Today’s companies operate in a world of Internet-driven mass media with the power to shape our perceptions and blindside company reputations. At Moreover, our job is to help you turn this media maelstrom into market intelligence for competitive advantage.
In this series of posts, we’ll be going through the multiple aspects of a successful media intelligence strategy, and offer concrete advice and insight for turning global news and social media into a powerful strategic asset.
Part 2 – Drive Informed Decision-Making with Company-Wide News Distribution
A 2011 study from the Sloan School of Management, MIT, entitled ‘Strength in Numbers: How Does Data-Driven Decision Making Affect Firm Performance‘, showed that companies that had adopted “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity gains of 5-6% in comparison to companies that remained focused on experience and intuition. Enough of a difference, according to the authors, to “separate winners from losers in most industries”.
It is clear, then, that timely access to key news sources is crucial. Of course, information professionals and corporate librarians have long provided this important function for businesses. But media consumption habits have changed dramatically over the last 15 years. Decision makers up and down the organization now expect the experience of the Web: Fast, hyperlinked, and on-demand.
Companies that extended the original librarian-focused news services to the rest of the organization often found themselves with ballooning costs – businesses were suddenly paying a premium for all-embracing publisher licenses when a timely link to a news website would have sufficed. At the other extreme, employees have been left to fend for themselves, with Google News the de facto service provider. But ultimately, as research by Outsell showed, consumer-focused search engines fail to serve business needs, with too much time wasted on sifting through irrelevant results.
Consequently, new media intelligence services have emerged, combining the immediacy of a Google type service with the imperatives of a business audience. Company-wide news distribution that is personalized to department and even down to individual employee level is increasingly the norm, with businesses now actively managing the consumption of news within the organization.
Here are three key features to look for in a successful media intelligence solution focused on company-wide news sharing:
Flexible news distribution options. The ability to serve business news through a variety of channels will improve the user experience and its effectiveness. Ideally, information is provided to users directly within the work-flow at point of use. Make sure that your media intelligence service supports automated email alerts, hand-edited newsletters, RSS feeds, and potentially an API to directly integrate business news on the intranet.
Powerful business-focused search filters. The ability to curate highly focused search results that can be individually tailored to specific audiences is absolutely paramount. The aim is for every single article to be relevant. To achieve this, you need powerful filtering options, including the ability to segment the media (e.g. regional vs national vs trade), select or block specific sources, emphasize particular keywords, and remove duplicate articles such as press releases.
Worldwide media coverage with custom source additions. A successful solution must satisfy the diverse information needs within a company, stretching across industries, professions, countries and languages, from mainstream topics to highly individualized interests. In order to cater to special interests and new projects, you must be able to add new sources on request at relatively short notice, including private publisher licenses.
Turning mass media it into actionable media intelligence is a fascinating opportunity for companies chasing productivity gains and competitive advantage. At Moreover Technologies we have made it our mission to help companies succeed at this challenge, with the award-winning Newsdesk servicedesigned specifically for this purpose.
If you’d like to learn more about Newsdesk and how Moreover helps corporate communications and information professionals achieve results, then contact us or visit our website for details.
Next post:
Part 3 – The Power of Consolidating Media Access Through a Single Enterprise News Hub
Previous post:
Part 1 – Encourage Employee Engagement and Corporate Identity by Sharing External Media