PR Clipping — A Smart Way to Track PR Results and Mentions

In a decade, the Internet has evolved to become an inseparable part of the marketing strategy. One aspect of marketing is that it keeps you close to your audience and enhances the reputation of your brand. Yet, the benefit of easy accessibility to your brand has equal parts of disadvantages as well. Hence, another aspect makes you the easy target of angry customers and consumer activists. Once hateful reviews, rude comments, and critical press features start pouring in, the reputation of your business and brand image suffers. As a result, your brand faces potential damage in the form of sales and profits.

To solve this problem, media monitoring has become a fundamental concept in marketing. A well-implemented media monitoring strategy helps you to manage and protect your brand image and reputation. One of the most common media monitoring services is PR clipping. It is an important predictor of the health of a brand. In this article, we are going to discover how PR clipping helps to track PR results and mentions. However, to begin, you first need to know the basics of PR clipping. Thus, we are introducing this article with the basics of PR clipping. Let’s start!

What is PR Clipping, and How Does it Benefit?

PR clipping is one of the methods of media monitoring. As the name suggests, it is a compilation of clippings of media mentions about a particular brand. Through this method, you can measure the number of times a brand has been mentioned in either print, broadcast, or online media. Above all, one can get the clippings in real-time and share them as it publishes.

PR clipping is not a new concept. It has been around since the 1850s when it was used through print media and known as press clipping. Since then, it has changed its form with different stages of technology development. With the advent of radio and television in the 20th century, press clipping extended to broadcast monitoring. It was not until the 90s when press clipping became digital media monitoring due to the explosion of the Internet.

The PR clippings in online media evaluate the online presence of a brand. It includes online editions of social media platforms, e-newspapers, news websites, email newsletters, website blogs, articles, other PR publishings, and online media coverage.

Why is PR Clipping Important?

According to the client request section of the Holmes Report, 44% of clients ask for media clippings. It is because PR clipping can benefit you in several ways. Here are some of them –

• Measures the Effectiveness of Marketing

PR clipping is a great strategic method to measure the performance of your PR activities or marketing efforts. After a product launch or a campaign goes live, the quality of media attention defines the effectiveness of your actions. These results impact your future marketing decisions and strategies.

• Helps you Stay Updated

The method of PR clipping collects the data from all over the web and presents it to you in one place. As a result, you stay updated with all the mentions of your brand conveniently. If you discover something negative surfacing about your brand, you can take immediate actions to solve the issue.

It is necessary to do so since 45% of people step back from a business opportunity after discovering something negative in an online search.

• Helps You Understand the Consumer’s Perception

You get to know what people are talking about you through constant monitoring of the mentions. Consequently, you understand the perception of your brand in the mind of consumers. The graph and the quality of the mentions over time can help you derive a conclusion. If their outlook is not how you want them to perceive your brand, you can change your marketing measures.

• Manages Your Brand Reputation

In media conversation, speed is of the essence. One negative review or comment can go viral and damage your brand reputation. In a global survey report of reputation risk of Deloitte, 41% of companies reported the loss of brand value and revenue after a negative reputation event.

However, if you track PR clippings on a real-time basis, you can handle the situation. Therefore, respond promptly to discussions, reviews, or queries. It not only depicts that you care about your customers but also builds trust and loyalty.

• Measures the Awareness of Your Brand

You can measure the reach of your paid media sources to measure brand awareness. However, it is earned media that measures the true statistics of brand awareness. For example, unsponsored brand mentions dominate Instagram influencer marketing or website blog. If people are talking about your brand organically, your brand is reaching them in the right ways.

• Builds a Press Page

You can create an offline or online professional press page by collecting the best of your PR clippings. This way, you can not only educate the prospects about your brand but also show off your past efforts. It helps you gain credibility in the industry from fellow brands as well.

Who is PR Clipping Important For?

• Startups and SMEs

Small businesses have a restrained budget to market their brands. However, if you do not track the organic media coverage, how else will you leverage your marketing efforts? These mentions are the ultimate credibility definers for young entrepreneurs.

• Large Businesses

The monitoring needs of large businesses are no different than that of small ones. PR clipping helps them to determine their performance and demonstrate the ROI of their marketing efforts. This information plays a key role in the presence of stakeholders.

