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

# 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