Universal Information Services

Posts for Social Media Tracking

At Universal I take calls, emails and tweets all the time asking about our news monitoring and media analysis services. When I think in terms of #samerules and #newtools, it strikes me that almost no two clients have the exact same need. Sure, many of our clients need TV clips and press clippings, or their media exposure analyzed, but rarely do they need their information in the exact same manner as another client.

I originally set out to provide a primer on the various news monitoring services like Critical Mention and Cision, as well as other News Data Service affiliates like Utah News Clips. An overview of what each news tracking, media measurement, or even media contacts platform provides would be helpful to clients. But seriously, who is going to read a blog post that runs 10 pages long? What I've presented below are the three main types of vendors to consider when discerning which news monitoring and media analysis service is best for your organization.

1. Free solutions: In this category you find search engines with basic functionality for storing some keywords and returning results to you. Free services like Google News Alerts or Bing act as search agents informing you of some of the news you want to hear. The most recent studies indicate these free services contain about 30% of the published or broadcast news in the United States. If you just need some information, and aren't picky about the specific media outlets that ran the story, these free services can be a great tool. You can track a lot of news for free. For organizations that need more comprehensive media monitoring, or media measurement beyond basic quantitative metrics, the paid monitoring services are essential.

2. Paid solutions: The most comprehensive services come in two flavors. You have the monitoring services that provide all the online tools you need, plus true customer service to support special needs and ad hoc requests. Companies like Universal Information Services or Cision fall into this category. Then you have the SaaS companies like Critical Mention and TVEyes. SaaS vendors provide a login to their platform where you perform the work yourself.

Comprehensive services that offer service and support generally have the following benefits over their SaaS competitors.
Backsearching for ad hoc orders
Support staff to handle questions and special requests
Crisis management contacts to assist with after hours needs
The ability customize your service package to specifically fit your needs

SaaS services are very good at:
Providing a single platform for reviewing and editing TV clips
Offering competitive pricing, although options and features are reduced
Delivering a nice looking interface to their platform.

3. Executive Summary Services This category represents the newest breed of news monitoring services. The goal of these services is to filter through the entire information sphere, pulling only the most strategic news stories as defined by the client. In a sense, this type of news monitoring cuts through the noise for the client so they don't have to filter their own results. In constructing our Executive Reports we still look at virtually all media outlets for print, broadcast, web and social media stories, but then select only the news that is most critical to our client. Although Executive Summary services come at a premium over the "all you can eat" models, the time and resources saved by the client can make up for that additional cost.

Our most recent analysis shows that most prospects are looking for flexibility, options, and the ability to modify orders with the help of support staff. However, not all users need that kind of help. In the end, you need to decide what your real needs are and what vendor can fulfill them now, or evolve with you in the future. If I can answer any questions, please leave a comment. I'm listening.

For those in public relations, corporate communications, or investor relations, you most likely have heard the news that Video Monitoring Services, VMS, closed last Friday with Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Since the story first broke on commpro.biz, many industry newsletters have posted their view of what caused the fall of the largest broadcast monitoring service. Looking in the rear view mirror is always far easier than projecting where one needs to be. Unfortunately it is too late for VMS, but here are some comments that have been said publicly, and my opinion on those speculative thoughts.

1. Said: VMS could not keep up with the competitive platforms built solely on a computerized infrastructure. Opinion: Probably not true. VMS had a very good system in the Quickview reports and were first to market with such a product. VMS had many integrated products that helped correlate efforts to results. Technology, when comparable, is rarely the reason a company fails.
2. Said: VMS couldn't pay their vendors and this led to a death spiral. Opinion: I'm not sure about all vendors, but since VMS purchased some of their broadcast content from Universal Information Services I know they stayed current with us.
3. Said: VMS management didn't know what they were doing. Opinion: I can't speak to the most recent management hires, but many of the people I knew and worked with at VMS were extremely bright and had a great intuition for the industry. In the end, a loss of mission or direction is probably the most likely culprit for this failure, but to say VMS had a history of poor management would dismiss the many years they were the market leader.
4. Said: Better services passed VMS by. Opinion: Consider the source of these statements. If you are a competitor who has much to gain from the failure of VMS, then you may be tempted to yell, "We scared VMS out of the water because we are awesome". Competition rarely forces a company to liquidate. Restructure, reconfigure, retool, these are the hallmarks of a competitive company that has been a market leader in any industry.

