How to Turn Mass Media into Media Intelligence – Part 1

Today’s companies operate in a world of Internet-driven mass media with the power to shape our perceptions and blindside company reputations. At Moreover, our job is to help you turn this media maelstrom into media intelligence for competitive advantage.

In this series of posts, we’ll be going through the multiple aspects of a successful media intelligence strategy, and offer concrete advice and insight for turning global news and social media into a powerful strategic asset.

Part 1 – Encourage employee engagement and corporate identity by sharing external media

News forms opinions, and everyone is exposed to it. External commentary about a company can inform employee perceptions, in part precisely because it is external – an independent voice as opposed to perceived corporate spin.

Organizations may take a laissez-faire approach and let events play out, or they may choose to engage proactively and use external media perspectives to positively reinforce internal communications objectives.

For example, an effective media intelligence solution can ensure that upbeat articles about the company or sector are consistently shared across the organization, helping to buoy morale amongst staff, while a negative story can be assuaged by internal commentary explaining the situation.

Sharing targeted media coverage is a way to showcase any area that the company is involved in, from the success of a marketing campaign to the impact of a corporate social responsibility initiative, invigorating team spirit and a sense of pride.

Ultimately, external media perspectives hold up a mirror to the company. In a world where information is free, instant, and shared, honesty and openness become quintessential qualities of successful media intelligence campaign.

Here are three key features to look for in a successful media intelligence solution:

• Establish media distribution channels across a company. This gives corporate communications teams access to employees’ media consumption and a measure of influence over it. Delivering news through the intranet using RSS feeds and making it part of an employee’s day-to-day workflow is a typical aspect of such an approach. It offers an unintrusive “FYI” user experience and removes the issues around ad-hoc company emails such as whether to send and who to include.

• Full editorial control over RSS feeds. You need the option to manually add and remove individual stories from RSS feeds without having to go through an IT department, for example to remove an unwanted story. It must be easy to edit the search terms of feeds so you can cater for evolving topics and sudden events. You might also want full editorial control so you only publish articles that have been handpicked from a wider set of results.

• The ability to add the company’s view to news events. As a corporate communications team you should be able to add commentary to news articles, for example to explain the company position or to flag the importance of a particular article. A media intelligence tool should make this a quick and easy process.

Today’s media intelligence services such as Moreover’s Newsdesk service offer a great opportunity to turn mass media into a powerful instrument for achieving key corporate communications goals.

If you’d like to learn more about how the award-winning Newsdesk service helps corporate communications and information professionals achieve results, then contact us or visit our website for details.

Next post: Part 2 - Drive Informed Decision-Making with Company-Wide News Distribution

Leave a Comment April 19, 2012