Media Monitoring

Framework

IRON LAW: Monitor for Action, Not Just Awareness

Media monitoring that produces weekly reports nobody reads is waste.
Every monitoring setup must have TRIGGER ACTIONS defined: if sentiment
drops below X, alert the PR team. If a competitor launches a campaign,
notify marketing within 24 hours. No triggers = no value.

Monitoring Dimensions

| Dimension | What to Track | Tools | |-----------|-------------|-------| | Volume | Number of mentions over time | Google Alerts, Mention, Meltwater | | Sentiment | Positive / Neutral / Negative ratio | Brandwatch, Talkwalker, manual coding | | Share of Voice | Your mentions vs competitors' mentions | Industry reports, custom dashboards | | Source | Where mentions appear (news, social, forums, blogs) | Platform analytics, social listening tools | | Influencer | Who is talking (reach, authority) | BuzzSumo, social platform analytics | | Topics | What themes/keywords are associated with your brand | Keyword clustering, topic modeling |

Setup Steps

Phase 1: Define Keywords

• Brand name + common misspellings
• Product names, CEO name, key executives
• Competitor brand names
• Industry keywords (for context)
• Negative keywords to exclude irrelevant results

Phase 2: Select Channels

• News (traditional media, online news)
• Social media (Facebook, IG, X/Twitter, PTT, Dcard for Taiwan)
• Forums and review sites
• Video (YouTube, TikTok)
• Podcasts (emerging channel, harder to monitor)

Phase 3: Set Triggers | Trigger | Threshold | Action | |---------|-----------|--------| | Negative sentiment spike | >20% increase in 24hrs | Alert PR manager immediately | | Competitor product launch | Any mention | Notify marketing team | | Influencer mention (>10K followers) | Any mention | Evaluate for engagement opportunity | | Crisis keyword detected | "recall", "lawsuit", "scandal" + brand | Activate crisis protocol |

Phase 4: Reporting Cadence

• Real-time alerts for crisis triggers
• Daily digest for PR team
• Weekly summary for marketing leadership
• Monthly report for executive team (volume, sentiment, SOV trends)

Output Format

markdown
# Media Monitoring Report: {Brand} — {Period}

## Summary
| Metric | Current | Prior Period | Change |
|--------|---------|-------------|--------|
| Total Mentions | {N} | {N} | {%} |
| Sentiment (Pos/Neu/Neg) | {%}/{%}/{%} | ... | ... |
| Share of Voice | {%} | {%} | {±%} |

## Top Mentions
| Date | Source | Headline/Summary | Sentiment | Reach |
|------|--------|-----------------|-----------|-------|
| {date} | {outlet} | {summary} | +/0/- | {est. reach} |

## Alerts Triggered
| Date | Trigger | Action Taken |
|------|---------|-------------|
| {date} | {what happened} | {response} |

## Competitor Activity
| Competitor | Mentions | Key Activity |
|-----------|----------|-------------|
| {name} | {N} | {what they did} |

## Recommendations
1. {action based on findings}

Gotchas

• Sentiment analysis is imperfect: Automated tools misclassify sarcasm, industry jargon, and context-dependent language. Manually review a sample weekly to calibrate.
• PTT/Dcard matter in Taiwan: For Taiwan brands, PTT and Dcard are critical channels that many international monitoring tools don't cover well. Consider local tools or manual monitoring.
• Volume spikes ≠ crisis: A viral meme mentioning your brand positively creates a volume spike. Don't panic — check sentiment before escalating.
• Competitor monitoring is legal and ethical: Tracking public mentions of competitors is standard practice. Accessing private data or impersonating competitors is not.

References

• For crisis escalation protocol, see the pr-crisis-response skill
• For Taiwan-specific media landscape, see references/taiwan-media.md