PR and communication: media monitoring is crucial for your reputation

• 11 minute read
Media Monitoring
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The ‘why’ of (social) media monitoring is no longer a topic for many organisations. For example, “online listening” or “social listening” enables you to take immediate action on events that occur in the media. In addition, this way of reporting may be brought out in the media, possibly in an altered way.

Whether it is about messages from online media, articles from print media or radio and TV excerpts, you are able to analyse them for valuable insights. This makes media monitoring an essential part of your strategy for reputation management, service, marketing, and sales.

Why is reputation management important?

By structurally incorporating a media monitoring initiative you collect input for communication, marketing, and customer service and you can analyse which factors influence the online reputation of your brand. Brands are confronted daily with messages from stakeholders on social media, but also on news sites, blogs, and in newspapers and magazines. To get a good overview of your reputation, it is important to get a good overview of all these sources and messages. This gives you valuable insight into messages from customers, potential customers, and stakeholders. In this way you know what is going on and you can decide what action you need to take in order to achieve your goals.

To be able to manage a reputation you first have to know what to look at. Reputation management – online and offline – is the process of identifying, influencing and optimising public trust in an organisation via online and offline media. This means that you, as a communication professional for your brand or organisation, must collect data about what is being said about your brand, exert influence where necessary to adjust your reputation, and optimise the whole in order to strengthen your reputation.

How can you measure your reputation?

Within the scope of measuring the reputation of your organisation, 4 emotional indicators are paramount:

  • Trust;
  • Appreciation;
  • Admiration;
  • A good feeling.

The most commonly used method for measuring a reputation is the RepTrak© method – also known as the 7 reputation pillars – by the Reputation Institute (Van Riel, C., 2014).

The purpose of the Reputation Institute is to help organisations answer the following questions:

  • What is my reputation?
  • How does my reputation compare?
  • How can I improve my reputation?

All these elements combined form a reputation score. The pillars measure externally what goes with what target groups with regard to various topics that are related to your organisation. In addition to consumers, the opinions of important stakeholders are also included.

De 7 reputatiepijlers

7 pillars on which an organisation is assessed

  1. Products / services
    This pillar is about the quality of products or services that an organisation provides. In addition, the price/quality ratio is considered, whether what is on offer is satisfactory, and whether it meets the expectations of the customer. Among the top 10 organisations that score highly on this pillar are Intel, Lego, and Canon, among others. All products that know how to sell themselves, and satisfy consumers in price/quality.

  2. Innovation
    Is your organisation seen as an innovative, progressive organisation? Are you able to adapt quickly to developments within the market? An organisation that is often a pioneer in innovative products or services will score high on this pillar.
  3. Workplace
    Are employees in the organisation rewarded well for their work? Employee welfare and opportunity for development are important considerations with regards to this pillar.
  4. Governance
    The Governance pillar is about the openness and transparency of an organisation. This includes assessing ethical behaviour and doing business fairly, for example.
  5. Citizenship
    Environmental awareness, corporate social responsibility, and social influence fall under citizenship. What kind of (positive) influence does the organisation have on society?
  6. Leadership
    Is the organisation well organised? How good is management? Do they have a clear vision and show good leadership? An organisation led by a CEO with a good exemplary role will score high on this.
  7. Performance
    The last pillar is about the financial performance of the organisation. Profitability, performing above expectations, and strong growth in the number of customers are points that are looked at.

Are there pillars that are important for your organisation other than the 7 described above? If so, please add your own pillars to your analysis.

THE 7 REPUTATION PILLARS Spotler Engage

The next step is to apply the pillars to your brand or organisation. Make sure you properly summarise all the different terms with regards to the pillars. Use a media monitoring tool for this, such as the one offered by Spotler Engage. By mapping these pillars in a structural way, you know to what extent you are currently associated with certain themes. Even more important is to take any points of improvement with you into the long term. This way you measure the effect of a campaign on communications regarding your brand, whereby you distinguish between different stakeholders. The insights you gain from measuring your campaign or overall experience around the organisation enable you to set up subsequent campaigns more effectively, or adjust the communication policy.

By actively implementing media monitoring, you are not only aware of what is going on, but you also learn what your strengths and weaknesses are in the long term so you can steer your reputation in the right direction. The insights from this analysis form an important part of your strategy and business operations.

TIP: Also think about how you can view the reputation of your organisation more broadly. A brand reputation goes further than just the brand itself, but can also be influenced by the reputation of the industry. A crisis at organisation X in the same industry can cause people to talk more about organisation Y (your organisation). Consider, for example, a crisis at a bank that can affect the confidence of entire sector.

In the coming years, a number of trends will determine how you can make your organisation’s reputation measurable.

Innovation
Innovation, in 2019, is the most important challenge and opportunity in the field of reputation management. New technologies ensure that algorithms, that analyse huge amounts of data, can predict when and how a reputation shifts and to what extent this influences the financial performance of an organisation.

