Nowadays, everybody is continuously online. So your brand can’t afford to improvise. A strategic communication plan is your first line of defense and a key part of your PR strategy.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to write a communication plan that keeps your messaging clear, consistent, and crisis-ready. So you’re always in control of the narrative.

TL;DR – what you’ll learn

• What a communication plan is and why it matters in PR
• How to make your communication plan work for AI search and GEO
• How to create a step-by-step communication plan
• Three communication plan templates (internal, campaign, product launch)
• Common mistakes to avoid
• How Prowly’s PR tools streamline the process

What is a communication plan?

A communication plan is is a strategic document that outlines how a brand communicates key messages to internal and external audiences. In other words–it'sa simple roadmap for how a brand shares messages with the public, media, employees, and other crucial groups.

It shapes what you say, who will say it, when, and through which channels. While a marketing communication plan is focused on selling products or services, a communications plan is about managing your brand’s image and building trust.

It’s especially relevant in PR, announcements, and dealing with crises.

Why is a communication plan important in PR?

Today, PR teams juggle tight deadlines, constant media buzz, and stakeholder pressure to show results. With multiple channels and rapid timelines, messages can get mixed or lost.

That’s why a solid communication plan is essential. It aligns messaging, ensures clarity, tracks effectiveness, and makes PR more measurable.

💡PR Tip: Juggling media outreach, internal updates, and brand messaging? A smart comms plan, paired with tools like Prowly, streamlines your work and boosts impact.

Future-proof your communication plan with Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

A modern communication plan isn’t just about messaging—it’s about discoverability.

As AI tools like ChatGPT and search engines generate answers using trusted online sources, your brand’s visibility depends on being mentioned in the right places. That’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.

💡 Prowly helps you optimize your communication strategy for GEO by making it easier to secure high-quality, searchable brand mentions.

To make your communication plan AI search–ready, here’s what to focus on:

• Use consistent, searchable language: Phrase your key messages using terms your audience would likely ask in a search query. For example, instead of saying “company updates,” say “product launch news” or “new feature announcement.”
• Earn mentions on authoritative sources: AI tools prioritize content from reputable outlets. Use Prowly’s journalist matching and pitching features to target high-authority publications more likely to be indexed by generative engines.
• Highlight your brand’s name and offerings clearly: Avoid jargon or vague metaphors in your press releases. AI summarizers pull concrete, clear details—like product names, brand benefits, and stats.
• Include structured data in your content: While mostly a task for web and SEO teams, making sure press releases and newsroom content are well-formatted, scannable, and include headlines, bullet points, and FAQs can increase their visibility in AI-generated summaries.

With features like AI-powered journalist matching, writing assistant, and multi-channel media monitoring across online, print, broadcast, and social media, that tracks sentiment and reach, Prowly supports your efforts to get mentioned in authoritative sources—boosting the chances your brand appears in AI-generated responses and search results.

What to include in a communication plan

A strong communication plan keeps your team aligned, your message clear, and your goals in focus. Here are the six essential elements every plan should cover:

• Goals
  What are you trying to achieve? (e.g., raise awareness, manage reputation, drive engagement)
• Target audiences
  Who needs to hear your message? (e.g., media, customers, employees, investors)
• Key messages
  What core points do you want to communicate to each audience?
• Channels
  How will you share your message? (e.g., press releases, social media, email, internal platforms)
• Timing
  When will messages go out? (e.g., timelines, sequencing, and key dates)
• Measurement & evaluation
  How will you track success? (e.g., media coverage, open rates, sentiment, engagement)

Now, let's cover several templates for a communication plan.

Communication plan templates you can use

Below you can find ready-to-use examples of a communications plan.

Template 1: internal communication plan

Goal: Improving employee understanding of new company values

Target audience: Employees, Department heads, Team leads

Key messages:

• Why the change matters
• What’s expected of employees
• How support will be provided (available support)

Channels:

• All-hands meetings
• Email newsletters
• Slack or intranet posts

Timing example:

Measurement & evaluation:

• Pulse survey results
• Engagement in Slack threads
• Attendance at all-hands meeting

Template 2: external campaign plan

Goal: Building awareness for a sustainability initiative

Target audience: Journalists, Customers, Industry influencers

Key messages:

• Our brand’s commitment to sustainability
• Impact goals and progress
• How audiences can get involved

Channels:

• Press release
• Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram)
• Email newsletters

Timing example:

Measurement & evaluation:

• Media coverage
• Social media mentions
• Newsletter open/click rates

Template 3: product launch

This template shows how to structure a product launch communication plan using Prowly's tools.

Goal: Drive media attention and customer sign-ups for new product

Target audience: Tech journalists, Existing users, Industry analysts

Key messages:

• What the product is and why it matters
• Unique features
• Launch offer (if applicable)

Channels:

• Press release (using Prowly's tool)
• Targeted e-mail pitch (you can do it with the help of the Prowly e-mail feature)
• Blog post and landing page
• Social media teaser campaign

Timing example:

Measurement & evaluation:

• Coverage from key outlets
• Media pitch response rate (track via Prowly)
• Sign-up conversions on the landing page

Each of these templates can be adapted to your specific goals, channels, and audiences. Use them as a base to build a communication plan that’s measurable, actionable, and aligned with your brand.

How to write a corporate communication plan (step-by-step)

An effective communication plan should be done thoroughly and involve some crucial points that make it usable and helpful. Such a plan should also be in line with the communication strategies of your brand.

Remember that the company communication plan is a core part of its messaging and communication.

Below we define the communication plan construction to help you create your own.

Step 1: Define your goal

👉 What are you aiming to achieve? Be specific.

In business, each process starts by defining the aim. By clearly stating what your organizational communication plan is trying to achieve, you are ready to draw a roadmap. This will guide everything from messaging to measurement. Keep it specific and outcome-focused.

Example: Secure 10 media placements in Tier 1 outlets in 30 days.

Step 2: Get to know your audience

👉 Tailor the plan to audience needs. Use segmentation.

To create effective communication strategies, you need to know who your audience is. Identify the key groups you're communicating with and what they care about. Tailoring your messaging and channels to each audience is crucial for impact and should be a solid point of your communication strategy.

Example: Tech journalists, early users, and the sales team.

💡 Tool Tip: Build segmented media lists using the Media Database. Filter journalists by beat, region, or past coverage to target only the right contacts.

Step 3: Craft your key messages

👉 Develop 2–3 concise messages per audience.

Now it's time for specifics. Make sure your messages are clear, relevant, and reflect your brand voice.

Example: Our new tool helps freelancers save 5+ hours a week, powered by AI, built for real work.

💡 Tool Tip: Use the AI Assistant to generate and refine key messages. You can use the AI Assistant in the release editor to create audience-specific messaging in seconds.

Step 4: Choose your channels

👉 Pick channels based on audience behavior and reach.

Your communication strategies and your plans are not just about the messaging. They are also about the way of sending it out. Decide where and how your messages will be delivered. Think about reach, relevance, and what’s proven to work for your audience.

Example: Press release for media, targeted email for users, Slack announcement for internal teams.

💡 Tool Tip: Publish on your Newsroom and pitch directly from the PR CRM.

Step 5: Set timing and responsibilities

👉 Assign owners, align timelines across teams.

Outline when each message will go out and who’s responsible for making it happen. But do not be overenthusiastic with this schedule. Keep it realistic and coordinated across channels.

Example: Day 1 – Press release, Day 2 – email, Day 3 – internal update

Step 6: Measure success

👉 Choose 3–5 KPIs to track the plan’s effectiveness.

Look at both reach (e.g., open rates) and impact (e.g,. engagement, signups, sentiment).

Example: 15 media mentions, 500 email opens, 50 demo requests within two weeks.

💡 Tool Tip:
➖ Use built-in analytics to track pitch responses, coverage, and newsroom traffic.
➖ Generate branded reports with a few clicks to share campaign results with stakeholders in minutes.
➖ Prowly’s AI Assistant helps you turn your goals into story ideas and ready-to-pitch press releases. You can draft the whole communication plan in one tool.

Avoid these common communication plan mistakes

Vague objectives

⛔️ If your goal is something like “get more visibility,” it’s too broad to guide real action or measure success.

How to fix it: Make your objectives specific and outcome-based. For example: “Secure 10 media placements in top-tier outlets within one month.”

No timeline

⛔️ Without clear deadlines or task owners, even great ideas stall.

How to fix it: Assign roles and dates to every deliverable. Use a shared calendar or campaign dashboard to keep things moving.

No audience customization

⛔️ One-size-fits-all messaging rarely works. Different audiences care about different things.

How to fix it: Shape your key messages and channels for each group, such as journalists, customers, execs, etc. Use the Prowly Media Database to segment contacts and the AI Assistant to tweak messaging by audience.

Ignoring follow-ups and feedback

⛔️ Launching isn’t the end, follow-up and feedback are essential for long-term impact.

How to fix it: Build in time for pitch follow-ups, internal check-ins, and performance reviews. With Prowly, you can track open rates and responses with the Media CRM and use Campaign Reports to gather insights.

💡 Tool Tip: Prowly lets you track open rates, auto-schedule follow-ups, and create stakeholder-ready reports.