Looking back over the past week I see a couple lessons to be learned. First, the VMS employees caught in the bankruptcy are great people. I'm glad to see quality services like cision hiring some of these employees. Soon we hope to also be working with former VMS staff. Second, don't believe all that you read...especially in advertising. Whether a blog or an ad, some lofty claims are being made. Phrases like "biggest", "best", and "only" are hollow terms that don't tell you a thing about the level of service and support you can expect from vendor. Finally, if you are a former VMS client the best thing you can do is interview prospective monitors. If you are a local or regional organization, there is undoubtedly a monitoring service better located to serve your needs. Local and regional monitors know the news that is important to you. They know your city, state, issues, problems, etc.

Use the wonderful search of Google to locate news monitoring services that may be better positioned to provide what you need. Yes, I think Universal Information Services is the best company in the world. I would not be able to fake passion for what I do if I did not truly believe in the team I work with and the client missions we serve. I also own Utah News Clips, a news monitoring company located on the west coast so we can better serve the Western time zones. The team at Utah News Clips shares the same core values as Universal, we make your news our business.

Please comment where you think I've missed the boat on what has been said, or leave additional comments on what you think happened to VMS.

Comments (6)

Updated: 8/27/11

The morning of August 26th, Twitter erupted over rumors that the oldest tv and radio monitoring service was filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If these rumors are correct [they were], Video Monitoring Services closed their doors today at noon eastern [8/26/11].

What does this mean for their clients. Unfortunately, they will need to find a new vendor they can initially trust...then build a new relationship over time. Universal Information Services has been fielding calls and tweets from former VMS clients that need uninterrupted news tracking for themselves or their clients.

Our sister company, Utah News Clips, is also spreading out to assist VMS clients who know the show must go on.

It is a terribly sad day for us and our friends at VMS. I've worked personally with their CEOs, production, and sales team. Many of these people are my close friends. I hope the best for my friends at VMS and pledge my companies to continue the level of service they established for the news monitoring industry.

Please contact us if you need help in finding a new, best-fit solution for news monitoring. (800) 408-3178

Note

The twittersphere is ripe with allegations that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) competitors killed VMS. As an innovator in this industry I think that notion is dangerous. There was no mass exodus of clients from VMS, it sounds like they simply loss direction from a management perspective. I am not on the inside, by the title of this blog is #SameRules #NewTools. This philosophy applies here in that VMS set the benchmark for quality client relations. All in the industry, including Critical Mention, Cision, and Universal bench-marked ourselves against VMS. The customer experience is still the number one issue to a client. We all have real-time reports, preview video, and edit on demand. I think the real difference now is between those who still offer true customer support, and those who don't. I believe the clients of VMS chose VMS because they wanted a team to call, someone to make things happen, and help when they didn't have time or didn't understand the interface. These things are all good and still available through companies like mine. The SaaS model exists for those who want to serve themselves, or think they won't need help.

As you review new vendors, think what your needs truly are. Have they changed just because VMS has closed their doors? Probably not.

Comments (22)

…for Public Relations, News Monitoring, Design, or Services of Any Kind

You have heard it almost everywhere over the past few years. If you haven’t, you’re not getting out enough. For this post I decided to discuss the blue ocean strategy of being different from your competitors. It can also be explored as “being remarkable” as described in Seth Godin’s Purple Cow book. This post is “different” in that I’m writing only with subtitles (actually, about half in subtitles). What can I say, it’s something different. I like subtitles because they often tell what the author really wants to say, but couldn’t in the official title.

“Yes, Different Is Good”
Subtitled-
Separate Yourself from Your Competition
Clients Quit Services When the Service Grows Stale
Clients Find New Vendors When They Don’t Get Strong Support
Clients Like Innovation that Works
New Communication Tools Can Help Amplify Most Efforts (but not all)
The Media Amplifies Your PR Effort
Let Social Media Drive a Greater Audience In Traditional Media
Are You Exploring How to Differentiate Yourself from “The Same Old”?
Are Your Points of Difference What Your Client Truly Cares About?
Are You Monitoring the News You Need?
Are You Analyzing Media that Is Truly Important?
Are You Using A Service You Have Real Faith In?
Are You Tired of These Questions?

In the end, being different, or making a change for change sake, is a waste of time and resources without practical goals in mind (#samerules). Evaluate what you are doing for your clients, how you are doing it, and how they view the value you provide them.

