Filed under: Products
Today’s blog post was inspired by a recent conversation between some Moreover employees. My hope is that this post will give you some insight into who we are as a company and why we do what we do.
Numbers Do Lie (or Can Mislead)
Moreover is strong in the Media Monitoring field — our online news coverage is second to none. But why do some other media monitoring brands tout vast numbers of social media sites, compared to our more humble-sounding index?
The answer lies in what information our customers are trying to glean from their research. There is a considerable amount of noise that becomes a distraction (information overload). Effective monitoring of impactful sources is the driving force behind our efforts to grow and maintain pertinent coverage of social media.
Quantity of Data vs. Quality of Understanding
Just like any media monitoring company, we have competing goals. We want more coverage and more data, while keeping the tools that our clients use lightning fast and giving them only the data that helps them solve their needs.
That “only” is important.
Beware the Big
Moreover owns the ping server Weblogs.com. We have access to data of millions and millions of blogs posting content daily. We know where to look if we’d ever want to inflate our numbers, but we won’t.
Instead, we choose a “White List” approach, in which sources are vetted before they make it into our clients’ search results. When our Newsdesk clients run their searches, the data they want is more likely to be at their fingertips, rather than scattered amongst poor quality data.
More data is better only so long as it can be seen and used. Adding more content to sift through can make finding usable content more difficult. Having too much data can be worse than too little when it hinders the discovery of relevant content.
Drawbacks and Trade-offs
Of course the White List approach has its own issues. An important blog may not be covered when it’s needed. And, it makes it harder to track all mentions of keywords across all social media.
To mitigate this, Moreover’s Client Services and Editorial teams work with our clients to add the blogs and other social media that are important to them. This customer-focused coverage expansion process ensures that we provide broad coverage across multiple industries and niches. We also look at our own data for mentions of new sites, while seeking out other high-value sources of data.
A brief note on “full coverage”: With countless blogs being created and abandoned daily, it’s unlikely that anyone has full coverage. It is more accurate to say “less incomplete coverage”.
Pride in our Numbers
Moreover is proud of our 3.5 million social media feeds and our 55,000 online News sources. The number that makes us most proud, though, is our 90%+ customer retention rate. That number clearly shows we are on the right path. And we’ll continue to grow our source list in ways that bring customers value and help them find the data they need to solve their unique problems.
If you’re a Moreover customer and there are sources that are relevant to your needs that Moreover does not monitor, let us know. Our Client Services team will be happy to work with you to get these into our coverage.
November 14, 2012
This week’s enhancements give you even more control over the precision of your search results and help you share the latest news more effectively with improvements to the Newsletter, keyword highlighting, and article extracts.
Precise Search Results:
Under the “Extras” tab, there are options to set which keywords get highlighted and which keywords the extracts center around. This is most useful for searches that use AND.
New search Parameters:
Start of article searches, START/x:(word1 OR word2)
Use the start option to specify the first x words of an article that your keyword(s) must appear in. This helps to improve the relevancy of your results as it ensures the search terms are mentioned early on in the articles.
search: START/150:(OECD OR “World Bank” OR IMF)
- Returns articles that contain the words OECR, “World Bank”, orIMF in the first 150 words.
Near searches, (word1) NEAR/x (word2)
Use the near search to specify the maximum number of words between your search terms. This allows you to qualify search results by specifying relationships between the keywords in your search.
search: (Vodafone “T-Mobile” O2) NEAR/10 (iPhone iPad)
- Returns articles than contain Vodafone, T-Mobile or O2 within 10 words of iPhone or iPad.
Multiple occurrence searches, MULTIPLE/x:(word1 OR word2)
Use the multiple occurrence search option to specify the minimum number of occurrences of your keyword. This is especially useful in avoiding single passing mentions of keywords, thereby boosting the relevancy of the articles.
search: MULTIPLE/5:(ScotRail)
- Returns articles that contain at least five mentions of ScotRail.
Wildcard searches now work for phrases:
search: “flu vaccin*”
- Returns articles that contain the phrases “flu vaccine”, “flu vaccines”, “flu vaccination”, “flu vaccinations” etc.