Turning a plan into PR results: ShePR’s strategic communication plan case study

ShePR is a boutique, women-led PR agency focused on amplifying women-led companies and voices.

How did ShePR use Prowly to succeed?

• Planning & Research - they started by using the Media Database to find the right journalists fast.
• Press Release Distribution -the agency publishes and distributes releases from one place via Prowly's Newsroom + CRM.
• Reporting - they started to track success with real-time analytics, replacing tools like CoverageBook.
• Pitching - they switched from Gmail to Prowly’s pitching tool, improving deliverability and personalization.

Dive into their communication plan sample and strategy–learn all key details in the case study.

How Prowly supports smarter comms planning

From the first idea to the final report, Prowly helps in quicker and clearer creation of communication strategies and plans .

What you can get with Prowly

From strategy to reporting, Prowly helps teams:

• Generate ideas with the AI Assistant (brainstorm angles, improve clarity, or rewrite content on the fly, right inside your workflow)
• Write press releases with structured suggestions (follow a structured writing flow with built-in suggestions that guide your tone, format, and focus)
• Pitch journalists with smart subject lines and AI refinement (generate AI-powered subject lines, find journalist matches, and boost deliverability with best-practice prompts)
• Monitor media and sentiment (track brand mentions, measure sentiment, and refine your messaging based on real-time feedback)
• Report results with visual analytics and auto-generated coverage summaries (create visual, client-ready reports and complete with tags, sentiment analysis, and measurable outcomes)

FAQ - communication plan

💬 What should a communication plan include?
Goals, target audiences, messages, channels, timing, and KPIs.

💬 How do I write a communication plan quickly?
Use a tool like Prowly. Start with a goal, define audiences, write 2–3 key messages, select channels, and schedule messaging.

💬 What’s the difference between a communication plan and a marketing plan?
A communication plan focuses on internal and external message clarity. A marketing plan is about promoting products.

💬 What tools help with communication plans?
Prowly stands out with built-in planning, pitching, and analytics. Here you can get to know more AI tools for Public Relations.

💬 Can AI help me create a communication plan?
Yes—tools like Prowly’s AI Assistant generate press releases, segment contacts, and auto-track results.

Final summary: what is a communication plan?

What is a communications plan? Hope you now know the answer. But if not:

A communication plan is a key part of any PR and communication strategy.

It indicates how you’ll share the right message with the right audience at the right time, whether for a product launch, internal update, or crisis response. Unlike a marketing plan, it focuses on messaging clarity, stakeholder alignment, and efficient information flow.

A well-crafted plan includes goals, audiences, messages, channels, timing, and metrics.

Whether for a product launch or brand reputation management, having a comms plan means staying in control—even when things go off script.

The post How to Write a Communication Plan (with Templates & Tips for AI Visibility) appeared first on Prowly.

PR ROI (Public Relations Return on Investment) shows how your public relations efforts are helping your business grow. You can measure it by looking at things like media mentions, website visitors, search engine rankings, and how much your brand stands out compared to others.

Tools like Prowly make it easy to track these results, link them to your goals, and share clear reports on how well your PR efforts are paying off.

This guide breaks down what PR ROI is, why it’s tricky to measure, and the specific metrics that help you show impact—not guess at it.

What is PR ROI?

PR ROI, or return on investment in public relations, is about more than just money. It shows how your PR work helps build your brand’s reputation, increase awareness, and earn the trust of your audience.

While sales and revenue are important, PR ROI also includes these bigger-picture benefits that help your business grow over time.

Why is it so hard to measure PR ROI?

Measuring PR ROI may seem like a difficult task, but the path from your PR efforts to business results is often long and complex.

PR influences customers via multiple touchpoints over time. So there is no one specific action to follow and measure.

Many valuable outcomes may not be visible in a simple graph, but they make your brand shine none-the-less. Improved brand reputation, increased trust, and greater visibility are more intangible an don’t show clearly in traditional financial metrics. PR teams often also struggle with limited or inaccurate tools that can’t fully capture or connect these diverse impacts to concrete business goals.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, by setting clear objectives, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics, and with the right tools, it’s possible to overcome these challenges.

💡 With Prowly, you can monitor all indicators that reflect how your brand is doing. Mentions, media monitoring (offline and online), and even create, distribute and track press releases. All of the data is collected and displayed in a comprehensive dashboard.

But to really understand the full impact of your PR efforts, it’s important to track the right things. PR influences many areas, from media mentions to online buzz, so focusing on a mix of raw numbers and their quality helps you see the full picture.

Here are the key things to measure to get a clear view of your PR ROI:

What to measure to track PR ROI metrics

PR influences many areas. So keep your fingers on the pulse to allocate your budget efficiently. You need to know what works and where.

#1 Website traffic and conversion

Check the number of people who visit your website through your PR stories. This shows whether your coverage is bringing in customers.

It also reflects how your brand resonates with your target.

#2 Media mentions and coverage

Follow the media who mentioned your brand. Verify their credibility and their volume of generated mentions. Plan outreach and responses, both in their feeds and in their emails, especially for those who pull a lot of weight in your industry.

#3 Share of Voice (SoV)

Use Share of Voice to see how much your brand is talked about compared to your competitors. Compare the coverage buzz your brand creates over time.

The bigger the share, the more control you have over your market.

#4 Social media reactions

Your social media presence is one thing, but engagement is another. Track likes, shares, comments, and other interactions with your PR content.

This indicates how well you know your audience and you can refine your strategies of reaching them.

#5 Sentiment and message impact

Pay attention to whether mentions are positive, negative or neutral and track if your key messages are coming through clearly.

Positive coverage that highlights your main points builds trust.

P.S. Want to dive deeper into sentiment analysis and how to use it to strengthen your PR? Check out these articles:

• How to Measure Brand Sentiment in PR - The 2025 Guide
• How to Use Sentiment Analysis in PR? The 2025 Guide
• 20+ Top Sentiment Analysis Tools for PR Pros - a 2025 List

#6 Skip AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent)

AVE tries to put a dollar value on PR by comparing it to ad costs, but it doesn’t show real impact and is considered outdated. There are a lot of other, more accurate indicators (like the above) that reflect your PR efforts more accurately.

Tools like Prowly make it simple to keep track of all these metrics in one place, helping you see how your PR efforts are paying off and making it easier to share your success. All the data is collected in one dashboard where you can analyse it, notice trends, tailor your strategy accordingly, and generate full PR reports.

#7 SEO signals (links and brand searches)

Look at the backlinks your PR generates and whether more people are actively searching for your brand online. Also, track what topics your brand is being associated with—there may be smart opportunities to boost visibility while staying aligned with your messaging and strategy.

Backlinks and branded search volume still play a role in visibility—but in the AI search era, PR-driven signals like brand mentions, trust, and media credibility are becoming even more influential.

SEO matters, but PR is now doing more of the heavy lifting when it comes to how your brand is surfaced, summarized, and recommended in AI-generated results.

Why brand mentions and trust are the new ROI drivers in 2025

As AI-powered search becomes more common, brand mentions and trust are starting to outweigh backlinks in shaping visibility.

Generative engines like ChatGPT and Google Search Generative Experience pull answers from sources they deem credible—not just those with the best SEO.

This means PR-led signals like earned media, sentiment, and consistent messaging now play a bigger role in how your brand is found and trusted.

Tools like Prowly help track those signals—so you can measure PR ROI not just by traffic, but by influence.

Prowly helps you track and grow the exact signals that influence your brand’s presence in generative search:

• Media mentions across top-tier and niche outlets
• Tone and sentiment of your coverage
• Share of Voice against competitors
• Clarity and consistency of your key messages

💡 With Prowly, you're not just tracking traditional PR metrics—you’re building the kind of visibility that AI trusts, ranks, and repeats.

This is why modern PR ROI must account for GEO. It’s no longer just about rankings—it’s about being recognized, cited, and trusted across the sources AI engines pull from.

5 PR metrics that matter most

#1 Media mentions and reach

What is it?
This tracks how many times your brand appears in the news, on blogs, or in other media. It also estimates how many people could have seen those mentions.

Why it matters:
More mentions and a wider reach means your brand is getting noticed, which builds awareness and credibility.

How to track it:
Platforms like Prowly can help you count mentions and estimate audience size for each placement. You can easily set up notifications about new mentions and follow them in real time.

#2 Website traffic and conversions

What is it?
The number of visitors to your website that came from your PR materials in media coverage.

Why it matters:
If people are clicking on your site, it shows your PR is sparking real interest and driving potential customers to learn more.

How to track it:
Use Google Analytics to monitor referral traffic and set up UTMs to see traffic sources.

#3 Share of Voice

What is it?
Share of voice compares how much your brand is talked about in the media compared to your competitors.

Why it matters:
A big share means you are a big player in your niche and allows you to share details over your growth over time.

How to track it:
Media monitoring tools like Prowly can help you see how your coverage stacks up against the competition.

#4 Social media engagement

What is it?
Engagement means likes, shares, comments, and all interactions on social media posts that result from your PR coverage.

Why it matters:
High engagement means your PR stories touch your audience's interests. In other words, they work.

How to track it:
Social media dashboards like Sprout Social make it easy to follow engagement numbers. You can also monitor it manually.

