools

3 Tools to Track Your Social Media Influence
Simple measurement advice and three essential tools.

5 Social Media &  PR Measurement Trends to Watch in 2009
Five trends to watch? Social media, quest for standards, engagement, cross-platform measurement challenges and a battle of accountability vs economy. From Italo Vignoli.

6 Social Media Success Metrics You Need to Track 
Excellent PR measurement advice.  W

8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
Here are eight free social media monitoring tools reviewed by Andy Beal.

8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring
Here are eight social media metrics worth tracking.  W

10 Questions for Social Media Measurement Success
Here are 10 key questions you should ask about social media measurement.

20 free tools to evaluate social media
Terrific PR measurement resources.  W

A Quick ‘n Dirty Guide to Setting Up Social Media Monitoring
Kat French shows how to set up social media monitoring using free tools and as little as 30 minutes a day.

Advancing Measurement and Evaluation of PR
PR measurement insight from Pauline Draper-Watts at IPR.

Alerti
New social media monitoring is fairly priced and fully featured.  Worth a test drive.

Alltop
Create and share your own personal magazine rack of favorite websites and blogs.

Buzzgain Launches in Beta, Enabling “Do It Yourself PR” Monitoring
Louis Gray reviews BuzzGain and its usefulness for PR monitoring.

Choosing a Media Monitoring Service – 9 Questions to Ask
Nine questions that may help you choose a media monitoring service that meets your needs.

Collecta
A useful “real-time” search engine that lets you search blog posts, comments, articles, video, Twitter, YouTube and more. Great potential.   W

Critical Mention
Web-based TV search and monitoring service. Instantly find and share TV coverage. Have a look at their blog Critical Thinking.

Do You Know What People are Saying About You?
Three excellent social media monitoring tips from Tory Patrick.

For Anyone Looking to Start Monitoring Social Media
Here’s a useful worksheet from Katie Paine. W

FriendFeed
Monitoring tool lets you keep an eye on Twitter, Facebook, and Google as well as share content.

Getting Smart with the Data: Measuring PR and Social Media
Excellent PR measurement insight from Sally Falkow.

Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search is a useful search tool for research, monitoring and targeting bloggers.   W

Google News
Search recent news with Google News.   W

Google News Alerts
Set up auto news alerts by topic or keyword and make sure to monitor news, blogs, web and video all-in-one. Powerful.   W

Google News Archive Search
Another Google news search tool for archived and historical online news. Search topics and timelines.   W

HeadlineSpot
Here’s a news search engine where you can search archives by region, media type and topic.

How Do You Plan for Measurement?
How to put together a measurement strategy.

How Do You Track Your Media Coverage?
Deborah Zanke suggests several practical ways to monitor your media coverage.

How Sociable?
Free tool measures more than 30,000 brands across 32 metrics.

How to Track 500 Business Blogs in 10 Minutes a Day
Mashable shows how to listen to many conversations online efficiently in just three simple steps.

Internet Monitoring and Clipping: Strategies for PR, Marketing and Competitive Intelligence
Amelia Kassel provides a really useful guide to internet monitoring along with practical tips to help you be effective.

Is There a New Measure of Success for Social Media?
Useful measurement insight.

Katie Paine’s Social Media Tips [Video 6:00]
Paine describes how to measure leads in social media and how PR needs to innovate.   W

KD Paine & Partners Propose New Un-Standard for Social Media Measurement
Thoughtful look at social media measurement and valuable list of potential metrics.   W

Look Who’s Talking
It’s tempting to dismiss online reviews of your business or product but you can respond effectively to negative reviews if necessary.

Monitter
A Twitter monitoring service.

NewsMap
NewsMap shows a visual representation of the news. A new, interesting way to search news.

Online Reputation Management Basics
Lee Odden shows where and what to monitor and also provides practical tips for managing reputation online.   W

Online Reputation Management: Radian6
An in-depth review of social media monitoring service Radian6 by Cece Salmon-Lee.

