Media Monitoring: The Way We Are
Prospect researchers have staked a unique niche in the media monitoring industry
By Anne Lessard and David Bell
Office of Development, Schulich School of Business
While media monitoring has a long history – dating back to the 1800’s – the days of news clippings and cluttered filing cabinets are gone. Today, in the professional world of marketing agencies, investment banks and government agencies, media monitoring is not only a savvy and sophisticated business, but a necessary component of daily operations. Equally so, in the world of prospect research. Media monitoring informs business decisions, recruits prospects and inspires campaigns.
Recently, the Development Research Unit at the Schulich School of Business undertook a survey to identify current media monitoring trends and practices amongst Canadian non-profits. In a nutshell, the survey aimed to gain insights on some key questions:
- What were other researchers across Canada doing on a daily basis in their research offices?
- Were we missing anything?
- Was there a general consensus on the importance of this daily research ritual
- Was it all worth it?
Key topics touched on included: purpose and focus of the function; research resources; preferred report formats; distribution; tracking of effectiveness; and overall satisfaction. In addition, participants were asked to share tips for an effective and efficient media monitoring process.
Our survey was sent to 58 research teams representing a wide range of organizations. Thirty-two completed surveys were received from the following sectors: higher education (59%); healthcare (17%); arts/culture and environment (7% each); international development (3%); education-other (3%). Over 74% of respondents work in research departments with two to three researchers. With the exception of one, all respondents conduct regular media monitoring.
Why Monitor Media?
When asked about the focus/themes of media monitoring, tracking major gift donors (97%) and prospects (91%) – which included watching for promotions, achievements, death/births and significant corporate/organization events – were dominant responses, followed closely by monitoring philanthropy in Canada (88%).
Other common themes cited were tracking board members (59%); keeping tabs on competitors (63%) and; monitoring organizational hot topics (59%). About 20% of respondents conduct comprehensive media monitoring and selected the most comprehensive option presented in the survey, “We track all major donors ($25K+), all major gift prospects, and all board members.” A larger group (47%) were more selective, tracking significant donors, hot list prospects and board members. Another 20% were even more focused, monitoring only hot list prospects and board members.
The results of our survey were both informative and instructive. Reassuringly, researchers used words like “vital”, “one of the most talked about and appreciated services” and “effective” to describe the importance of media monitoring at their organizations. Our survey told us that 79% of respondents were satisfied with the ROI of the media review function and 21% were not. At Schulich this project has been incredibly useful in bolstering our confidence in the work we undertake each day; it has also helped us fine-tune our strategies to ensure that we make the best use of time and our organization’s resources.
Best Practices
We would like to share what we believe are some key media monitoring best practices, as well as useful tips for running an efficient media review tracking program at a non-profit organization. Most of this commentary is based on our analysis of the survey but we have also included some lessons learned from our own daily efforts.
Share and share alike. Interestingly, none of the research teams employed a media monitoring company to assist with their media reviews. However, 59% of respondents share the media monitoring function, often with communications and/or public relations departments. Since the largest segment of our respondents (94%) felt that media monitoring was important to discovering new prospects or to inform cultivation, it seems important to avoid duplication with other departments and to channel energies towards clear gaps in coverage. While Schulich shares the work and results of its monitoring with other School departments, we work to aggregate what is most useful to the Development team.
Take the time to think about goals, processes and deliverables. An afternoon to draft a plain language policy and procedure for your organization’s media monitoring efforts is well worth the effort. Having a clear plan before jumping into search engines and paid resources can save money and frustration in the long-run. At Schulich, our newly developed policies and procedures scope out the constituents and the programs we track, the frequency of searches and resources used to achieve each search objective, as well as search strings for each focus/theme. We are finding that this very modular document facilitates communication with management and sets out delegation of certain tasks. This policy is easily reviewed in weekly prospect management meetings and revised as prospects and program priorities continually change.
Evaluate and activate the news items you find. Most survey respondents confirmed that they actively add value to the news items that they circulate and flag stories that relate to:
- Current cultivations (100%);
- Opportunities for contacting/congratulating prospects (100%);
- New prospect identification (90%);
- Opportunities for contacting/congratulating alumni and friends (62%); and,
- An additional 38% suggest follow-up strategies to their readership.