#5 Sentiment and messaging clarity

What is it?
Sentiment analysis checks if your main messages are being communicated and received, and whether your media coverage is positive, neutral or negative.

Why it matters:
Positive coverage and clear messaging help build trust and reinforce your brand’s reputation. If negative mentions arise in numbers, it should be your red flag to react and take some preventive steps to avoid a brewing crisis.

How to track it:
Tools like Prowly analyze sentiment and show if your key messages are being picked up. You can be notified about negative sentiment spikes and monitor active cases to react quickly.

How to calculate PR ROI (a simple formula)

To calculate ROI, use this formula:

PR ROI = (Value of PR Outcomes – PR Costs) / PR Costs

Example:

You spend $2,000 on a PR campaign that brings you $12,000 in measurable value (leads, sales, coverage).

ROI = ($12,000 – $2,000) / $2,000 * 100 = 500%

This means every $1 you invested brought you $5 more.

How to connect PR to business goals? Framework to follow

Linking your PR efforts to business goals is not a piece of cake, but with this framework, it can go more smoothly.

👉 First, define which of the above goals is closer to your needs: raising awareness, encouraging people to learn more, or driving sales.

👉 Then, choose the specific metrics that align with each goal.

This way, you can clearly demonstrate how your PR activities contribute to your company’s success and thus make it easier to track progress and optimize your strategy accordingly. Keep monitoring and tailor it to the shifting market as you go.

What tools help track and report PR ROI?

Combine monitoring, analytics, SEO, and lead-related activities. This way you can cover all the bases and create a multichannel strategy. Thus, your efforts will have even greater impact and your ROI will improve. Prowly connects all these in one intuitive, ready-to-share dashboard.

How to report PR ROI to stakeholders

Measuring PR ROI matters most to stakeholders.

When sharing PR results with stakeholders, keep things simple and focus on impact, not just activities. Instead of listing how many press releases you sent or mentions you got, show how these efforts helped the business, like in boosting brand awareness, increasing website visits, or generating leads.

Use easy-to-understand visuals like charts and graphs to keep them interested. It’s also helpful to show progress over time, so present how it was and how it has changed. Speak in plain language that connects PR results to business goals, drop complicated terms and industry jargon.

To make reporting even easier, tools like Prowly offer features that help you create clear, visual reports that tell the story of your PR success in a way everyone can understand.

FAQ: Your top PR ROI questions and answers

What does PR ROI really mean?

PR ROI is the measurable return you get from public relations, including visibility, traffic, and brand equity.

What are key PR metrics?

Media coverage, web traffic, backlinks, sentiment, and share of voice.

Is PR ROI tied to revenue?

Yes, especially when using analytics and CRM tracking tools to link earned media to lead gen and conversions.

What’s better than AVE?

Actual impact metrics like traffic, backlinks, and quality media placements which can be tracked through platforms like Prowly.

PR ROI - summing up

Smarter PR means making your efforts measurable and data-driven. What once felt intangible, like brand reputation or trust, can now be tracked and quantified with the right numbers in hand.

Today, PR is no longer just about stories and your image; it’s a discipline grounded in clear metrics and real business impact. With modern tools and strategies, you can easily show the impact of your work value.

Does your PR really matter?
With Prowly, it’s easy to keep tabs on media coverage, build reports, and show the real impact of your work. Whether you're getting your name out there or bringing in leads, your PR should speak for itself and shine.

The post How to Measure the ROI of PR (With Metrics That Actually Matter) appeared first on Prowly.

This guide skips the basics. Instead, we dive straight into advanced crisis media monitoring strategies backed by real-world examples from brands like KFC, California Pizza Kitchen, and even the Tiger Woods incident.

TL;DR – What you’ll learn in this guide

• How to use real-time alerts to spot crises before they escalate
• Why sentiment analysis drives smarter PR decisions
• How to build high-precision Boolean queries that catch everything
• What to track across digital, social, broadcast, and print media
• How to design crisis dashboards that drive action
• 3 case studies that showcase real-world applications
• 4 recurring themes in successful PR crisis responses

6 advanced best practices for crisis media monitoring

1. Set up proactive alerts and threshold triggers

Monitor all kinds of keywords ahead of time. Your own brand, hashtags, competitors, CEO, stakeholders, or anyone (or anything) that can potentially be at the scrutiny of the media. Additionally, set up alerts for things like an unusual spike in mentions, so you know when a crisis is starting to hit.

🛠️ With Prowly, you can set real-time alerts for spikes in mentions, specific stakeholders, or regional media—giving you a head start on response.

2. Build smarter queries—without the Boolean complexity

Effective monitoring starts with flexible, inclusive queries. Instead of wrestling with traditional Boolean syntax, group keywords into logical themes—like product names, spokespersons, or crisis topics.

Don’t forget to include common misspellings, abbreviations, hashtags, or language variations your audience might use.

💡 Prowly’s intuitive query builder lets you cluster keywords using “ANY,” “ALL,” and “NONE” logic—making it easy to cast a wide net or zero in on specific mentions, all without needing technical expertise.

3. Track sentiment and narrative changes dynamically

Truth is, sentiment simply drives decisions. Are people excited for your new campaign? Confused? Angry with a statement you've put out? Is your brand the laughter of the internet now? An advanced media monitoring PR tactic will have these covered with intuitive dashboards.

💡 Prowly’s dashboards visualize sentiment shifts across all media types—TV, social, online, and print—so you can adjust messaging in real-time.

4. Monitor across the web, social media, TV, and print

While social media usually gets hit first, it's not until it spreads to national broadcasts and more popular magazines that more people hear about it. You know, a Reddit thread will slightly question your integrity, but a segment on the evening news might turn it into a fact for the public.

💡 Prowly covers online, social, broadcast, and print channels—so you can spot narratives as they evolve and take action before they hit mainstream media.

5. Build dashboards for crisis response teams

It doesn't matter if they're pretty. It matters if they're actionable at a quick glance. Stakeholders and managers need to view sentiment and volume trends quickly, while social media and PR coworkers need live mentions.

💡 With customizable widgets and real-time data, Prowly dashboards let you build stakeholder-friendly views that highlight key metrics instantly—no spreadsheets required.

Tip: include benchmark metrics from calm periods so your team can immediately spot if something is out of the ordinary.

6. Respond to emerging misinformation quickly

Ready, set, go! When that first comment hits, you literally have about 15 minutes to re-think your entire strategy in that moment. While aiming for a perfect response is crucial, being on time is even more important. What's even better? Having a proactive media monitoring crisis strategy in place.

💡 Prowly’s real-time alerts and keyword spike detection help you catch misinformation the moment it starts trending—so you’re always one step ahead.

Case Study 1: Rolling Hills Estates & Tiger Woods crash

In February 2021, Tiger Woods was injured in a high-speed rollover crash around the Rolling Hills Estates in California, USA. He was twice over the speed limit, collided with a neighborhood sign, crossed into oncoming traffic, and rolled into a tree.

The crash brought intense attention, even though he was reportedly not intoxicated. However, a toxicology test was never conducted because police said there was no probable cause since Woods was lucid and cooperative.

This is an exact scenario where carefully curated Boolean queries and sentiment analysis are the most important, for both Woods as a celebrity, and the Rolling Hills Estates as a community. Things like baseline sentiment dashboards help comms teams view narrative shifts, from shock to speculation.

Then, of course, preventing rumours and misinformation since they're easy to appear out of no where especially when the case involves a high-profile celebrity.

📡 Prowly’s broadcast and local print monitoring capabilities would help comms teams detect narrative shifts early—even before they trend nationally.

Case Study 2: KFC Chicken Shortage in UK

In 2018, UK's KFC ran out of chicken across hundreds of locations nationwide. Days later, more than 600 restaurant chains closed temporarily, sparking debates and rumors on why, along with negative sentiment towards the brand.

Unfortunately, the public's reaction ranged from sarcastic frustration to empathy, but mostly it kept on escalating quite fast on social media. However, KFC shot it all down with humor themselves, rearranging their logo to say "FCK" on an empty bucket as a sign of apology.

This is a classic example of how real-media monitoring can help in cases like these. Spotting sentiment overflown with negativity (but some humor), their team was probably able to assess who the critics within the audience are, and turned a potential PR disaster into a cheeky brand win.

📈 By visualizing sentiment patterns using Prowly’s customizable dashboards, PR teams can quickly adapt tone and messaging—turning a crisis into an opportunity.

Case Study 3: California Pizza Kitchen TikTok Crisis

Around July 2024, a user named Riley (@fumptruck) went viral on TikTok after there was nothing but cheese in her mac & cheese order from California Pizza Kitchen. The video had over 3 million views and sparked a hefty conversation in the comments.

While things like these happen and it could have been a simple human error, the community did not leave a dry thread on California Pizza Kitchen. Had the company not utilized platform-specific monitoring, they would miss their shot on responding to the crisis effectively.

In return, California Pizza Kitchen sent Riley a care package and a voucher for completely free mac & cheese for a year.

Additionally, because they knew the sentiment and humor of their audience, they launched a funny chef video showing how to make the dish properly. You know, actually add the pasta.

P.S. We've gathered 16 more crisis management examples—explore them all here.

