Tracking Your Media Coverage

Your press release is ready to go. You have decided which audience you want to target and determined that your release is going to newspapers, magazines, internet wire services, and television and radio stations. You decided to pay the Acme Marketing firm to professionally write your press release. As a part of their writing the press release, they will also do the distribution for you. This saves you time and money. But how will you know if the release was picked up by any of the media outlets on your distribution?

You are probably familiar with the term “clipping service”. No, it is not used for clipping coupons. Clipping services have been around since the 1890s. Before the electronic, computer and internet explosions, these services were performed manually by companies that perused hundreds of newspapers, magazines and broadcast manuscripts.

Now, most of these services are performed by some of the same companies but they use the power of the Internet and other electronic sources to more quickly keep track of potential coverage not only in the print media, but also in blogs and any other internet communications. Television and radio stations make their manuscripts available by updating their database and making them available via the internet.

Many of these firms offer you the ability to search for yourself. The improvement of databases and their easy to use searching capabilities allows you to track where, when and by whom your story has been published.

Whether you decide to have the clipping service do the tracking for you or you decide to do it yourself, expect to pay for these services. Fees vary and you should take the time to find the service that will best meet your needs at a budget you can afford.

If you have a very tight budget and you can’t afford a clipping service, try a standard, free, Internet search engine such as Google or yahoo!. Both of these services allow you to set up an ongoing, automatic search for your company name or other key words or phrases. They notify you daily by email if and when your key words are found on the internet. You receive a link to the information as well as the date, etc. Keep in mind there could be a lag time between the time you distributed your Press Release and the time it takes to be found by Google or yahoo!. Paid clipping services cost money but most of the time, their data is updated as quickly as every two minutes. If time is of the essence, you may want a clipping service.

Measuring and knowing the effectiveness of your Press Release is very important. It helps you determine the return on your investment and keeps you informed as to how information about you or your company is printed, broadcast or “blogged” on the Internet.