6 considerations when choosing a media monitoring platform

For the over 20 years I’ve been in PR and PR Tech, I have been perpetually fascinated by how technology continues to change, how organizations communicate and how we all consume media and information.

I just spent the last eight weeks analyzing the state of social and traditional media monitoring software and for my 2020 Media Monitoring Buyer’s Guide and here are the top takeaways:

Breadth of coverage

While many platform providers claim to have the broadest coverage, the only way to see whether or not they monitor the outlets you’re interested in is to prepare a list and ask a sales rep to manually check and see if those outlets are included.

Some services do have broader coverage in some areas, but for the most part, everyone’s accessing the same source feeds. Though it’s certainly important to check and make sure any critical outlets you need are covered, breadth is much less important than it should be. If everyone has access to the same source feeds, then the more important thing is how easy it is to find relevant articles and stories.

Ease-of-use