4 key themes across effective crisis management

To continue using the same examples, let's follow up on what similarities all the above mentioned case studies had. There are surely plenty of other occurrences which would fit here as well, but for the purpose of this article, we'll focus on what we've discussed.

In order to effectively put out their own fire, media monitoring crisis teams look for similarities across the strategies and responses of brands to shape their own approach. Here are the four key themes that emerge:

Theme 1: Speed

Each one of these teams responded quickly before the topic died down or got out of hand. The reason they were able to do it usually consists of several different things: effective media monitoring using solid PR crisis communication tools, a proactive crisis management plan, and making sure everyone at the organization knows what they need to do when a situation like this arises.

Most of the time, the best crisis management teams have several statements ready long before anything happens. These statements just sit there, waiting to be used, but they're usually vetted by all the stakeholders, align with the company's voice and tone, and ensure everyone is prepared as much as possible.

⚡ Prowly’s immediate alert system and email digests ensure no key moment is missed.

Theme 2: Real-time alerting

Media monitoring in crisis management is sort of the same, but then different. Yes, they also create queries of all the keywords that need to be tracked, but they're much more meticulous and detailed in doing so.

Real-time monitoring tools that allow for Boolean queries and platform-specific alerts are key here.

Just because you're going down on TikTok, doesn't mean your Facebook community shares the same sentiment. By knowing these nuances, teams can better understand what's going on and respond successfully.

💡 With Prowly, you can set tailored alerts for each platform and issue—so no comment, tweet, or local news report goes unseen. And here you can compare Google and Prowly alerts.

Theme 3: Platform-specific communication

A short, snappy video will probably not work for the audiences that watch national television, so knowing what content to place on what channel is absolute key. For all the companies we've discussed above, their response strategies were effectively tailored to the platforms and channels where the conversation first began.

Takeaway? There's no such thing as one-size-fits-all messaging. Especially in times of a fragmented media landscape.

💡 Prowly helps PR pros identify which channels are gaining traction through intuitive filtering by source type—TV, radio, blogs, or social.

Theme 4: Thorough sentiment analysis

Sentiment isn't just a cool graph that shows who's happy and who's upset. In sentiment analysis crisis PR, it becomes a tactical lever that shapes the tone of apologies, guides replies, and helps organizations stay ahead of misinformed gossip.

💡 Track mood in real-time, not just numbers. Prowly helps tailor response tone by mapping sentiment across stakeholder groups.

P.S. Don’t stop here—our PR crisis management guide is packed with extra tactics the pros keep to themselves.

Stay ahead of any comment with real-time media alerts PR crisis teams rely on. Start your free 7-day trial with Prowly. No contracts, no credit card needed.

How Prowly helps in media monitoring for crisis teams

#1 Real-time alerts

What's good about an alert that will come several hours after the comment has been posted? Absolutely nothing. In this day and age, Kerry will write something at 1:02pm, and by 2:00pm you have a full-blown crisis in the comments if whatever Kerry wrote sticks the wrong way.

With Prowly, you'll get immediate, real-time alerts delivered right into your inbox. This is in addition to special alerts, such as a spike in mentions so you know there's something cooking up if you get it. Pretty sure that's exactly how California Pizza Kitchen caught their viral TikTok video before it got out of control.

#2 Sentiment analysis

Prowly's tools measure the exact feeling your audience has about whatever campaign you've put out. The tool will track mentions in comments, on forums, customer feedback, and more, so you know if they're rather positive or negative towards an event.

For example, in the above-mentioned KFC chicken outage, the team must have monitored the sentiment closely in order to know if they need to come out with a formal apology, or add a bit or laughter.

#3 Offline tracking

With Prowly, you can monitor traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, and broadcast television. Therefore, if something has shown up even in local news, you'll know about it right away. That was probably the case in the Tiger Woods crash.

Although he's a celebrity, the community is pretty tight knit in these areas in California. Before national outlets picked it up, you bet it was local TV, radio, and newspapers that wrote about it first. Without proper offline monitoring, it would be nearly impossible to spot these mentions.

#4 Comprehensive dashboards

Life isn't easy when you need to juggle several tabs in order to digest all the information. That's why Prowly features easy-to-read dashboards, so you can quickly spot trends, opportunities, and outliers just by looking at it.

It's also effective if you're trying to explain something to a stakeholder that might not necessarily understand PR. After all, everyone understands the basics of when a line goes up, down, or what colors mean.

👉 Looking for more crisis management tools? This comparison covers 6 top-rated PR crisis management platforms.

Quick FAQ

💬 How does media monitoring help in a crisis?

Media monitoring allows teams to quickly understand what is going on in their respective landscape, where did the crisis appear first and who started it. Additionally, it also allows teams to check out what their competitor's are doing when a crisis hits them, so they can learn from their successes and failures.

💬 Why is real-time media monitoring important for crisis communication?

Real-time media monitoring is an indispensable component of all successful crisis strategy. It helps teams assess the risks of current issues, spot communications they need to respond to immediately, and prioritize in times of havoc.

That way, they can engage the right stakeholders to speak to the public, coordinate with other people, and minimize the damage to a minimum.

Final thoughts

If there's one thing you should take away from this post, it's the notion that if you're not prepared, you're already behind and failing. Those little first signs of negative comments here and there surely build momentum and can potentially spiral down further rather quickly.

Prowly gives you the right tools and features to pick up on the first spark and not be caught in a surprise. Start your 7-day free trial today and experience how media monitoring for crisis teams can turn your work from reactive to proactive.

The post Media Monitoring for Crisis Teams: Advanced Strategies for 2025 w/Case Studies appeared first on Prowly.

This guide breaks down how to write a clear, credible, and effective PR statement—complete with real examples and expert tips.

TL;DR:

• Learn how to structure a professional PR statement in 5 key parts
• Understand when and why to issue one—crisis, campaign, or company news
• Discover tone strategies that build trust and avoid backlash
• See good vs. bad PR statement examples from Shopify and BrewDog
• Get practical tips on tailoring messages to media, customers, and stakeholders
• Explore how tools like Prowly help monitor sentiment and manage communications

What is a public relations statement?

A public relations (PR) statement is an official message from a company designed to shape public perception. Typically written by a media relations or communications team, it's used in response to crises, product launches, or news events involving the brand.

So, why write a PR statement? Here are some common scenarios:

• To generate media buzz around a new product launch
• To reinforce a positive reputation after an ESG or DEI campaign
• To address negative press and clarify your company’s position

Whether proactive or reactive, a well-crafted PR statement can build trust, redirect narratives, and ensure your voice is heard first.

How to write a public relations statement?

A strong PR statement can make or break public relations and crisis communications for your brand. Whether it's an official statement from government officials, or a few sentences to reduce negative publicity, it needs to follow a structure that prioritizes transparency, empathy, responsibility and direction.

Here are five essential elements every effective PR statement should include—plus ways to support each stage with smart planning, cross-functional alignment, and the right tools.

5 key building blocks of a PR statement

#1 Acknowledge the situation

Start by clearly stating what happened, when it occurred, and—if relevant—where. This shows transparency and sets the stage for the rest of the message.

Example: “On Sunday, January 12, one of our representatives made false claims about our organization and its employees.”

🛠️ Many PR teams begin this step inside a press release creator with real-time editing support—like Prowly’s AI Assistant, which helps structure key messages and maintain tone consistency while drafting.

#2 Explain the impact

Address who was affected and express empathy. A human tone goes a long way in showing your brand takes the matter seriously.

Example: “We understand this outage caused delayed and canceled flights, disrupting many travelers’ plans.”

🛠️ Empathy also comes from listening. Media monitoring tools like Prowly’s help teams surface early reactions and keyword sentiment across channels, making it easier to reflect real concerns in your messaging.

START MEDIA MONITORING FOR 7 DAYS FREE

#3 Own the responsibility

Avoid deflecting blame. Instead, be direct about what went wrong and your company’s role in it.

Example: “We recognize that our actions didn’t align with the values we stand for.”

🛠️ Tracking media responses to your messaging helps teams understand whether the tone of accountability is resonating—or needs recalibration.

#4 Outline your response

Let your audience know what steps you're taking to fix the issue. Even if the situation is ongoing, communicate the direction you're moving in.

Example: “We’re issuing full refunds to everyone affected and reviewing our response process to prevent future incidents.”

🛠️ Once your response is outlined, you’ll likely need to communicate it to multiple groups—media, partners, or customers. Prowly users can distribute statements through branded newsrooms or targeted journalist emails, keeping the message aligned across channels.

#5 Commit to change

Wrap up with a clear statement of what will be done long-term. This helps restore trust and signals accountability.

Example: “We’re implementing new safety protocols company-wide and will report back on progress.”

🛠️ This step isn’t just about saying the right thing—it’s about proving it. Reporting tools like Prowly’s let you track and visualize earned media coverage over time, so you can demonstrate how public sentiment shifts as changes roll out.

