In
dealing with news coverage of your organization, more is not always better. In
fact, more is often much, much worse. Major news outlets are more likely to cover
negative stories than positive, and they are often much more likely to devote
more prominent placement to the more negative or more scandalous stories. Let’s face it,
we’ve all heard the line: “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes more news coverage is better – if you’re trying to
promote a new product or service, you need to get it in front of consumers in
order to build consciousness. But established brands sometimes need to turn down
the volume on their news coverage to minimize the impact of negative stories.
So measuring your news coverage needs to be more than a quick chart telling you
whether your news volume is up or down and what region most of your coverage
appeared in. Or the supposed advertising value of all that coverage. Should you
count every news story you see like it was saving you money on advertising? Of
course not. Maybe sometimes, but certainly not always.
You need more than just charts and numbers, and you certainly need more than
just an assessment of how often the media is reporting on your company.
You need a real evaluation of the favourability of your coverage and you need a
real evaluation of the issues affecting your media profile. You need the
expertise to know when increasing media volume can help improve your public
profile, and when lowering media volume can help protect your public reputation.
And just as importantly, you need all this on a timely basis. During critical periods, you may need expert analysis on a daily basis to help you deal with issues as they arise. Not a review of what happened that comes a month from now. If you need background material for an important meeting that’s coming up, you need it before the meeting – not a week afterwards.
For more information, contact Doug Kells at Doug@Doug-Kells.com or 416-596-0778.