Hacking a media monitoring service

Media monitoring isn't cheap. Most services will divide up the media landscape and then charge you a fee for monitoring each one. Print/TV/Radio? $1500-$2000 per month. Online news? $1000 per month. Social? $100 - $1000 per month.

Most small businesses won't get mentioned in the press enough to warrant this monitoring and most large organisations that worry about their name in the media are big enough to afford the cost. But there is also a middle ground of growing businesses that want to monitor their business but can't afford the professional fees.

What's the answer? I've been able to hack together a pretty good media monitoring plan without any fees using as many free monitoring services I can get. Here's the run-down:

Print: My local library has a subscription to PressDisplay.com which gives me daily print monitoring of hundreds of local and national newspapers.
Online news: I have set-up my Google Reader to receive RSS feeds of the following news aggregators - Google News, Bing News and Yahoo News. I've spread my bets across the field because they all trawl different amounts of news sites. (note: Bing news send through the feed a couple of times a day which gets a bit confusing).
Forums: Grab an RSS feed from BoardReader
Blog and Social Search: Icerocket is a service from the Meltwater Group and a pretty good free option from a comprehensive professional Monitor.
Blog Search: Twingly is another Blog Search tool - as you're sticking these feeds in an RSS reader the more feeds you have the broader your possible monitor.
Social Search: Although it is not in my RSS reader, I use Hootsuite to publish and monitor social streams. One of the big pluses for this is that you can geo-code your search results to narrow down more generic search terms.

The one big omission that I have is TV and Radio. Monitoring these services requires lots of people and many hours of transcribing audio which is why the big Media Monitoring services charge so much. There are services that will do this for you on an ad-hoc basis, but you have to know you're going to be mentioned to know to get the transcript!

My list isn't exhaustive by any means and missing TV and Radio is a big hole, but for growing businesses it is a pretty good starting point for monitoring your brand. If you know of any more services feel free to comments and i'll keep growing the list.

UPDATE: The gods were against me on this one. The day after I write this post, praising RSS and Google Reader, Google announces they are going to kill-off Reader. Boo. Not to worry, I still think RSS is the best way to monitor media for your brand so I'm going to go off and find a better Reader.

Does Google demote itself?

Google must have one of the best online art galleries on the web, yet you've probably never heard of it let alone discovered it from a Google search.

The Google Art Project is a fantastic treasure trove of high resolution photographs of the collections of some of the worlds most famous art galleries. But, when you do a Google search for "art collection", "renaissance art", "renaissance paintings" or "renaissance gallery" the site is no-where to be seen.

It makes me wonder why this would be, after all, you could forgive a company for wanting to promote their own stuff first, right? And, it is a great site.

Has Google just done a poor job SEO-ing their own site? There's no shortage of references to it on the web. Opensiteexplorer.com says it has awesome domain authority and inbound links. Me not being technical at all might be missing a 'dev' issue as to why it isn't ranking, but it is a real shame this site doesn't pop up more often.

On this note, it's also worth mentioning the Web Gallery of Art - another site that sadly doesn't rank as well as it should. It might not be as sexy as the Google Art Project or have the hi-resolution, but it certainly has indexed many more paintings.

Treehouse plans

One of the great things about Google Books is that what it contains is before the time when any random half-cocked idea could be published to the world.

The stuff you get in Google Books was written, edited and published in the true sense - quality stuff.

My current grand plan is a tree house, and so Google Books helps me with some great info. Here are some links to some of the gold that i've found:

• Build a modern treehouse - with or without a tree - Popular Mechanics Jun 1965
• Modern Living - A Treetop Retreat - LIFE 10 Dec 1956
• Treehouses: A Step-By-Step Guide to Designing & Building a Safe & Sound Structure
• Build Your Kids a Treehouse: The Complete Guide
• Tree Houses: You Can Actually Build

Happy building!

Westpac engaging business customers

I often walk past the Westpac branch on the corner of Collins and Swanston. It's a bank branch that offers the regular services you'd expect of a bank, but it has something that makes it unique for banks in the CBD.

This branch has a shop window that is passed by tens of thousands people every day, but there are plenty of banks like that. What's unique about this branch is that its windows are not filled with posters of the latest home loan or term deposit rates, rather its lovingly merchandised with products from one if its business banking customers. Each month a different customer gets a turn.

What a great offer for valued customers, something I'm sure many of these small business customers could never think to afford.

I don't have a business so I'm not really sure what the most important thing a business bank can do to satisfy its customers, but handing over high street window space is a good start.

I wonder if this is one if the factors that makes Westpac have the highest business banking satisfaction of the Big Four.

