How to Fix These 6 Common Media Monitoring and Measuring Mistakes

Media monitoring and measuring is a huge part of many public relations or strategic communications jobs. The approach to monitoring and measurement has changed significantly over the past few years thanks to evolving technology and platforms, such as social media and online forums. The addition of these platforms offers PR professionals more opportunities to discover how the brands they work for are featured, discussed, and perceived.

Media monitoring analysis is a good exercise to understand the data gathered about your brand. PR and comms professionals who make use of this information can deliver real results through targeted actions, making them valuable assets to any business.

Common Media Monitoring and Measuring Mistakes – And How to Fix Them

If you feel overwhelmed by media monitoring or frustrated with your results, you’re not alone. It’s far too easy to overlook some key elements that make media monitoring and measuring effective.

According to the 2025 Comms Report, 18% of respondents identified media monitoring as one of the most important activities they carry out; meanwhile, 46% of participants cited analytics and reporting. Media monitoring analysis brings both of these activities together, and given their critical importance, having the right tools and strategies in place is essential to carry analysis out effectively. 

While there’s no shortage of media monitoring platforms available to help communications and PR teams gather the data they need, even the best tools take a little practice to make sure you’re getting the most out of them.

We’ve gathered some common media monitoring mistakes and how to fix them to make sure you’re getting the most out of your efforts.

Mistake #1: Not Having Goals

Before you start tracking anything, you should think about what you are hoping to achieve through media monitoring. Do you want to prove your impact? Identify potential buyers? Understand brand reputation? Having goals for your PR strategy and campaigns will help you focus on which metrics to track and what to do with them.

The solution

While you can conduct media monitoring to track what audiences are saying about your brand, the data is only useful if you use it to enhance your strategy and campaigns. To do that, you’ll need clear goals to work toward.

Your PR goals should relate to overarching business objectives, so think about how PR helps the brand reach those goals. The activities you carry out, such as media monitoring, will have an effect in reaching those targets.

Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely by using SMART framework in your PR strategy.

One example of a goal you might set is Increasing the brand’s audience over a specific period of time. Activities could include increasing the number of journalists you pitch to, broadening the content you produce to appeal to a wider audience, or finding new formats to share your message to engage more people. Successfully reaching this goal could bring more awareness and traffic to the brand and help it grow.

Mistake #2: Tracking The Wrong Metrics

On the surface, identifying the right metrics to track seems like it should be relatively simple; however, it can quickly get overwhelming considering the sheer volume of possible metrics to track.

Following on from the previous mistake, you can use your improved goals to identify what you should be tracking by assigning metrics to each goal you’ve made. By measuring the right data, you can be sure your efforts will have an impact.

The solution

Don’t try and track everything at first. Depending on your goals, some PR metrics are going to be more important than others and you should focus on data that helps you measure the effectiveness of your PR activities. Examples include:

• Sentiment evaluates the tone and context of mentions and interactions to better understand perceptions of your brand. Use sentiment to understand where and how you can adjust your PR efforts to reshape the narrative and curry positive conversations and mentions in the future
• Share of voice is the coverage your brand receives against your competitors, which can help you identify what gaps you can fill to be more prominent
• Impressions refers to the potential size of the audiences engaging with the outlets mentioning your brands. Impressions dictate how far your content and messages are seen, so higher impressions present more real opportunities to engage people
• Sessions is the amount of website traffic your website receives from search engines, social media, and other websites. More visitors to your website mean more people are finding you, giving you the chance to make conversions (such as sales)
• Domain authority is a rank for how authoritative your website is. Websites and media outlets with a higher domain authority is a sign of trust among search engines. Gaining coverage on high authority websites increase the chance you’ll rank highly on search engine results, increasing the traffic your website receives

The final two metrics on the above list may not typically be found in media monitoring platforms, but they do contribute to your understanding of how people engage with your content and messages. You’ll need to use other tools, such as Google Analytics (GA4) or Ahrefs to accurately track these metrics.

Once you identify the right metrics to track, you can focus on gathering data that will provide value to your brand.

Mistake #3: Going Too Broad (Or Too Narrow) In Your Search

You don’t want to miss anything, so you set out to track everything…only to realize that between duplicate hits and irrelevant results, there’s a lot of to sift through – too much, in fact. On the other hand, if you set your search parameters too narrow, you might miss key coverage and mentions that are relevant to your brand.

So, how do you strike the right balance to make sure you get the information you need without being overloaded by it?

