When it comes to working on your brand and taking your business to the next level, it is easy to get lost. At some point, you find yourself asking questions like "What should I do next?" and "What are we missing?" You start doing your homework and look for ways to make this leap to gain an edge over your competition. After a bit of googling and a bit of research, you might come across a new phrase, Media Intelligence. This new phrase is intriguing. The words in this phrase are familiar to you. You know what "Media" is, and you know what "Intelligence" is, yet you may not be familiar with those two words combined together. Media Intelligence is one of the most important things to keep in mind if you want to make better-informed decisions and build strategies based on facts and not just "experience" or "gut feelings." We will discuss the meaning of media intelligence, what it can help you with, and how to use it.
What is Media intelligence?
Media intelligence is a term used to describe the result of three different processes. The first is mining and organizing data from all the various media outlets. This data could come from printed media, broadcasted media, online and social media. After that comes analyzing the data and understanding it. The collected media data tends to be complex, so it is crucial to understand what factors affect this data and how it relates to your business or industry. Finally comes the third process, which in our opinion, is the most critical process, making decisions and building strategies based on the information gathered and based on the analysis done on the data.
What exactly can Media Intelligence help my business with?
Now that we have a better understanding of what Media Intelligence is, we can start talking about what media intelligence can help you do that will give you the knowledge that will tip the balance of market competition in your favor.
Consumer Trends:
Media Intelligence can help you identify and comprehend consumer trends in the market. Trends like consumer sentiment and values can be easily identified with media intelligence. As an executive, you can learn more about the customers you service from their online conversations. You can learn more about the things they value most, like green and eco-friendly initiatives, luxury products, and many other things.
Product Performance:
This use of media intelligence is close to consumer trends as it has a lot to do with customers' online conversations. However, it is different because it focuses more on the conversations about specific products and services. People, in general, like to voice their opinions on the things that concern and affect them. Especially on social media platforms, which gives them a voice to speak with billions of people from all over the world. As a company that offers any kind of product or service to the public, media intelligence is of the highest importance to successfully improve and build. Conversations about your products or services hold huge amounts of insights that can be leveraged to your company's advantage. The only way to be able to make use of these insights in the first place is by collecting, organizing, and analyzing consumer conversations on media outlets, mainly social media platforms. The insights from the customer conversations will put you in the right direction to improve your products and services. It will tell you what your customers love about your products, what they wish you could improve, and what they absolutely loath.
Brand Position:
Brand strength is different from a company's strength. It is easy to confuse these two, but they are different. A brand's strength is based on a combination of how the company performs, how it is perceived by consumers, the values that the company holds and how it company presents itself in the media, how the public interacts with the brand, and how the company affects consumers. Media intelligence is critical to get a good perception of a brand's position in the market and improve the brand's strength. Collecting and monitoring online conversations and press releases mentioning a brand name would give us a huge amount of data. This data can be studied and analyzed to understand the brand's position and build strategies to improve the brand's position and build on its strengths.
Competitor Analysis:
It is no secret that competition drives success. To stay on top of your game, you need to constantly watch your competitors, learn from their success, and avoid making their mistakes. Media intelligence is one of the keys to staying ahead of your competition. Monitoring your competitors' online presence, gathering the online conversations mentioning them and their products, and analyzing this data is crucial if you want to stay on top. Analyzing the information you collected would provide insights into their strengths and weaknesses, online activities, PR activities, targeted audience, and their customers' behavior. These insights are helpful to you and your organization when building future growth strategies. They would provide you with direction for growth and could give you ideas on what weaknesses your competitors have that you could capitalize on.
The media provides enormous amounts of data. Really huge. We now have the ability to interact with the entire world and listen to their opinions. Especially with social media being so intertwined with our lives. There are many ways you can use media intelligence to your advantage. It is very diverse, and the potential for your growth with it is limitless. You simply have to set a target and gather the data that will help you better understand the path to your target. Decisions can be backed by facts. Strategies are built based on data. You don't have to rely on a few good ideas, your intuition, and make educated guesses. The data is out there. People are constantly talking on social media platforms. Media outlets are readily publishing. Listen to the conversations your customers are participating in. Analyze the media publications regarding your industry. This will help you understand trends better, put your brand in a better position, enhance your products' performance, and gain an edge over your competitors.