*disclaimer: I work for Roy Morgan, which is one of the reasons I get thinking about customer satisfaction quite a bit.

Advertising and sponsorship, the Olympics and Paralympics

These past two weeks I have been totally wrapped up in the Paralympics. A lot has to do with how well Australia is doing, but I have also enjoyed the ABC's commentary and programming.

The mix of expert comments and entertainment, especially the nightly panel was totally engaging - a real lesson in how to engage an audience.

But probably the biggest difference I noticed between the Olympics and Paralympics was the difference in advertising and sponsorship. Unlike the Olympics, in the Paralympics sponsors are able to advertise within venues, thus getting their branding within the sports broadcast.

In the Olympics this is banned, thus sponsors rely on commercial tv advertising. And this was probably the thing that most turned me off channel nine's Olympics broadcast. The continuous ad breaks required to payback the broadcast rights made the already lackluster programming lineup even worse.

It leads me to ask, could there be a different sponsorship model for the Olympics where sponsors pay more for in-venue advertising (a reality of all modern sports) in exchange for non-commercial, or at least limited commercial  broadcasts?

I imagine that is one dream too large.

Social media - the customer's channel.

Storm over Target's 'trampy' fashion sense | theage.com.au

Like the multiple viewer complaints posted on the Channel 9 Facebook page over the past two weeks, this complaint to Target reminds us that Social media is the customer's channel.

As much as Facebook, Twitter et.al might be seen as marketing communication channels, the real ownership is in the hands of the customers.

As such, responsibility for these channels should be business-wide, a cooperation between both Customer Service and Marketing.

UPDATE 8.51PM

Ahh, the Facebook democracy. Here we (and me) are praising the ability of the everyday person to stand up and make their voice count. Good on you, great to get your voice heard! But, for every Common Sense Rises the the Top article we get a loopy non sequitur post like the following pearl of wisdom on the nine news Facebook page:

first of all i would like to say that this comment is in no way offensive to 9 news.

Im 19 years old and feel the need to express my opinions.
When seeing the ads on t.v about the news story coming up with refugees and illegal immigrants getting housed in australia with families etc, i don't need to see the story to know what its about. in fact i am ashamed to see australia for what it is today, WE as a country need to realise that before we put hard earned tax payers money into housing and looking after refugees and those less fortunate from other countries.. WE need to think about our OWN first. Take a trip down to melbourne or sydney or brisbane just to name a few, look at all the homeless on the streets, in freezing winters and rough conditions, why cant we house those people first? why cant we put them in a detention centre with tv's and a nice comfy bed, food and a nice warm shelter. WHY do we just look past this and leave them on the street and give people from other countries an opportunity and somewhere to stay before we do with our OWN? WE as a country need some form of real leadership, to take priority with our own born and bread before we as country will lose what we once called "home".

Please take the time to read this.
Thanks

 The result? Over 73,000 likes and rising. Gee, top job Australia.

Using parentheses in promotional writing

I work with some guys that you would say come from the old school of advertising. Back in the day, before flashy websites and 3 second TVCs, well written copy was highly valued.

Today we are taught about the ruthlessness of advertising copy, keeping it short, calls to action, active sentences. However, every now and then I enjoy reading promotions that are well written by someone that takes pride in their product descriptions and catalogues.

Of all the things that I think stand out for me is the use of parentheses in promotional writing. The old school is not afraid to use parentheses to provide more context or give a little more meaning. Some might think if it's in parentheses then its superfluous, but to me it can add a little fun.

It may seem silly when you're competing so heavily for the consumers time but just adding a little flourish to your usual pared-back promotional copy might be a nice change (give it a try, I dare you).

It doesn't end at employment.

The 10 States and 10 Jobs With the Most Low-Wage Workers - Atlantic Mobile

The stats presented in the above link just go to show that employment isn't everything. With so many pundits tracking unemployment rates you'd be forgiven for thinking once this goes down everything will be peachy.

Looking at these stats though paints a different picture. The massive amount of people on low and very low incomes goes to show that breaking the poverty cycle is more complex than just increasing employment.

Makes me greatful for what I have and the opportunities I've been given, that's for sure.

Who says where country borders lie?

BBC NEWS - India climbdown may help China border dispute

Within this article is the following quote:

"when the Chinese claim line was posted on Google earlier this year, it led to a furore in India."

If the majority of the world's population use Google Maps as a reference, does this mean Google has become the de facto arbiter of Geo-political boundaries?

Europe's unemployment crisis.

"Putting a million people back to work would be £26bn – or around half of the latest £50bn tranche of QE released by the Bank last month."

A new op-ed in the Guardian factors humans into the EU crisis for a change.

Put's it into a perspective you can understand.