Data is king. But there are different types of data brands can use to help them make more informed decisions.
Today, we’re going to talk about the data you can gather from brand mentions across the web. Consumers have a lot to say about companies, whether they have a negative or positive experience.
💡Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
But media outlets, news sites, and other media coverage also have a lot to say about brands. Whether they’re reporting on major announcements, financial performance, or worse, scandals, journalists and news outlets often play a large role in how the public perceives your brand.
While you can’t control what people say about your business, you can control how you respond to it. To ensure the best possible outcome, it’s always best to be proactive and get ahead of things before they potentially damage your reputation.
Thanks to media monitoring, you have that chance. But there are lots of media monitoring tools out there. Which one should you choose?
To help you decide, we’ve compiled a list of affordable media monitoring solutions for enterprises and some of their best features.
What is media monitoring?
Media monitoring is the process of tracking what people are saying about your brand, competitors, industry, and other relevant topics.
Media monitoring tools let you automatically track, analyze, and measure public sentiment on different platforms. These channels can include traditional media, such as magazines, newsprint, radio, and television. Or, they can be online sources, like social media platforms, forums, review sites, or other web-based applications.
A 2022 survey of 650+ top marketers found that 61% of businesses have a social listening system in place and monitor for keyword mentions.
So, why is media monitoring so important? 96% of unhappy customers aren’t likely to directly tell you if they’re disappointed with your brand.
That’s why many businesses use media monitoring tools — so that they can get ahead of any negative attention before it becomes a bigger problem.
But that’s not the only reason. Brands also use media monitoring tools to:
- Track the impact of events (i.e., product launches, press conferences, industry expos) and enhance their coverage through event photography
- Evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns
- Assess the success of media outreach efforts
- See what competitors are up to
- Monitor media coverage
- Stay on top of trends
Top media monitoring software solutions
Without further ado, here are the best media monitoring software solutions that are effective but don’t break the bank.
Determ
Determ is a media monitoring tool that uses AI to give you real-time insights into your brand image, public sentiment, and media presence across a variety of platforms.
Determ’s software creates media presence summaries instantly. It’ll also provide you with instant explanations for every spike and drop in public sentiment, allowing you to quickly uncover patterns and identify trends.
It’s the ideal tool for PR and marketing professionals. And you can get started for absolutely free.
After a demo, you can get a tailored free trial to see Determ’s capabilities for yourself.
Key features:
- Media monitoring API for custom integrations
- Comprehensive, data-driven reports
- All-in-one-place media coverage
- 100+ million online sources
- 24/7 mention monitoring
- Real-time notifications
- Engagement tracking
- AI assistant Synthia
- Sentiment analysis
- Visual analytics
- Spike alerts
Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker is a free media monitoring tool. It has recently been acquired by the people over at Hootsuite, a social media management platform.
Talkwalker is similar to Google Alerts but claims to be better.
While Google Alerts lets you set alerts for mentions on blogs, forums, and websites, Talkwalker does all that and adds social platforms to the mix.
Also, with Talkwalker, you can filter your results. For example, if you only want to monitor alerts for blogs, you can easily do so with a filter.
Key features:
- Comprehensive media coverage
- Powerful integrations
- Sentiment analysis
- Custom scoring
- Real-time alerts
Mention
Mention’s media monitoring tool allows you to track mentions across the web in real-time. You can even fetch mentions up to two years in the past (Determ beats that with three years of historical data).
You can also easily track specific mentions and web pages without having to sift through tons of results, thanks to its multiple filtering options.
With its robot assistant, you can monitor any topic and keyword. It’ll also suggest additional keywords and hashtags to keep track of.
Mention offers collaboration features to help you share results across teams. You can share your mentions list with others in the app or via email.
After signing up, you get access to a free trial. After the trial is up, prices start at $41/month.
Key features:
- Seamless integrations
- Over 1 billion sources
- Sentiment analysis
- Real-time tracking
- Boolean Search
- Query building
Agility PR Solutions
Agility PR Solutions offers an AI-powered media monitoring solution that helps you monitor media coverage across various channels, including online, print, broadcast, podcasts, and social media.
You can set coverage alerts so that you always know what people and the media are saying about your brand. When a mention meets your criteria, you’ll get an email notification.
With AI-powered article analysis, you can quickly gather insights and key takeaways, including sentiment, opinion, contextual analysis, brands mentioned, key facts and figures, and more.
Agility PR offers a flat fee for its media monitoring solution. Each feature costs $1,000.
Key features:
- Personalized interactive insights
- AI-powered media monitoring
- Effortless insights sharing
- Competitive analysis
- Coverage alerts
- Media briefings
- Custom topics
Meltwater
With Meltwater’s media intelligence tool, you can track topics that matter to you. You can monitor several social media channels, TV and radio, global news sources, and podcasts.
This lets you track the volume of mentions, their potential reach, sentiment, trends, and top publications.
With global media monitoring, you can gain insights from one single source of truth and compare sentiment across the globe.
You’ll know about news articles mentioning your keywords and be able to understand how people and the media perceive your brand globally.
Key features:
- Sentiment analysis
- Custom scoring
- Spike detection
- Social echo
Meltwater’s pricing starts at $8,000 a year.
Muck Rack
One of the key use cases of Muck Rack is the ability to build and maintain great relationships with relevant journalists.
However, Muck Rack offers more with its media alert features that allow you to track relevant media mentions, client names, and key trends.
You can set up email alerts where you receive notifications about news stories and shares on social media. It even claims to deliver updates to your inbox faster than Google.
Google can take hours or even days to index new articles. Muck Rack Alerts taps directly into outlet feeds. It can also go beyond what Google can crawl, offering alerts from broadcast and social channels.
Key features:
- Automated coverage reports and alerts
- Competitive analysis
- Advanced analytics
- Media trends
If you want to try out Muck Rack, you can request a free demo of its software. Muck Rack’s pricing varies by the number of users. The average cost is $6,000 per year.
Brandwatch
With Brandwatch’s robust software, you can monitor brand mentions, conduct sentiment analysis, and keep a close eye on your competitors.
As a social listening tool, Brandwatch allows you to monitor conversations across various social media platforms and stay informed about what consumers are saying about your brand.
It also offers a sentiment analysis feature where you can determine the sentiment behind social media posts to understand public opinion and consumer feelings toward your brand.
It works by collecting millions of posts, comments, and conversations that are relevant to you. Then, you can easily categorize these comments by feedback, complaints, opinions, and more.
From there, you can use AI to analyze content and gain actionable insights that you can share across your organization with live alerts and customizable reports.
Key features:
- Flexible, automated reporting and alerts
- Fully customizable dashboards
- AI-powered insights
- Sentiment analysis
Brandwatch allows you to schedule a free demo. It starts at $1,000 per month to monitor up to 10,000 mentions.
Take your pick
There is a range of options when it comes to media monitoring tools. So, which is the best?
The answer to that question is up to you. You should think about your goals and what you hope to achieve with the software.
What features stand out to you the most? Which option best fits your budget? If you still can’t decide, try out each tool through a free demo or trial. That way, you can see exactly how they work and what you can expect.
Will you choose Determ? Our media monitoring software gives you everything you need to track mentions around your brand, all at a competitive price point. When you use it to make sense of all the data at your fingertips, you can make better business decisions.
Author’s Bio Britney Steele was born and raised in Atlanta, Britney is a freelance writer with 5+ years of experience. She has written for a variety of industries, including marketing, technology, business, finance, healthcare, wellness, and fitness. If she’s not spending her time chasing after three little humans and two four-legged friends, you can almost always find her glued to a book or awesome TV series.