BUILD TRUST WITH BETTER PR TOOLS

Additional tips for strong PR messaging

👉 Tailor your format

Different audiences consume information differently. Consider creating:

• A headline summary for social or media alerts
• An executive summary for internal or investor updates
• A full-length version for press releases or newsroom use

👉 Know your audience

Customize your statement based on who's reading:

• Customers want to know if their service or product will be impacted
• Employees need reassurance and transparency
• Investors look for signs of stability and future-proof planning

👉 Use media monitoring to stay ahead

Once your PR statement is live, the job isn't over. Use a media monitoring tool like Prowly to track how the message is being received across social media, online news, and even broadcast and print. This helps you adapt quickly, manage sentiment, and stay in control of the narrative.

👉 Align internally before publishing

Make sure your marketing, legal, and leadership teams are on the same page before anything goes public. The faster your internal alignment, the quicker—and safer—you can respond.

👉 Enhance with visuals

Infographics, video messages from your CEO, or a visual timeline of events can help clarify complex updates and build connection with your audience.

In public relations, creating a PR statement is just a piece of the puzzle.

For public relations professionals, it means they need to communicate in a way that aligns with what the company believes it, while at the same time protecting its reputation and strengthening relationships with journalists, the media, and the public.

There is no resolution without building trust

Your public relations statement might check all the technical boxes—but does it genuinely build trust?

A defensive or overly polished tone can backfire. Audiences are quick to sense when a message feels performative or insincere. True accountability and transparency are the foundation of trust, especially during a crisis or high-stakes announcement.

Trust signals that strengthen PR statements

To make your message more credible and trustworthy, include these critical elements:

• Be specific: Use concrete timelines, name the individuals or departments responsible, and clearly state what actions have been taken.
• Create follow-up mechanisms: Keep your audience informed over time—not just in the moment. This could mean posting updates, issuing secondary statements, or using a newsroom.
• Understand your audience: Speak directly to the concerns of your stakeholders—customers, employees, investors—not just what you think they need to hear.
• Maintain tone consistency: Your statement should align with your brand’s voice, previous communications, and core values. Sudden shifts can feel disingenuous.

Brands that are transparent and credible follow up on the state of things. For example, when a company isn't clear on ethical practices and receives backlash for a questionable product launch, your company needs to prove they will take actions that will increase customer satisfaction and strengthen broken relationships.

What if a PR statement becomes the story itself?

Even if our public relations statement is written according to all the rules and with the best intentions, sometimes the media can misconstrue it anyway. Sometimes, the best public relations specialists can't predict what will go wrong (or right).

Here are some contrasting examples of public relations statements that journalists picked up and made into headlines:

Good PR statement: Shopify CEO’s layoff message

In 2022, Shopify announced they were laying off around 10% of their employees. However, instead of creating a PR statement full of jargon rarely anyone understands, Tobi Lutke, the CEO, released a company-wide message that was received as raw, full of reflection, and something that doesn't happen often in the tech industry: humanity.

Instead of sugar-coating and spilling out a bunch of words that wouldn't make anyone feel better in that situation, he explained (or the PR professionals on his team did) that they miscalculated the acceleration of e-commerce growth during the times of the pandemic.

He took full responsibility for what happened, showing honesty and humility. The communication was direct and easy to understand without reading in between the lines.

“Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong,” he wrote.

Plenty of public relations specialists have analyzed it and examined it since, highlighting that it was the greatest response in crisis communications in many, many years. Additionally, the company received less backlash than other tech layoffs have seen in social media (which is always a win).

Bad PR statement: BrewDog’s apology after toxic workplace claims

Contrast that with BrewDog, which faced intense criticism in 2021 after more than 60 former employees published an open letter accusing the company of fostering a culture of fear, pressure, and exploitation.

In response, CEO James Watt issued a public apology...

But the tone fell flat. It was too vague, too sanitized, and lacked any real accountability. The statement didn’t address the specific allegations raised. Nor did it outline steps the company would take to improve working conditions or repair internal culture.

Critics quickly pointed out that the apology felt more like damage control than genuine reflection. The lack of a forward-looking plan—and the absence of emotional acknowledgment—only intensified the backlash.

Conclusion – writing for the moment and the memory

A great PR statement shows customers how your organization handles pressure, public scrutiny, and shows accountability.

In crisis communications, the language you choose shapes perception and helps build a favorable public image that can outlast the headlines which are damaging to your company.

When writing a PR statement, PR professionals need to conduct thorough research to craft the type of communication that respects the urgency of the situation and the long-term well-being of their audience. It's a tough balancing act, and this type of communication is certainly difficult to write.

It doesn't matter if your company is addressing journalists, employees, customers, or simply keeping stakeholders informed — a well-crafted reactive PR statement or a proactive holding statement can make or break the business you're doing public relations for.

The post Crafting the Perfect Public Relations Statement: A Guide for Success appeared first on Prowly.

By understanding and tracking brand mentions and PR results, you can clearly see the difference between a thriving brand and one that’s struggling to capture attention.

TL;DR

Brand mentions are any instances where your company is referenced online—often without a backlink. They're key indicators of brand visibility, PR effectiveness, and share of voice. This guide breaks down what brand mentions are, why they matter, and how to track and leverage them to strengthen your PR strategy.

What are brand mentions? (definition & examples)

Brand mentions are cases when a specific brand is mentioned online, discussed, or referred to on any digital platform in various forms of communication. This could be on blogs, social media posts, news articles, or forums, just to name a few.

There are two types of mentions:

• Linked mentions, which include a hyperlink to your website
• Unlinked mentions, which reference your name without a link

Both are valuable for PR and reputation management. Even without links, mentions show that your brand is part of public conversations.

Examples of brand mentions:

• A news article covering your latest product launch
• A podcast host discussing your brand as a category example
• A Reddit post asking for opinions on your company
• A LinkedIn comment where someone tags your brand during an industry debate

Mentions can occur in three different types of sentiments: positive, neutral or negative. They are a key indicator of your brand's presence and reputation in the public sphere.

Why tracking brand mentions matters (for PR strategy & ROI)

For businesses across industries, brand mentions are a thermometer for the health of their brand. Through onlinementions, businesses can monitor their online reputation, their customers' opinions of them, and the effectiveness of their PR strategies.

Tracking brand mentions is the practice of setting up a filter and getting notifications every time someone uses your brand name or designated keywords. It sounds simple, but it's a tool that can super power your PR.

Here’s why tracking mentions matters:

• Understand brand visibility
  See how often your brand is discussed, where it's showing up, who’s talking about it, and how.
• Measure campaign impact
  Mentions help you gauge whether your press releases, announcements, or events are getting attention.
• Monitor reputation and sentiment
  Track the tone of mentions to identify positive buzz—or spot potential PR crises before they snowball.
• Improve media outreach
  Discover which outlets and journalists already cover your brand or topic area.
• Prove PR ROI to stakeholders
  Use mention volume, reach, and Share of Voice (SOV) data to show your team’s value.

Effectively monitoring and responding to brand mentions can enhance your brand image, boost customer engagement, and provide valuable insights into the public perception of your brand.

The different types of brand mentions

There are several different types of brand mentions, depending on the source the mention comes from:

A good brand mentions tool captures all of these mentions and groups them according to source and sentiment.

1. News mentions (earned media)
Articles in online media, industry publications, or local news outlets referencing your brand in coverage.

Example: A product launch mentioned in TechCrunch or a quote from your CEO in a trend piece.

2. Social Media Mentions (shared media)
Comments, posts, or tags on platforms like Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok.

Example: A journalist tweeting a link to your press release or an influencer tagging your product in a post.

3. Blog and forum mentions
Mentions in niche blogs, customer review sites, or forums like Reddit or Quora.

Example: A blogger reviewing your product or users discussing your company in a Reddit thread.

4. Podcast and video mentions
Spoken mentions in audio or video content that reference your brand or product.

Example: A podcast host citing your brand as a case study or a YouTube creator discussing your campaign.

5. Unlinked mentions
Your brand is mentioned without a hyperlink. These are common—and valuable—even without direct SEO benefits.

Example: A journalist references your brand by name but doesn’t link to your site.

6. Reviews and testimonials (customer-driven mentions)

User-generated content on review platforms like Amazon, TripAdvisor, Yelp, G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius. These mentions can reflect satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or comparison with competitors—and they influence buying decisions and brand perception.

Example: A 5-star review on G2 praising your media monitoring features, or a Capterra comment noting ease of use compared to a competitor.

7. Broadcast Mentions (TV, radio, podcasts)

Mentions of your brand in traditional or digital audio/visual media. This includes TV news segments, radio interviews, and podcast discussions. These often require specialized media monitoring tools to detect but can significantly boost brand credibility.

Example: A PR segment on a morning news show featuring your CEO, or a podcast host referencing your brand during an industry conversation.

Pro tip: With Prowly, you can monitor all of these mentions in one place and get real-time alerts whenever and wherever your brand is talked about.

Why brand mentions matter

If you're wondering whether it’s worth the time and budget to monitor brand mentions, the answer is simple: it’s essential for protecting your brand image, building trust, and proving PR value. Here’s how tracking brand mentions across digital and traditional media channels benefits your PR strategy

1️⃣ Reputation management

Brand mentions can be both positive and negative. While many boost your brand reputation, others can damage it—especially if left unaddressed.

Using brand monitoring tools like Prowly, you can track online conversations, including social media posts and reviews, in real time. This helps you manage negative mentions and reinforce positive ones, creating a healthier brand image and public perception.

