Not all media coverage is made equal.
Media coverage is important for all companies. It provides each company with messaging from an unbiased outsider. Top-tier media placements are an invaluable way to communicate a company’s story and thought leadership.
When evaluating media coverage and the corresponding metrics, it is important to separate each piece of coverage and grade it accordingly.
For example, many companies are often mentioned in another company’s funding round, usually due to a shared investor or being mentioned as a competitor. These small inserts do very little for a company’s bottom line.
On the contrary, a feature story for a company in an industry trade outlet has a much larger ROI. These pieces of coverage can be used internally for sales and marketing purposes as well as awards and social media. This coverage can also be featured on the company’s website and greatly improves its SEO.
At Bospar, our way of evaluating media coverage is through the development of share of voice (SOV) reports. We do this by breaking down the coverage in the lenses of media impressions and reach, sentiment analysis, quality of coverage, and SEO and backlink impacts.
With media coverage, evaluating the ROI cannot be singularly focused on the company’s bottom line. Public relations isn’t a direct means to make the company more money; instead, it is a way to garner more eyes and visibility for new business opportunities.
To do this, media impressions and reach are important. Each media outlet is measured by its unique monthly visitors (UVM). Top-tier outlets such as The Wall Street Journal (25m+ UVM), Forbes (60m+ UVM) and CNN (100m+ UVM) are seen as some of the elite media wins for media outreach efforts.
Coverage in these outlets with a high reach indicates widespread visibility of the brand and message, increasing awareness. Bospar has plenty of examples of secured placements for clients in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, CNBC and other leading media outlets.
However, coverage in these top-tier outlets means very little unless the coverage is what the team desires. The quality of each placement needs to be evaluated on a scale. For example, a small mention has less of an impact than a strong CEO quote, while a company’s data being featured or a product announcement getting coverage goes a long way toward establishing that brand as a leader in the industry.
The best way for a brand to establish credibility and get its name into top publications is to have an opinion on important and trending topics. The CEO or other executives need to set the company’s stance on these topics and offer their thought leadership to media outlets. In many cases, reporters are working on stories and need sources and opinions, hence the importance of offering a company’s spokesperson as an expert.
That brings us to backlinks and SEO. While a company CEO or executive commenting on a trending story may not directly lead to more leads, having a backlink will. When someone is quoted in a piece of content, in many cases the company’s name will follow, often linked to the company’s website. Some top-tier publications may not include links, but many do. Major pieces of coverage will drive tons of traffic back to a company’s website. In Bospar’s case, even causing the website to crash from all the traffic!
When media outlets include links in their coverage, it creates the opportunity for new customers. The same can be said for SEO. When a company is mentioned, not only does the coverage move up higher in many search engines, but it also establishes a company’s credibility. In that case, when a company is searched for, there are plenty of examples and stories to establish a brand’s legitimacy.
While the quality of coverage is important, evaluating the sentiment is just as imperative. Obviously, a feature story that is negative can harm a company, but even if the company’s name is used in a negative context, it can be harmful. When a brand is mentioned in a negative context, the quality of the coverage goes down, especially when the executive quote is misused. Understanding how the public is responding to a piece of news is part of the big picture.
Ultimately, it all comes down to the SOV. When Bospar develops the share of voice report, we will compare every piece of coverage or media mention to that of the company’s competitors. We do this by tracking all of the coverage with their media reach, sentiment, quality of coverage, and backlink inclusion and measuring each company’s share of the industry coverage. This will typically be represented in a pie chart like the one below for Bospar’s client Dryad:
SOV reports allow a company to assess its media presence in its industry and plan on how to increase its share of coverage. Upon partnering with Bospar, clients get a baseline share of voice report to establish where the company ranks at the time of engagement We then move forward with clients, providing a new SOV quarterly to highlight the progression.
In many cases, Bospar is able to increase clients’ SOV percentage enough to make them leaders in their industries. For example, Bospar took Jugo from 2 million media impressions in 3 years, to 650 million in 6 months!
Contact us to get more details on how our PR superstars can create and execute winning public relations strategies to increase your visibility, media coverage and sales!
