“Eavesdropping” Through Media Monitoring
Eavesdropping, or “nguping,” is usually seen as a negative activity because it involves listening to something one shouldn’t be hearing. However, eavesdropping isn’t actually that narrow in scope, nor does it always carry a negative connotation. In fact, in the world of Public Relations, a PR practitioner at a Jakarta PR agency must possess the skill of eavesdropping.
“Do Public Relations professionals need to know how to eavesdrop? What kind of eavesdropping?”
In the realm of Public Relations, “nguping” refers to the ability of practitioners to listen to conversations in public spaces. It’s not just about participating in conversations; PR practitioners must also be able to gather “important data” for the brand or organization.
Definition of Media Monitoring
In short, media monitoring is the activity by PR practitioners to analyze news coverage published by the mass media. This can include watching, reading, or listening to editorial content that contains specific keywords or topics. Through media monitoring, we as PR consultants gain insight into what’s happening in the outside world—from developments related to our clients’ industries to coverage of our clients and even news about competitors.
Read also:
Social Listening: Techniques for Listening to Consumer Conversations on Social Media
How to Be a Public Relations Professional in the Digital Age and During a Pandemic?
Yes, the “important data” mentioned earlier consists of findings that can later serve as a reference and foundation for determining future strategic steps and help guide policy decisions. For this reason, the most basic form of content analysis that must be conducted is categorizing news coverage as positive, neutral, or negative. This categorization is not an easy task, as news isn’t always entirely positive or entirely negative.
Media Monitoring Tools Ă la Media Buffet PR
As a Jakarta-based PR agency, Media Buffet PR routinely conducts media monitoring for several clients as part of daily reporting. Typically, media monitoring is conducted in the morning so the results can be presented to clients as data during internal meetings, or in the afternoon if a client is facing a crisis.
Take Sinka, for example—a Media Buffet consultant currently conducting active media monitoring for Wise. For her, media monitoring is like being a “spy”; carefully reading and analyzing media coverage of clients or competitors. She tracks what competitors are doing, the challenges they’re facing, and even their future plans.
In addition to conducting manual media monitoring, as Sinka does, Media Buffet PR also frequently uses online tools like Brand24 or Global Insight to streamline the capture of online news coverage—whether it concerns the brand, competitors, or industries related to the brand.
Media monitoring isn’t just done when a crisis hits—it must be conducted routinely to anticipate what will happen in the future. This has a positive impact on decision-making and helps determine the company’s marketing strategy.