For Universal Information Services, http://universal-info.com , this exercise has brought us to where we are today. We are different. Clients find us when they need something more in terms of service, support, or cost savings. We don’t compete on the same old parameters for news monitoring and media analysis defined many years ago. We do provide real customer service, real client support, honest solutions, and prices that are really tied to our cost to serve the client. Our press clipping, TV monitoring, or web monitoring services are truly remarkable. Most importantly, we provide innovation that our clients really need.

It’s ironic, but the #newtools concept of “being different” is almost a result of common sense others have lost (#samerules). Develop, design, or deliver what you do in a way that separates your from your competitors. My suggestion is you do it now before your competition does it first.

Visit Seth Godin's blog for more insight on this topic and let us know what you think. Leave a comment, we enjoy the dialogue.

If you watch Twitter or follow public relations groups on LinkedIn, you've seen a common question about the #newtools for monitoring news or social media. Over the past week I counted no less than 200 sources people had offered up as their favorite new tool for tracking media. Some are free, some are paid, but what all of these services have in common is they are trying to help users and organizations cut through the deafening media noise. People want solutions, the answers, an educated interpretation of what their media exposure means in terms of values that are important to them. 99% of the services out there are missing the mark.

The subtitle of this post is "The Art of Noise", not as a reference to the avant-garde alternative band of the 1980's, but as a reference to the growing volume of news and information available to everyone. What PR professionals, corporate communicators, and anyone tasked with tracking media need is simply an answer to the question of, "What stories should I be focusing on? Show me what is truly important and why."

Here are a few of the services I believe have sound methodologies for generating meaningful earned media placements: Cision, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, BlueVision, and Carma. Yes, these are competitors: Universal Information Services offers many of the same services, but these companies have also demonstrated a high rate of reliability and are worthy of mention.

In contrast, the shortcoming in almost every online news monitoring solution available is that it is a software-as-a-service (SaaS). Invariably this means you, the customer, must know exactly what you want to track, what metrics you want to see, and then you have to do the work of correctly entering that information into an online tool. All of this effort on your part must occur before you can see any analysis or report outlining your results.

For accurate media monitoring and pr measurement, and to cut through the noise to just the news you need, human reasoning is ultimately required. Computers can only decide a yes or no proposition (1 or 0). Yes, the human is still critical for accurate news monitoring and media measurement. So, in the end your use of SaaS solutions, or a system that includes customized human interaction, may be the difference between receiving an overwhelming amount of media noise and getting truly valuable information. How loud must it be before you can no longer do your job well? We look at the #newtools with the #samerules in mind…then do what is best for our clients. What do you do?

The conference season has been in full swing over the past 30 days, as if it ever really slows down, and we have three great reasons you should make conference attendance a regular part of your business and new media education.

First, if you at all have a passion for your job or what you are pursuing, then continuing education must be a part of that path you follow to success. Nearly every industry, and variation within industries, has some form of a meeting where you can learn new tricks, rub elbows with peers, and hear from experts in your field. My news monitoring and media analysis industry has no less than five opportunities per year. I can attend PRSA, IABC, NDS, and even Rotary conferences...and many others. All of these opportunities allow you to further yourself in your position. Whether CEO or intern, gaining new perspectives is an essential part of fully realizing your potential. Here are a few resources I use to find helpful conferences in my areas of interest.

http://mashable.com/category/events/

http://www.prsa.org/Conferences/

http://www.bigomaha.com/ (don’t let the name fool you, this may be the most important conference you ever attend)

Second, if your success depends on your own creativity, then attending industry meetings and conferences allows you to get outside of your own head. At Universal Information Services my primary role is to envision, create, and deploy new services for our clients. I have implemented all of Universal’s TV and Radio monitoring, media analysis, and web monitoring services…but only through the insight I’ve gained from my pears throughout the industry. Developing services in a vacuum can be a dangerous path to believing all that you dream up is of great value to others. Interacting with competitive and cooperative peers exposes you to ideas that help keep your own mind in check and accelerates your own development.

Third, the ability to connect the dots may be the greatest benefit to attending conferences. I refer to connecting the dots as the ability to hear new ideas at meetings and conferences, but hearing them in a way that connects with a seemingly unrelated concept you may have rattling around in your head. This is critical to innovation. I use The Action Method, developed by Scott Belsky’s mind at Behance, to help me manage my ideas and visions This should be mandatory training for anyone with a creative thought.

Leave your comments on what conferences you have found the most beneficial. I’m always looking for better ways to get outside my head and connect the dots. Many of these fun ideas are found in our new site.

Next post: Number 1 Reason to Skip A Conference