Fact checking with: Danielle, Senior Media Analyst & Product Owner

“As an analyst, I support our clients in monitoring and analysing their data for reputation and crisis management purpose. I work closely together with my colleagues from the Insights team, all data-analist experts. As Product Owner I am responsible for the Spotler Engage monitoring tool: the Media Monitor. The Media Monitor helps marketing and PR professionals to provide realtime information about their organisations’ brand, reputation and competitors.

The advantage of my dual role is that I use the tool myself, so I am aware of the possibilities and what customers need. This helps me to determine what delivers the most value for the product. The interesting thing about my double function is that I am meeting teams and professionals from various branches. The tool can be used very widely. Both by an entire team in an organisation, and just by one professional who only wants to monitor a product.”

“To provide the customer with the right insights, we always start with a conversation to determine what is needed. Several important things play a role, such as the audience to whom the insights are shown, the current brand reputation – which we test on the basis of a baseline measurement – and what PR or marketing goals a customer has. We support the customer in this by drawing up a strategic plan that we can monitor over time.”

Of course, preventing a crisis is not always possible, because you are dealing with external factors, but what we often hear from our customers is that our action-oriented insights help them with their communication strategies. If opinion pieces and critical statements from a particular stakeholder group influence the general public’s opinion about a crisis, the customer can respond by using key influencers in these stakeholder groups to reverse the sentiment. We can then help determine where the obstacles are in a discussion and who the stakeholders or key influencers are.”

“The biggest change is that offline media is increasingly shifting to on demand media and online media is facing privacy and fake news issues. This affects the change in business life, where I see data-driven decisions becoming increasingly important. I think it’s increasingly important for readers to know the source from a specific newsitem and that we are paying more attention to whether this news source is reliable. In terms of offline media, people are becoming more media-conscious. Privacy is becoming more and more important and people protect their privacy better. This reflects in a completely different public debate. Also, data is brought out in a different way. In addition, new technological developments, such as artificial intelligence, are becoming more important in the field of media monitoring.”

“Sometimes, when PR and communication professionals request an analysis, they do not know exactly what they want to know or achieve. I think it starts with properly determining how you want to market your brand or product. Fortunately, we can help by doing baseline measurements and determining the themes that play a role in that sector. Then you can take the next steps and determine where you want to go. We help you to focus on this, so that you get the best result from the analysis.

“An example: suppose you want to be sustainable as a company. What exactly do you want to achieve? Do you want to be more sustainable than your competitor or become the most sustainable company in the Netherlands? To determine your goal we work with associations. What do people say about your brand, what does the public associate your brand with?”

We regularly advise: go back to the basics. We can then help you to determine what you can and cannot monitor. For example an organisation’s reputation score, reputation drivers or the media value of your organisation.

With the insights and data from the Media Monitor tool you can directly respond to market developments or take a stand on certain issues. Via the reporting function in the tool, you can easily send a report to the stakeholders involved, so that all those involved are quickly informed!”

I started at Spotler Engage as an intern. I studied the Bachelor of Communication and Information Sciences and the Master of Digital Media & Culture at the University of Utrecht. I wrote my graduation internship at Spotler Engage, where I developed a reputation score model. This was further developed last year and we are currently running the first pilots with clients. Very cool to see how my own research has become tangible as a product of Spotler Engage!

We are always looking for new talent! Interested in a position? Check out the vacancies here or send an open application to contact-engage@spotler.com