Pushing the news to your colleagues with suggested actions provides important value add for your organization. For example, is there a new prospect embedded in this story? Can a special note of congratulations be sent by a fundraiser? Have you stumbled upon a new story angle for the monthly alumni newsletter or the news section of the organization’s website
Consult your readership often. We have learned that keeping our Development team in the loop about search strategy definitely pays off in terms of delivering a more focused and useful product. By involving your colleagues in the process, you may learn about new search topics or get advice on removals from your search strategy. A quick meeting, possibly during regularly scheduled prospect management discussions, can save hours of work over the long-term.
Don’t forget about the papers. While virtually all survey participants employ some form of electronic media to conduct their media monitoring, approximately 80% appear to complement/supplement these searches with paper-based resources. In fact, 75% of respondents felt that media monitoring using only electronic search databases was not satisfactory. One respondent told us “…there have been many instances when information has been available in print source, but not electronically or the information was available in print sooner.” Since our researcher brains absorb countless facts daily, this reservoir of knowledge can be put to good use through taking the time, each day, to flip through the newsprint and catching leads, connections and advertisements that would otherwise not turn up in an electronic search. Our survey showed us that popular newspapers include Globe and Mail (80%); National Post (57%); Toronto Star (40%); and local newspapers (40%). Commonly referenced magazines were: Canadian Business (73%), Toronto Life (50%), Bloomberg/Businessweek (20%), Fortune (17%); LifeStyles (13%); and Forbes (13%).
Google alerts fan club? According to our survey, popular electronic sources were: Google alerts (90%); electronic newsletters (70%); RSS feeds (53%); Factiva (47%); social media sites (43%) and; FP Infomart (27%).
News is daily and the next day brings more news. Therefore we need to keep up, keep it realistic and fast and not set it aside for other priorities. In fact, 77% of survey respondents agree and conduct media review on a daily basis. All but one of these participants spent no more than two hours per review. 80% of this group delivered results before noon. In our opinion, getting the news out before 10:30 a.m., or earlier, is an optimal goal to strive for. In addition, the majority of our survey respondents felt that the “shelf-life” of media review reports was a week or less. At Schulich, where we endeavour to monitor a large group of global alumni, donors, board members, hot prospects and our competitors, we are very invested in our media monitoring process. However, after a careful review of the daily ROI, we are striving to allocate no more than one hour per day to our media review.
Getting the news out is more important than fonts and formatting. Our survey revealed that 37% of us “excerpt paragraphs of key information and append a link to full text on internet” in our daily news report. Some of us (30%) have the time to create basic point-form summaries. We salute those that go the extra mile. Pushing full text articles from the net/commercial databases to the reader was favoured by 17% of respondents. Our advice, don’t push out a lot of separate emails in one day – respect your colleagues in-box or they may stop reading.
Keep track of your bragging rights. While 72% of survey respondents do not track activity/results driven by their media review – and that includes us – those who did reported the following strategies:
- “We keep a count of e-mails distributed and a count of how many updates were made to our database from media monitoring”;
- “Looking at the number of value-add pieces sent and any responses to the material”; and,
- “…news articles related to prospects [are added into the] database and coded with an ‘in the news’ title so they can be tracked”.
Go global! Most survey respondents told us that they conduct searches that are at least national in scope. While not for everyone, searching just the local daily may not keep your organization on top of the latest trends and intelligence related to your donors and competitors.
Continue to strive for efficiencies. Many respondents are clearly attuned to the on-going need to search for efficiencies. Tips offered by our survey respondents include:
- “Keep your team on a strict timeline…identify a purpose/goal and stick to it…keep your alerts clean and up to date…”;
- “Make sure you DOs have a legitimate case for adding a new name to your folder”;
- “RSS feeds are my friend”; and,
- “RSS Readers makes everything easier and takes emails out of your system”.
Thank you to all who participated in the media monitoring survey – your contributions were invaluable. As a result of the input of APRA Canada members, we are confident that our media monitoring is rooted in the collective wisdom of our prospect research colleagues.
Anne Lessard is the Development Researcher and David Bell is the Associate Director of Development at the Schulich School of Business