• The Not-for-Profit Sector

NPOs need support for a cause that is provided by donors and volunteers. Here, the goodwill of the groups plays an essential role. Exercising control over the PR clipping helps them to regulate their opinion in the public. Learn what are the benefits of Social Media Monitoring for Nonprofit Organizations.

• Government and Public Organizations

These organizations are funded by the public and hence, having the confidence of the public matters the most. PR clippings help them to determine the way they are portrayed in the media and the eyes of the general public.

• Public Relation Agencies

To monitor the success of a campaign of any of their clients, PR agencies need to demonstrate unpaid positive media coverage. It defines their efforts for the existing clients and contributes to an effective pitch for the potential clients. Learn how to track campaigns for marketing and PR agencies.

How to Leverage PR Clipping Services?

As mentioned above, PR clippings are a part of media monitoring services. Therefore, to leverage a PR clipping tool, you need to explore a media monitoring service. We recommend the following services –

• Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free tool to leverage PR clipping services. All you have to do is add keywords and filter the result type. However, it is not a comprehensive tool and offers limited keyword tracking.

• Google News

Perform a quick search of your brand name on Google News. You will find the recent media coverage of your brand. However, it only picks up the mentions of the listed sites of Google.

• Google Organic Search

Through Google Search, you can search your brand name or related keywords and filter the time. You will get the results of your media features. However, it is not a ready-made solution, and hence, you need to look out for unfiltered content.

• Media Monitoring Tools like Mentionlytics

There are leading media monitoring platforms that provide tools to monitor your entire web presence and provide PR clippings from every digital platform. Mentionlytics is one of them.

Mentionlytics, one of the best media monitoring service platforms, is an ideal tool to monitor news media, social media, and other digital platforms. Whether you are a startup, an established business, or a PR agency, it can provide you with customized PR clippings. Every mention it curates is first assessed and analyzed with advanced machine learning algorithms. It extracts valuable information in this process and then presents itself to you with the added information. No other media monitoring tool can compete with the wealth of data it provides in real-time with a single click.

How Can Mentionlytics Help you With PR Clipping?

Mentionlytics is a dedicated PR clipping service that keeps you updated with your brand mentions. No matter the industry, you can monitor your brand all over the web through relevant keywords and hashtags.

Here is how you can conduct a PR clipping through Mentionlytics –

1. First, set up your account on the website of Mentionlytics. Then, provide us the name of your brand, product, or a related keyword. We ask for your business email to log in. Once you do so, we send you an activation link on your email account and begin your free trial.

2. As you set your first monitoring project for the desired brand name, hashtag, or keyword, the tool will showcase what everyone is saying about the key term on different platforms.

3. Mentionlytics will collect all the mentions in real-time in different formats. You will see the analytics under the following groups –

• Total mentions
• Social reach
• Social engagement
• Sentiment Analysis — positive and negative
• Overview chart
• Mention trackers for brand monitoring, competitors, and marketing leads
• Social media mentions for every platform — Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram
• Top social media mentioners
• Demographic division of mentions by geographical boundaries
• Web mentions

4. Experience the following benefits while using Mentionlytics –

• Change the date of the mentions and make a custom range according to your needs.
• Export the PR clipping mention report to Excel or PDF file.
• Gather all the groups of mentions under a single dashboard.
• Filter the results according to your specifications in different channels, categories, sources, relevance, sentiment, country, and language.
• Get the depiction of information in various formats — pie charts, graphs, maps, growth charts, etc. to facilitate easier understanding.

5. Once you set the desired keyword, the PR clipping tool keeps updating the mentions in real-time.

Start your free trial here.

Final Word

More than half of the U.S. adults google the brand or person before initiating business with them. If your web presence depicts negative conversations about your brand, you lose your potential client. Therefore, use a PR clipping tool and ensure you do not miss a single mention of your brand on the web.

We hope this article was successful at imparting valuable information about PR clipping and its importance.

If you want to learn more about the online presence of your brand, keep following us. We will be back soon with another informational blog post.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/pr-clipping-a-smart-way-to-track-pr-results-and-mentions