A More User-Friendly Newsletter
We redesigned the Email section to give you better control of the way that Newsletters can be formatted. There is now a larger area to edit your Newsletter contents, and you instantly see the effect of styling changes on your email such as turning on keyword highlighting and user comments. Expect further enhancements in a few weeks time!
You can now hide or show:
- Paragraph Breaks
- Highlighting
- User Comments
It works great in conjunction with the custom highlighting and extracts above.
Contact your salesperson or Client Service to learn more.
October 30, 2012
Please join Rick @ricklombardo and Jim @jimcollish through the 16th at the PRSA 2012 International Conference. Once again, Moreover Technologies is a proud exhibitor and this year you’ll find us in Booth #26 next to Google. Enter our drawing to win an iPad and take a first hand look at Newsdesk our award-winning solution. Come by and Rick or Jim will set up your own customized Newsdesk dashboard with automatic alerts. See how you’ll never miss a beat with Newsdesk from Moreover — and enjoy a cup of coffee on the guys with a Starbucks Gift Card.
October 15, 2012
Newsdesk now in German and French. Commensurate with our growing presence in international markets, we are very pleased to announce that Newsdesk now comes in 4 languages: French, German, Spanish, and English. You can switch to your preferred language via the Settings page which is in the dropdown menu top-right of the screen.
Much improved article clippings feature. It’s considerably faster to copy (‘clip’) articles from one feed to another, thanks to Newsdesk now remembering which feeds you have recently clipped to. The Clip/Email/Delete buttons now also stay visible on the page as you move down the list of articles so you no longer have to scroll back up to the top of the page to email, remove or copy an article.
Cleaner User Interface. The links that appeared top-right on the screen are now inside a neat dropdown menu, so the screen looks much less cluttered.
Enhancements and bug fixes.
- We have updated the feed dropdown menu so it no longer remains visible after moving the mouse away.
- The analytics download button now appears for all browsers again.
- Articles can now be clipped over to regular, non-clippings feeds.
- When you hit enter after typing in keywords, it runs the search as opposed to producing a carriage return.
Let us know what you think about the new features in the comments.
October 3, 2012
Do you use Newsdesk’s clippings feeds? Upcoming changes are about to make your life much easier. If you don’t use them yet, here’s why you should give them a try.
Clippings feeds are manually-managed collections of articles that can be created from any number of automatic searches. The problem with “any number” is that lists of saved feeds can get very long and unwieldy.
With this latest update, it’s just a simple click to add an article to a clippings feed. No more having to drag and scroll through the list.
While you can still drag and drop like before, the clickable list of recently used feeds gives more flexibility.
Why Clip?
For those of you unfamiliar with clippings feeds, they are a good way to editorially manage which articles get distributed by RSS or Email alerts. While Newsdesk lets you create tightly-focused searches, occasionally there will be bad articles that get by. A trusted source could be hacked or slang could cause previously innocuous words take on new meanings. By using automatic searches to cut through the chaff and clippings feeds to manually select the best, you know exactly what your clients or colleagues are going to see.
This feature idea came directly from customers. We are always interested in hearing about how Newsdesk can be improved. If you have any suggestions, please contact us.
September 28, 2012
Speakers of French and German will soon have Newsdesk available to them in their native tongue. No additional subscription is necessary; it can all be changed from the Settings inside your existing Newsdesk subscription. Of course, we still offer Newsdesk in Spanish and English.
Moreover’s media coverage has always been broad and it has continued to grow along with our international customer base. It’s a natural extension for us to offer an interface for users in locations outside of English-speaking countries.
German Interface
Companies with international offices can use a single solution to facilitate corporate communications and news sharing across the entire organization, with users all interacting in their native languages.
French Interface
Small businesses can also benefit from Moreover’s 55,000+ news sources, and Newsdesk’s award-winning interface — without being bilingual.
Check back later this week for more new features.
September 27, 2012
Ideya released their 2012 Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Report, listing Moreover’s Newsdesk and Metabase products.