The solution

Finding a happy medium might take a bit of trial and error, but you have to know what keywords and phrases you can use in your monitoring searches. Online media monitoring tools allow you to make searches around:

• Brand names
• Campaign slogans
• Associated people, such as brand spokespeople, executives, or influencer partners
• Hashtags
• Products
• Services
• Variations, such as misspellings, on the above

Start by building a keyword list. Include all variations of your brand name (including common misspellings and abbreviations, if relevant) and any related terms. And if available to you, take advantage of search filters – such as media outlet type, geography, or date ranges – to get more specific.

Leverage Boolean search practices for more precise searches. By combining terms with AND, OR, and NOT operators, you can get more specific in your searches and weed out unrelated topics. If you aren’t familiar with Boolean search or need a refresher, Mentionlytics has a great explainer article.

It’s also worth noting that many of today’s media monitoring platforms are making search a lot easier and more intuitive for PR teams (thanks, AI!). CisionOne, for example, automatically suggests search terms and offers guidance to help you get the most relevant results quickly.

Mistake #4: Not Conducting Competitor Research

Just as important as monitoring your brand is monitoring your brand’s biggest competitors. Without knowing what the competition is up to, you might miss out on opportunities to learn from their mistakes (or their wins) and set your brand apart from them in a big way.

Media monitoring enables you to find out who’s covering your competitors (so you can add them to your outreach list), but it also helps you understand how you measure up against them, what you can do to differentiate yourself from them, and even how to gain an edge over them.

The solution

Don’t discount your media monitoring platform as a competitive intelligence tool. The right media monitoring platforms will let you see who’s mentioning not just your brand, but your competitors – and your brand in relation to your competitors – as well.

You do this in the same way as monitoring your own brand – simply swap out your brand as the keyword term for the name of your competitor. You can go deeper by expanding the searches to their products, services, and campaigns, too.

Monitoring your competitors with your chosen tool allows you to see how they’re positioning themselves and what messages are (or aren’t) working for them. Then you can think about what messaging and tactics you can apply to differentiate yourself, closing any gaps or extending your advantage.

Mistake #5: Not Acting on the Data

Tracking the right metrics is critical, but it doesn’t serve you any good if you don’t actually do anything with that data.

When looking at the publications and social media platforms that mention you (or your competitors), are you then engaging with the reporters or influencers behind those mentions? Are you linking back to those articles (that mention you positively) to get more mileage out of that earned media? What is the perception around your brand versus that of your competitors, and how can you create messaging that differentiates you from them?

The solution

Don’t be afraid to alter your strategy and upcoming campaigns to make sure they have the greatest impact possible. 

Take the data you’ve gathered and put your analytical skills to work, so you can find the meaning behind the metrics. Compare the data you have to the previous month, quarter, and year to see how your efforts are performing. This comparison helps you refine your efforts to focus on what works best.

Once you understand the conversations you find from media monitoring analysis, you can adjust your messaging and strategy to help shape the narrative around your brand in your favor.

Mistake #6: Keeping the Findings to Yourself

You’ve done the work. You have the data to show what’s going on, what you’ve done, and what to do next. Now it’s time to let others (i.e. your C-suite) know.

It’s easy to think that a bit more data will help make the case you want to make stronger, but that puts you into a waiting game where no one else can help you. Perhaps you’re concerned you’re not drawing the right conclusions or are concerned about resources, but there are steps you can take to address both concerns.

The solution

If the data you’ve gathered from media monitoring and measuring shows progress to your goals, then celebrate it. Use these results to recognize the hard work you and your team have put in, as well as an opportunity to show the C-suite your efforts are paying off – and make a case for extra support or resources.

On the other hand, if the data isn’t showing you’re making progress toward your goals, it’s time to reflect on what changes you can make to your strategy. It’s always a good idea to reflect on how to do better, but you don’t have to think about this alone. Discuss the results with your team and stakeholders to generate ideas and new ways of doing things – especially if you want confirmation you're interpreting the data correctly.

Even if your C-suite wants a report when the data isn’t as positive as you’d like, acknowledge the challenges you're facing and show them the plans you have to bring the results you all want.

Step Up Your Media Monitoring Analysis

Media monitoring is a complex task at the best of times, and all PR pros will face challenges like these as they carry it out. Staying vigilant and making use of technology helps us stay focused on what matters: getting results.

Today's media monitoring platforms enable you to carry out the majority of your monitoring in one place, which saves you time you can use on other tasks. Use the data you gather to create reports that let you focus on what really matters to your brand and drive positive changes from your strategy.

Effective media monitoring and measuring is definitely a skill that needs continual developing, but with the right tools, it’s easier to hone those skills and not as easy to make these common mistakes. Find out how CisionOne can help streamline media monitoring for your brand -  speak to one of our experts today.

Editor's note: This article has been updated from an earlier version to reflect new data and findings.