💡 Tip: If you want to make your PR strategy truly robust, read these articles to learn how to manage and protect your brand reputation.

2️⃣ Customer perception and trust

Brand mentions provide valuable insights into how customers perceive your business—without needing extensive research. By tracking mentions across social media platforms, blogs and review sites, you can better understand trust levels and customer sentiment. 

3️⃣ Social proof

Track mentions that showcase testimonials, quotes, videos, or articles about your brand—this is social proof in action. These organic endorsements shape public trust and influence purchase decisions.

By using brand mention tools, you can automatically dig up this proof and attach it to PR reports with metrics like reach, sentiment, and engagement.

4️⃣ Crisis management

Wondering how to spot a brewing crisis? Set up alerts to monitor brand mentions across the web. A spike in negative mentions or sudden surge in volume on specific social media accounts can signal reputational risks early on.

This allows you to take control of the narrative before the story spirals, protecting your brand reputation.

5️⃣ Competitor analysis

Brand monitoring isn’t just about you. Track how people talk about your competitors—what gets praised, what triggers backlash, and how audiences respond.

Using tools like Prowly, you can follow competitor social media channels, websites, and review platforms to identify patterns and gaps in their PR strategy.

P.S. For those searching for the best tools available for competitor analysis, check out this article.

6️⃣ Monitoring digital & traditional media mentions in one place

Collecting clippings manually is a daunting task, especially since most print media comes out with new issues every single day. That's when a media monitoring solution can take all the work off your hands.

With print monitoring you can:

• Instantly access global and local newspapers, magazines, and journals.
• Track brand mentions, competitors, and industry trends across all outlets.
• Analyze insights using a user-friendly dashboard.
• Ensure comprehensive coverage from diverse sources.
• Evaluate print media investments and campaign ROI with advanced filters.

💡 Want to make the most of your print coverage? Discover how to turn print media monitoring into a powerful part of your PR strategy.

Broadcast monitoring lets you better understand the media landscape by analyzing your media presence across TV, over the Radio, and in podcasts on both local and global scales.

Monitoring broadcasts allows you to:

• Gain comprehensive coverage data
• Track all mentions across the US, Canada, and the UK
• Capture relevant broadcast content for your market
• Get detailed insights on your media presence
• Obtain metrics like estimated reach, publicity value, and sentiment analysis
• Analyze all media sources from a single, unified tool

7️⃣ Industry trends

Brand names are not the only thing you can track with brand mentions software. You can also type in industry categories, product names, new technologies and anything else that comes to mind.

For example, if you want to keep up with the latest news about ChatGPT, you can just track the term and get notified when news and other mentions roll in.

You can also learn all about using social monitoring for PR from The Complete Social Media Listening Guide for Public Relations.

How to find and track brand mentions (free & pro tools)

Before investing in a dedicated platform, there are manual and free ways to begin brand monitoring. These options can help you start finding brand mentions and understand your brand’s online presence—though they’re limited in scale and insight.

Free & manual methods to find brand mentions

1. Manual search

Start with a basic Google search using your brand name, product names, or spokespersons. Try it in incognito mode and use tools like the Google’s “News” tab to focus on news sites only. You can also use filters to view recent results or limit them by region.

🔻 Limitation: You’ll miss mentions on social media platforms, forums, or in spoken formats like podcasts.

2. Google Alerts

Set up keyword-based alerts to monitor brand mentions from websites and indexed media. You’ll get email updates when those keywords appear.

🔻 Limitation: Doesn’t include social media channels, podcasts, or sentiment indicators.

→ Read more about Google Alerts alternatives in our article "The Best Google Alerts Alternatives for PR Pros."

3. Social media search

Use the built-in search features of social media platforms like Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to manually check for mentions, hashtags, and tags.

🔻 Limitation: No unified view across channels. You’ll miss context, trends, and brand sentiment behind the mentions.

4. Review sites

Check platforms like G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, or TripAdvisor to monitor what customers are saying about your brand. These reviews can reveal both praise and negative mentions, shaping your brand reputation and trust.

🔻 Limitation: No automated alerting or way to track trends over time.

5. Forums & online communities

Search Reddit, Quora, or niche industry forums using Google with the site:operator (e.g., site:reddit.com “your brand”). These online conversations can uncover hidden insights about your audience and competitors.

🔻 Limitation: No sentiment analysis, limited visibility into volume and engagement levels.

Media monitoring tools (with Prowly walkthrough)

As your media presence grows, free methods become unsustainable. Media monitoring tools offer comprehensive, real-time coverage—and Prowly is built to meet your needs end-to-end.

What to look for in Brand Monitoring Tools

Effective brand monitoring tools should help you:

• Monitor brand mentions across all channels: news sites, blogs, podcasts, social media platforms, review sites, and broadcast media
• Detect brand sentiment and flag negative mentions using sentiment analysis
• Set up customized keyword alerts for your brand, competitors, or campaigns
• Consolidate mentions into a unified dashboard for analysis and reporting
• Track trends over time and measure your Share of Voice vs. competitors

Pros: fast, accurate, covers all types of sources: digital media (including social media) and traditional media (print & broadcast), lets you add mentions to PR reports with just a few clicks

Cons: free for seven days only

Tip: Read this full guide on brand monitoring software to choose the right one.

How to track mentions with Prowly

1. Set up your brand monitoring dashboard

Start by heading to your mention tracking dashboard. Enter the brand terms, campaign hashtags, or spokesperson names you want to monitor.

Customize your monitoring by:

• Language and region (e.g., only Japanese-language results)
• Type of media channel (e.g., social media, blogs, TV, forums)
• Choose specific journalists or authors

2. Create smart alerts that fit your workflow

Once your terms are set, configure email notifications to fit your team’s rhythm, like:

• Immediate alerts for spikes or negative sentiment
• Daily or weekly roundups for ongoing coverage and positive mentions
• Scheduled digests (daily, weekly, or custom intervals)

This way, your team never misses a beat—but also doesn’t get flooded.

3. Monitor sentiment & impact across all channels

Get a real-time view of:

• Audience sentiment and tone (positive, neutral, or negative)
• The volume and source of each mention
• What’s trending in customer feedback and user mentions

Use these insights to adjust your marketing strategy, manage your online reputation, and strengthen customer satisfaction.

4. Add print & broadcast mentions to your PR reports

Need to track mentions beyond digital? Prowly also helps you:

• Monitor print coverage from global and regional outlets
• Track broadcast media, including TV, radio, and podcasts
• Easily insert traditional media mentions into PR dashboards

These features are ideal for reporting on high-visibility campaigns or executive interviews.

Here are some examples of how traditional media mentions appear in your PR reports:

5. Generate custom PR reports in minutes

At the end of your reporting cycle, generate stunning, data-rich PR reports with just a few clicks. Customize layout, highlight key wins, and present clear insights your manager or clients will love.

🎯 No more screenshots or spreadsheets—just clean, credible data backed by real results.

Tips for tracking brand mentions

If you're new to tracking brand mentions, we have a few handy tips to help you get started.

📌 It's not just the brand name

Brand mention tools let you track literally any term you can think of. This means you can choose a wide variety of terms alongisde your brand name. For example:

• spokesperson names
• online authors
• authors you want to track online
• product names (e.g. "CRM software")
• category terms (e.g. "healthcare communications")

And all of this for yourself and for your competitors.

While your brand term should be the first thing to start with, don't limit yourself. Every brand mentions tracking tool comes with a number of keywords you can track by a specific plan, so make good use of those keywords.

📌 Analyze your sentiment on the fly

Great monitoring software like Prowly does more than just collect brand mentions. As each mention comes in, Prowly analyzes the context around it and sorts the mentions according to sentiment, organizing them into three groups:

• positive
• neutral
• negative

This lets you sort all of your brand mentions automatically using language learning algorithms. For example, if you see a large number of negative mentions coming in over a short period of time, this means that a crisis is looming and you need to look into it.

📌 Track variations of your brand name

If you assume that your (potential) customers know how to spell your brand name perfectly, you're wrong. Depending on what the brand name is, there could be many alternatives that people use. For example, you could search for "Mailchimp" or "mail chimp" with equal success. If you set up just one of these as a term to track, you could miss out on valuable mentions.

📌 Don’t underestimate print, TV or radio mentions

Although most of our information comes from online sources, print, TV, and radio remain crucial media types. They are often seen as more "prestigious" since earning mentions in these outlets is generally more challenging.

Conclusion

Tracking brand mentions is not an afterthought, it's a vital part of a great PR strategy. No matter what industry you're in, tracking brand mentions allow you to stay on top of reputation management, avert crises, and keep an eye on your competition.

And it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to get started, either. With Prowly, you can start monitoring the web for your branded (and other) terms today completely free for 7 days.

The post What Are Brand Mentions and How to Track & Analyze Them appeared first on Prowly.

The real opportunity? Turning those scattered mentions into insights that actually drive strategy. That’s where media intelligence tools step in — helping PR, marketing, and comms teams cut through the noise, spot trends early, and prove the value of their work with real numbers.

TL;DR:

• Media intelligence turns media mentions into insights that inform PR, marketing, and brand strategy.
• It goes beyond monitoring — helping you analyse sentiment, track competitors, and spot PR risks early.
• Tools powered by AI (like Prowly) make it easier to measure impact, optimize campaigns, and align PR with business goals.
• In 2025, media intelligence is essential for staying ahead in a fragmented, fast-moving media landscape.