Information in this report is targeted for those organizations and people who are interested in specific SMM tools and services and the overall market trends.
The SMM Tools and Services Report covers these areas:
- Paid and Free tools
- Market trends
- How to Select and use Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services
Download the report and let us know what you think in the comments.
September 19, 2012
Using Moreover’s Metabase product, Engagor was able to enhance their products with niche and local market news coverage in multiple languages to provide clients with a complete picture of what their brand looks like online.
Read more
September 13, 2012
A feature article by Moreover’s Senior Product Manager, Brian Mackie, appears in the latest issue of IntranetsToday explaining how companies can find and exploit opportunities within the challenges of Big Data.
His article, “Actionable Media Intelligence: Delivering a Competitive Edge”, argues that companies should be using the proper tools to turn unwieldy “mass media” into actionable “meaningful media”.
Great companies make decisions driven by data, not by gut feelings alone. The problem is that available “big data” is increasing very quickly. How does an organization make sense of it all and get it to the relevant people?
Employees are going to talk- to each other and to people outside the company. Are they informed? They should be reading targeted and relevant news every day without spending too much time seeking it out. Do you know how to get them there?
In the feature, Mr. Mackie gives a checklist of points to consider while evaluating tools for internal communication to solve these problems.
- What media sources does the service cover, does it match your particular industry needs, and can new ones be added on request?
- Check the news filtering options to make sure they will support the precisely tuned results you need (test with real-life news requirements)
- Look for flexible media distribution options: A user portal, newsletters, RSS feeds, possibly an API to integrate news search directly into an intranet
- Ensure it includes editorial control features to manage the content that flows out to the organization (e.g. the ability to quickly remove articles from an RSS feed on the intranet)
- Confirm whether customer service includes editorial support for building out searches
- Ask about their software development processes and how often they roll out new features (ideally at least monthly)
- Know the pricing – avoid ballooning content licensing costs, and beware the sweet entry level deal that is followed by a sudden not-quite-explained price hike in year two!
- Lastly, always run a trial and push the vendor to prove, not just promise, targeted business news that demonstrates value. If they can’t provide this during a trial, it’s probably because they can’t provide it full stop.
Companies can leverage their internal communication to gain an advantage in the marketplace. It is difficult, but there is opportunity in this challenge to rise above the competition:
Turning mass media it into meaningful media intelligence is a fascinating challenge – it is for vendors, publishers, and especially for the companies chasing productivity gains and competitive advantage. And therein lies the good business news: It is not too late to be an early mover and gain that edge.
Read the whole article here while it’s still free!
August 16, 2012
The 2012 London Olympic Games have come to a close and so has this blog series, looking at which of the Top 11 Corporate Sponsors received the most news coverage.
Newsdesk played the leading role in our ability to quickly find and understand the news coverage for each of these sponsors. It is clear from our data that Visa (Gold), McDonald’s (Silver), and Coca-Cola (Bronze) were the winners in terms of highest volume of news mentions.
The coverage was not always positive. Each day there was backlash against the International Olympic Committee for allowing the sponsors to dictate the food, payment methods, and even logos that appeared on clothing worn by spectators and athletes at the Olympic Games.
It wasn’t all negative, though. Visa’s series of real-time congratulatory commercials for medalists were quite popular. Also, several athletes had their victory celebrations at McDonald’s after winning their medals, which was widely covered.
The primary goal of this blog series was to quickly find and report relevant data . To this end Newsdesk performed very well.
We built searches beforehand for each top sponsor and included variations on their brand names (e.g. Coca-Cola and Coke). The search results automatically fed into dynamic charts, which helped us visualize the leaders for the previous day. Creating these searches took a little time and thought up-front, but after that it was “set it and forget it”.
Each day we used our charts to identify the day’s leaders. Then we scanned the headlines to see which topics were driving coverage. This took us just a minute or two. From there, it was simple to see trends and find single articles that typified them.
We wrote the blog posts and were done. All-in-all, it was a very quick process and easily repeatable every day.
This is something you could do for your own blog. Tell us in the comments if you would like someone to show you how.
August 13, 2012
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