It is important to evaluate your press activity to make sure you are reaching the right audiences with the right messages. It can be quite challenging for a small business to monitor press coverage, but there are a few simple things you can put in place to help:
1. Set up a free Google Alert - Put in your name, your organization’s name, the name of any products or services, and everything that might generate a hit in the press. Google will then send you an email when there are new results for your search, so you can keep up to date without constantly running searches for the same words. Note: your Google Alert starts from when you sign up, so if you want to get your alerts in the morning, make sure you sign up in the morning.
2. Set up a search on Twitter/X for your name and certain Twitter/X hashtags to monitor social media. For simple monitoring, Twitter/X Search is the way to go. If you only want to monitor a single keyword or a small number of keywords, you can easily use the built-in search in your web browser. Otherwise, you may wish to consider a real time monitoring tool, such as:
3. If you have some budget, you may wish to look into a media monitoring service, paying for an agency to collate press activity and clippings. These services tend to specialise their coverage by subject, industry, size, geography, publication, journalist, or editor. Costs vary, depending on the subject area you want covered and what channels you need monitored. There are many different pricing structures, ranging from pay-per-clip to annual contracts. Have the service explain how the options work. Specific questions: What is the fixed monthly fee? Is there an additional per clip charge? Is there an additional charge for access to the clip portal? Is there an extra charge for additional people to access the clip storage portal simultaneously? Is a long-term contract required? If they insist on a yearly contract, be wary. Ask for a free trial period to judge the quality of the service, or an opt-out period, so you can withdraw without penalty in the first 60-90 days in case you find that their service is not for you.
4. Make a note of every time you get a press enquiry or host a press trip, and then follow up to see what coverage was achieved.