What is media intelligence?

Media intelligence includes gathering, analyzing, and processing information from different media sources to gain insights and help drive decisions. With it, brands can understand their audience, customers, and competitors better, using it to elevate their campaigns in the direction they want to.

Media monitoring vs. media intelligence

Kind of the same, but different. Why? It depends on the tool.

Essentially, media intelligence involves media monitoring, but the latter doesn't necessarily result in media intelligence.

Media intelligence goes several layers deeper than just collecting mentions. It includes spotting trends, analyzing sentiment, gathering metrics from social listening, benchmarking competitors, and so on. Sounds like media monitoring, right?

However, media intelligence goes even a step further and offers deeper analysis of the data, making it easier for you to make informed decisions based on data-backed interpretations and context.

Why do businesses need media intelligence in 2025?

The short answer: media complexity is exploding. There are simply too many platforms, channels, and conversations to monitor — and too much reputational risk in missing what matters.

Even if your audience mostly lives on Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean that’s where your reputation is being shaped. You may be getting clicks there, but brand sentiment could be shifting elsewhere — unnoticed.

That’s why businesses are upgrading from basic media monitoring to full-scale media intelligence — using advanced media analysis tools to uncover what’s really driving their brand narrative.

#1 Media fragmentation requires smarter media intelligence

Your audience is scattered across dozens of platforms — from TikTok and newsletters to niche blogs, Reddit, and YouTube. Owning the narrative in just one place no longer works.

A modern data-driven PR strategy depends on tools that turn scattered mentions into brand reputation insights — going beyond monitoring to unlock earned media analytics at scale.

💡 According to Harvard Business Review, 67% of consumers use multiple channels before making a purchase.

That journey might include an ad on Instagram, a mention on Facebook, and a review on Reddit — all influencing a single decision.

Only media intelligence tools can track this full arc and make it actionable.

#2 Real-time media insights prevent brand damage

Crises don’t wait. Public sentiment shifts within hours — and traditional monitoring tools just can’t keep up.

That’s why brands rely on real-time media insights and sentiment analysis to stay ahead of emerging issues. According to Deloitte’s Reputation Risk Survey, brands that actively monitor sentiment recover 30% faster from crises.

With the right tools, you can:

• Catch PR threats before they escalate
• Track how competitors handle crises using competitive benchmarking
• Build smarter response strategies powered by continuous media analysis

#3 Stakeholders demand proof, not gut instinct

What's the impact? Do you have proof? How do you translate things like brand awareness into numbers that stakeholders will understand?

Leaders want metrics — not “we think it worked.”

Modern earned media analytics take your reporting from:

“We got coverage,” to

“That coverage drove 2x web traffic, improved sentiment by 15%, and gave us 3x more share of voice than competitors.”

By moving from media monitoring to media intelligence, you gain a clear picture of what’s working and why — and turn PR into a measurable growth driver.

Ready to show real PR impact?
Tools like Prowly help you go beyond basic reporting with media intelligence features built for proving results. From sentiment analysis to share-of-voice benchmarks, you’ll get the data stakeholders actually care about — and a clearer view of how PR drives business outcomes.

Turning data analysis into decisions

Dashboards are powerful — but they don’t make decisions. People do.

Say your latest campaign earned twice as much coverage in Canada but triggered negative sentiment. Was it a messaging misstep? A cultural blind spot?

These are the kinds of insights media intelligence tools uncover — helping you not just measure results, but act on them.

What is a media intelligence solutions company?

A media intelligence solutions company collects and analyzes data from news, social media, reviews, blogs, and other earned, owned, and shared media.

But it’s not just about counting mentions — it’s about identifying patterns:

• Where is sentiment shifting?
• What’s fueling competitor growth?
• How does media exposure tie into reputation risk or campaign traction?

Modern media analysis platforms go beyond vanity metrics to deliver actionable, predictive insights.

Is media intelligence just another term for sentiment analysis?

Absolutely not. While sentiment analysis is part of the equation, media intelligence spans much wider. It can show you connections like:

• PR coverage to web traffic
• Social buzz to investor behavior
• Media narratives to real business performance

It’s not just what people say — it’s what that means for your next move.

Real-life media intelligence examples

Theory is great — but here’s how businesses actually use media intelligence platforms to drive smarter, faster decisions:

• Optimize campaign performance
  Test how your messaging and storytelling land across different outlets, formats, and demographics. Did your headline gain traction in the UK while making no commotion in Texas? Media intelligence helps you spot these gaps and adjust your strategy in real time.
• Spot PR crises before they trend
  Think of media intelligence as an early warning system. It helps catch brewing issues before they spill over, so you can fine-tune your reputation management strategies and respond proactively — not reactively.
• Benchmark competitors effectively
  Keep tabs on your industry without guesswork. Analyze share of voice, sentiment trends, media volume, and the quality of your coverage — all from a single dashboard. That’s competitive benchmarking made simple.
• Improve investor relations
  Track market sentiment and brand visibility to show that PR isn’t just about awareness — it’s a measurable asset. Media intelligence gives you the numbers your CEO and CFO actually care about.
• Fuel product decisions with real-world feedback
  Use insights from reviews, forum comments, and media mentions to iterate smarter. Whether it’s product features, messaging tweaks, or UX changes, earned media analytics reveal what your customers really think — without waiting for a formal survey.

What to look for in a media intelligence tool

If you really think on it, a monitoring tool can also be a media intelligence tool. However, that's not always the case. If the software only tracks mentions and gives you data you don't really know what to do with or how to analyze, then you can't add it to the media intelligence solutions bucket.

Features that will get you actionable insights

👉 AI-based sentiment analysis

After all, this is exactly what artificial intelligence is good at — predicting sentiment based on more than just a few words within an article, blog post, or comment. The best media intelligence solutions will be able to detect the difference between a "hit" being something positive ("Brand's latest release was an absolute hit"), and it being negative ("Brand name took a hit due to...").

👉 Entity and topic clustering

A core feature of predictive media intelligence. It's based on grouping related terms, themes, names, and trending issues into clusters, so it all makes some kind of sense all together. It shows how conversations evolve, connect, and form based on thousands of articles so you can see the bigger picture.

👉 Customizable dashboards and reporting

There is no one-size-fits-all dashboard, and many professionals struggle with getting value out of a tool that isn't tailored to their needs. Surely, a dashboard should be customized depending on who is using it: a stakeholder, a client, a coworker, or someone external.

👉 Analytics and CRM integration

PR doesn't live in a silo and it always affects different metrics that revolve around advertising, marketing, sales, and more. So the best media intelligence solutions will be able to show you trends between an increase in media exposure for a particular campaign and the number of sales you've hit thanks to it.

👉 Multilingual, multichannel coverage

You can't be successful if your tool only allows you to monitor half of the popular media channels, or picks and chooses which sources they monitor for you. It's all too common that a brand thinks they're wildly popular in one country, only to find out they've swept up a niche audience in their industry in another country.

Is Prowly a good media intelligence tool?

Yes — Prowly is more than a PR tool! It’s a media intelligence platform built to help public relations teams track performance, monitor sentiment, and prove ROI with real data.

While Prowly is best known for its all-in-one PR workflow, it also delivers powerful media intelligence capabilities thanks to features like:

✅ Audience analytics

To create the most curated media lists with various media data points about the traffic of online media outlets and visitor data on countries, interests, gender, age, income distribution, occupation, education level, and household size.

✅ Customizable dashboards

So you can show off your work and progress in a way that suits your stakeholders, managers, clients, or simply highlights the key parts of your campaign strategy.

✅ Competitor benchmarking

Monitor mentions across channels to compare share of voice, sentiment trends, and media volume — all within a unified dashboard.

✅ Smart press release builder

A press release creator tool that will allow you to write customizable press releases based on questions you'd typically get from a journalist (so you know exactly what to mention and what to leave behind).

✅ Pitching & email engagement insights

Powerful email statistics including how long someone has spent reading your email and how many times they clicked on it, timestamps included, which is useful in evaluating and predicting further follow-up and pitching actions.

Do you need a media intelligence strategy?

With where things are heading, that's a solid yes. The current trend is to predict what will happen next, rather than analyze the past and what's happening now.

The future of communications is where narratives meet attributions and PR effortlessly proves the ROI it brought in. Remember that if you're not keeping up with everyone else, you're being left behind.

Some of the emerging trends in media intelligence include predictive modeling and automated alerts, tools that can help you spot correlations between earned media and traffic to your site and sales, as well as deeper integrations with business intelligence tools.

The coolest of them all? Real-time crisis simulation models (can't wait for this one to go mainstream).

Media intelligence is the new influence

Making decisions based on feelings is no longer relevant, especially thanks to all the metrics and insights available to PR professionals.

Media intelligence gives communications teams monitoring and social media monitoring on steroids. It shows who is saying what, where, and why, thus making influence more measurable and repeatable.

Think of it this way — you've placed dots on the map and media intelligence is what pulls them together into the cohesive narrative you need to succeed.

The post What is Media Intelligence and What Can It Do for Your Business? appeared first on Prowly.