Online Reputation Monitoring Beginners Guide
Updated analysis of some of the free reputation monitoring tools by Trackur’s Andy Beal. Includes tips and links as well.   W

Pubcon: Online Reputation Management
Lee Odden shares online reputation management advice and monitoring tools from recent Pubcon conference.

Reputation Management in Social Media
Slide presentation with social media monitoring tips.

ROI on Social Media With Katie Paine [Video 10:54]
Paine talks with Jason Falls about measuring return on social media.   W

Social Media Analytics: 6 Steps to Measuring What You Care About
Superb look at measurement that matters for PR.  W

Social Media Measurement 2011: Five Things to Forget, Five Things to Learn 
Excellent advice from Metrics Man – Don Bartholomew.  W

Social Media Monitor Makes Tracking Facebook, Twitter Brand Growth Simple 
Social media measurement, PR tool to try.

Social Media Monitoring – Disturbing or Useful?
Dave Fleet looks at the dilemma of responding to negative online comments.

Social Media Monitoring Tools – How to Pick The Right One
Katie Van Domelen walks through the key questions to pick the best social media monitoring tool.  W

Ten Reasons Small Businesses Should Monitor Online Reputation
Lee Odden highlights 10 reasons to monitor your online reputation.

Three A’s of Social Media Measurement: Attention, Attitude, Action 
Really useful PR measurement tips.

Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation
Dan Schawbel shares his monitoring system and looks at 10 free monitoring tools to help you keep an eye on your brand.   W

Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For
These 10 fee-based services are good enough to pay for writes Dan Schawbel in a helpful review.   W

Tracking Yourself and Your Blog Brand Across the Online Social World
Lorelle VanFossen looks at Yahoo Pipes for tracking yourself and your brand online.

Trendpedia
A social media monitoring, trends and buzz tracking tool worth a look.

TweetBeep
Monitor Twitter and get an email alert whenever a mention occurs. Very useful.   W

Ways to Measure social media effectiveness
Basic tips to get you started.

What Should Every Company Be Monitoring?
A valuable list of topics for monitoring from the NewPR Wiki.   W

Yahoo News
Search recent news with Yahoo News.   W

Commercial Media Monitoring Services

Following is a selection of North American social and media monitoring services:

Aircheck News Taping
Broadcast media coverage and archive from 210+ US markets.

BrandMentions
BrandMentions is a great tool that helps you monitor the online presence of your brand online. Its purpose is to detect all the web mentions that your brand or your competitors have in a given period of time.

BurellesLuce
Media monitoring and measurement service. Also has iMonitor its self-service online monitoring service.

Cision Social Media Monitoring
Cision is known for its traditional media monitoring services and its social media monitoring uses the powerful Radian6 platform.

Clip Genius
National online media monitoring service.

CustomScoop
Service includes traditional media and social media monitoring.

CyberAlert
Established media monitoring service with social media monitoring capability.

dna13
Real-time monitoring for online reputation management.

Dow Jones Factiva
traditional media monitoring and new social media capability.

FPInfomart
Canadian media monitoring and research service is comprehensive.

MediaMiser
Media and social media monitoring and analysis services.

Meltwater News
Meltwater provides online news monitoring and analysis.

MightyBrand
Social media monitoring and analysis service is worth testing.

National Aircheck
Source radio and TV clips from 2500+ stations across the US.

NewsPower Online
Broadcast news and blog monitoring and clipping services.

TrackNews
Get news clips from 100+ US major markets.

Trackur
Solid, scalable social media monitoring service.   W

TVEyes
Real-time monitoring of TV and radio with instant email alerts.

Universal Information Services
Broadcast media monitoring, tracking and analysis.

WebClipping
Media monitoring service and analysis.

Photo credit: Emily Hoyer

up auto news alerts by topic or keyword and make sure to monitor news,  blogs, web and video all-in-one. Powerful.   W
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