Reputation management is no longer just the domain of Corporate Communication, but requires integration of technical and analytical knowledge. As a result, your work as a communication professional will be viewed more critically as your contribution to the success of the organisation will become more visible. This raises the bar in the field of reputation management. Oftentimes the biggest challenge is to be able to implement this throughout the entire organisation and to penetrate all levels.

Shift from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Responsibility
At the same time, we are seeing a shift from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Responsibility; the social expectation that companies are not only committed to the social aspect, but are also doing something for “the greater good” in terms of society, the environment, product development, and what it takes to be a good employer. Positive actions in these areas contribute to a better reputation score on the aforementioned reputation pillars.

Gain action-oriented insights from data
And, finally, it is important to obtain actionoriented insights from data; something that many organisations run into. Volume is becoming less important; it is more about the actionable insights, the “so what” of the data. As a marketing, PR and spokesperson professional, you are constantly looking for insights with which you can take your strategy and implementation to a higher level. Data is the new gold standard, and for a reason: from data we can gain a mountain of substantiated insights about our (potential) target groups, relevant themes, trending topics, stakeholders, essential platforms, workload for online customer support teams, and the impact of a message, event, or campaign. What do all those numbers say? We will take you through a number of examples of this kind of analysis.

“In the coming years, it will no longer be enough to focus solely on the social aspect, but on the combination of factors. As an organisation you no longer get away with only being “responsible” for the environment, but not as an employer, or vice versa.” – REPUTATION SPECIALIST CARINA DUSSELDORP

The translation of data into insight

Monitoring and analysing data gives you the opportunity to gain insights with which you, as an organisation, can take further steps. Data analysis and in-depth reports can not only give you new insights on a weekly or monthly basis, but can also be used ad hoc, for example in the event of an incident or the launch of a new product. Here are a number of important analyses for you.

An analysis of the most important topics and themes
An analysis of the most important topics or themes is used by many marketing and communication professionals to launch or (re)position a brand, product, or service, or for the development of a campaign. The insights gained from this type of analysis can help you to make strategic marketing choices. Because the focus is on analysing online conversations, this analysis provides you with insight into relevant topics, preferences, uncertainties, and needs that are relevant to your target group.

Extensive target group analysis
An extensive target group analysis can be used to get an idea of your brand or organisation’s community. The analysis can be performed only once, but it can also be interesting to analyse development over an entire year, starting with a zero-measurement. The target group analysis brings the followers, fans, and consumers of your brand into focus. Who are they? What topics are they talking about? What is the sentiment? And which less obvious topics and needs are coming up in the discussions?

Online customer service, or webcare, analysis
In order to determine whether online customer service is being organised optimally within your organisation, an analysis of webcare activities can provide valuable insights. This type of analysis brings strengths and weaknesses into focus, and provides insight into the important themes that play a part. As an organisation, what types of complaints are you getting? What types of questions? These insights give your organisation the opportunity to optimise information provision, or improve products or services.

Chatbot feasibility report

Impact analysis
Whether expected and unexpected, anything can happen that can have a major impact on your organisation. An impact analysis is usually used at the time of an event, crisis, or important publication regarding an organisation, and is often ad hoc in nature and done at the time or after the end of an important event. For example, publishing annual figures, launching new campaigns, spreading news about mistakes made, crises, sponsoring, or introducing new products or services.

Chatbot feasibility report
“Not because you have to, but because you can” is the starting point for many organisations to start using chatbot technology. It would, however, help if we think more about the actual goal than the means to the goal. For example, if you use chatbots for service, what is the actual purpose of this? Faster service and better response times? Accessibility outside opening hours? Or creating more efficiency for service employees by having chatbots prepare the work? By analysing the data and following up with a calculation, you can calculate overall what the expected result of having a chatbot for a specific task will be.

Ready to go!

Are you up for the challenge of getting started this year with all the trends in reputation management? Do you want more control over social media monitoring and reputation management? Or do you want to get started with chatbots and you don’t know where to start? Spotler Engage is the partner for you to help with the everincreasing amounts of data that you, as an organisation, have to deal with. By extracting value and meaning from data, we ensure action-oriented insights with which you can optimise reputation management, communication strategy, and PR activities.

Spotler Engage offers the best data-driven, all-inone solutions and excellent service in the field of reputation management, customer engagement, and AI. It is our mission to effectively bring your organisation into direct contact with your customers. We make innovative technology accessible and, in addition to user-friendly tools, also offer comprehensive services such as research and data analysis, strategy development, and training.

Now that you have read this white paper, do you have any questions regarding the optimal use of media monitoring?

We are happy to help answer them. Contact us: +31 (0)85 210 50 60 or contact-engage@spotler.com.

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