Media analysis helps your business to gain strategic insights into different media trends and topics. The information helps businesses to understand which channels are best for promoting a product or service, allowing them to gauge how they are perceived by the public.
Here are three things you need to know about media analysis:
Media analysis offers a great deal of insight
This type of analysis enables businesses to examine and evaluate different types of media to identify which would be the best for promoting a product or service.
In this instance, the media that is being analysed refers to all types of mass communication, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet.
The purpose of this analysis is to:
1. identify pertinent issues that need more traction
2. examine the best way to frame specific messages
3. improve the way that existing issues are covered in the media
Media analysis is beneficial to brands as it gives businesses metrics regarding how their content is being perceived by the public and it also helps them to determine what is working and what isn't.
Additionally, this information will help businesses going forward as it will give insight as to why certain things were said, how this will impact their brand and how they can respond.
Media analysis enables businesses to manage public perception of brands, monitor competitors’ activities and stay on top of how the media portrays issues relating to brands.
There are two types of media analysis
There are two different types of media analysis: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative media analysis focuses on statistics, which is the collection of media mentions and the statistics relating to these mentions.
These statistics consist of:
1. clip count — this is the total number of mentions a topic or issue has.
2. circulation — the number of copies in circulation that have been distributed to each publication.
3. share of voice — this looks at how often an entity or topic is mentioned in comparison to its competitors.
4. media segmentation — a comprehensive breakdown of all media sources.
Qualitative media analysis takes a look at things on a deeper level, investigating the relationship between a text and the audience.
This type of analysis tracks the discourse surrounding these texts so it focuses on factors like media sources and target audiences, as this is who will be receiving the information.
The best media analysis combines qualitative and quantitative procedures, giving the fullest picture of what is going on.
Your research must be focused
When acquiring a service to conduct a media analysis, it is imperative that you provide the company with every last detail of what exactly you would like to analyse, as this will refine the search, providing your brand with better, more focused results.
Scheming through content to find the insight can be an extremely tedious job and even more so if you don’t know what to look for.
Providing details will also save you time and drive results into more detailed, precise feedback.
Businesses can focus their media analysis by determining:
1. which media they want to analyse (newspapers, television, radio.)
2. which genres of content will be analysed (marketing copy, interview, speech.)
3. what the criteria for inclusion is (e.g. newspaper articles that mention a particular event, speeches by a certain politician, or websites selling a specific type of product)
4. what the parameters of your research are (relating to date range, location, etc.)
Conclusion
Media analysis is an insightful and advantageous tool for deciphering how a brand is perceived by the public and identifying what works and what doesn't in terms of content.