The UK media landscape can be quite varied, with broadcast, print (often hidden behind paywalls), online, and social making for a colourful mix. The problem is that handling everything at once requires a comprehensive media monitoring solution that covers all media channels.

Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of the best media monitoring services for the UK market to help you track mentions, identify trends, and strengthen your earned media strategy. You’ll also learn which features are must-haves for UK-focused tools.

What is UK Media Monitoring?

Media monitoring in the United Kingdom is the systematic process of tracking and analysing print, online, social, and broadcast media to gather insights into how a business, organisation, or individual is represented across the UK media landscape.

How is media monitoring different in the UK?

The UK’s media mix—national press, tabloids, and regional outlets—is fast-moving. But print and broadcast are still leading. Surprised?

Here's the trick: many major outlets—like The Telegraph—restrict content and fall under the UK-specific NLA licence, which governs how print media is shared. That’s why it’s essential to use fully licensed monitoring tools.

So the first thing to look at when planning media monitoring strategy for UK market is–choose a service like Prowly, that tracks all formats, including paywalled print, online, social, and broadcast.

Top 5 media monitoring tools in the UK

We've reviewed the top five media monitoring tools for the UK market, along with their pricing and key features, so that you can find the best solution for your needs.

Note that, unfortunately, most tools do not offer transparent pricing—it’s usually necessary to get in touch with them to receive a custom quote.

UK Media Monitoring Services Overview

#1 Prowly

💸 Pricing: From £209 per month

Prowly is more than just a media monitoring tool—it’s your all-in-one digital PR platform for managing every stage of the PR workflow.

From media outreach and journalist discovery to monitoring coverage and tracking backlinks, it’s tailored for digital PR pros who want maximum impact with fewer tools.

Top features:

• Comprehensive media monitoring across online, print, broadcast, and social channels—helping you stay on top of your brand presence, wherever it appears.
• Backlink tracking so you can measure not just exposure, but also SEO value, by tracking articles that link to your target URLs. Build dashboards with backlink-rich mentions and sort them by domain authority using data backed by Semrush.
• Real-time alerts and sentiment analysis to keep you informed of media spikes and tone shifts.
• Advanced hashtag tracking—monitor #journorequest and other high-value hashtags with precise filters for topics like travel or finance.
• Audience & Traffic insights powered by Semrush, integrated into the Media Database—so you can target high-ranking media outlets based on relevancy, reach, and SEO value.
• Media Database with 1M+ journalist contacts, plus tools for email pitching, tagging, and campaign management.
• Custom dashboards and widgets to report on what matters most—mentions by country, domain rank, sentiment, or category (e.g. Advertising industry).

💡 No need to juggle multiple tools for backlinks, targeting, outreach, and reporting—Prowly brings it all together in one place.

#2 Roxhill

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Roxhill is a UK-focused media intelligence tool designed specifically for PR professionals who need deep insights into journalists and media outlets.

Media monitoring features include journalist profiles, real-time media alerts, advanced search filters, and email analytics. It also offers a comprehensive media database with direct journalist contact details.

Top features:

• Smart Folder Organization: Automatically categorizes media mentions into Smart Folders based on brand pillars, spokespeople, and themes. 
• Automated Metrics & Sentiment Analysis: Assigns sentiment, campaign themes, and other custom metrics to coverage, streamlining reporting processes. 
• Integrated PR Tools: Combines media monitoring with a comprehensive media database and outreach tools, enhancing the efficiency of PR campaigns.  

#3 Vuelio

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Vuelio is a comprehensive media monitoring and PR management tool that provides strong coverage of the UK media landscape.

Media monitoring features include real-time news tracking, social media listening, sentiment analysis, and broadcast monitoring. It also offers a robust media database with journalist and influencer contacts, press release distribution, and a built-in PR CRM.

Top features:

• Unlimited Keyword & Coverage Monitoring: Offers flat-fee plans with no limits on keywords or coverage, tracking across online, print, broadcast, and social media. 
• Integrated Media & Political Databases: Provides access to extensive media and political contact databases, facilitating targeted outreach. 
• Customizable Reporting Tools: Enables users to generate tailored reports and dashboards, enhancing the evaluation of PR efforts. 

#4 Meltwater

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Meltwater is a global media monitoring and intelligence tool that provides in-depth insights across news, social media, and broadcast channels.

Media monitoring features include real-time alerts, AI-driven sentiment analysis, social listening, and competitive benchmarking. It also offers a vast media database with journalist contacts, press release distribution, and advanced analytics to measure PR impact.

Top features:

• AI-Powered Monitoring with Mira: Utilizes AI assistant ‘Mira’ for real-time media monitoring and insights across various channels. 
• Comprehensive Media Intelligence: Covers over 270,000 online news sources, print publications, TV/radio broadcasts, and social media platforms. 
• Advanced Sentiment & Trend Analysis: Offers sophisticated tools for sentiment analysis and trend detection, aiding in strategic decision-making.

#5 Cision

💸 Pricing: Custom pricing

Cision is a leading media monitoring and PR platform in the US with extensive global coverage, offering powerful tools for tracking media impact and managing press outreach.

Media monitoring features include real-time news alerts, AI-powered sentiment analysis, social media tracking, and broadcast monitoring. It also has a vast media database with journalist contacts, press release distribution, and a PR CRM for campaign management.

Top features:

• Extensive Media Coverage: Monitors a vast array of sources, including print, broadcast, online, and social media, offering real-time tracking. 
• Cision Communications Cloud®: Combines media monitoring, database management, analytics, and social media distribution in one platform. 
• Advanced Analytics & Reporting: Delivers in-depth insights into media coverage, including sentiment analysis and share of voice metrics.  

12 features to look for in UK media monitoring services

If you're looking to monitor your brand's reputation online and aren't sure what to look for in a media tracking service (especially for the UK), here are some features to pay attention to when shopping around.

#1 Coverage

When we say "coverage," we mean two things.

One, the area it covers, as some tools focus on specific regions of the world. Furthermore, some services will be better at providing mentions from the UK, while others are focused more on the US market.

Two, coverage of available platforms, such as Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, print and broadcast, and others.

💡 Ideally, you should choose a platform that provides access to your most important channels and regions for a holistic view of your brand presence.

#2 Content behind paywalls, NLA licence, and UK media coverage

Many UK media outlets – especially established print outlets like The Telegraph – limit online content access with subscription models. They are covered under the NLA licence (Newspaper Licensing Agency), which governs how copyrighted articles are shared.

This can pose a serious blind spot for brands, as influential stories or industry mentions may go unnoticed if your media monitoring tool doesn’t have licensing agreements in place.

And if you're working in the UK market one thing is sure–you’ll need access to this licensed press content.

Ideally, you should choose a platform that provides access to both mainstream and hard-to-reach sources, including those behind paywalls–like Prowly that supports NLA content for every Pro member.

💡 Prowly offers print monitoring powered by licensed content from 7,000+ outlets total, including national and regional UK press. Through its integration with LexisNexis, you get compliant access to premium print coverage—all in one place.

Whether it’s a feature in the national magazine or a niche mention in a local daily, Prowly helps you spot it, measure its value, and incorporate it into your reporting.

👉 Want to make the most of your print coverage? Discover how to turn print media monitoring into a powerful part of your PR strategy.

#3 Real-time alerts

When set up for the right keywords or hashtags, the real-time insights let you prevent minor problems from escalating into crises as well as find opportunities in your competitors' problems. You can find out if a major crisis is brewing not just around your brand, but also - your competitors.

Of course, you may also get daily, weekly or monthly summaries according to your needs.

👉 Strategy example: media monitoring for reactive PR

One of the most effective ways to practice reactive PR is by tapping into live journalist requests.

💡 Social media hashtags like #journorequest and #bloggerrequest are goldmines for spotting real-time media opportunities—and media monitoring tools help you to never miss a beat.

With Prowly, you can take this a step further by setting up precise hashtag filters for niche topics, like travel or finance. This way, you cut through the noise and only see the most relevant media requests for your brand or client.

Want to make it even easier?

Create email alerts based on these filters and get relevant requests delivered straight to your inbox.

💡 While alerts are often associated with crisis monitoring (such as spikes in negative mentions), you can also use them as your personal opportunity tracker—a kind of curated "newsletter" that helps you jump on journalist requests before anyone else.

#4 Sentiment analysis

When someone mentions you, it's pretty easy to tell how they feel about your brand at a glance. But you don't always have the time to spare it.

Choose a tool with sentiment analysis: the ability to automatically decipher how people perceive your brand.

This not only saves massive amounts of time but can also send you alerts when there is a sudden spike of negative mentions, which is a tell-tale sign of a crisis in making.

#5 Reporting and analytics

Good media monitoring tools let you create dashboards and reports with key metrics that are relevant to your client or business. You should get an overview of your mentions, the sentiment behind them, the total reach, share of voice, and other important PR metrics.

But it doesn’t end there.

For PR professionals who care about impact beyond exposure, tracking backlinks is crucial.

#6 Backlink tracking for smarter PR measurement

Backlinks in media coverage are more than just vanity metrics—they directly influence your SEO performance and domain authority. With backlink tracking, you can monitor not just how many articles mention your brand, but how many actually link back to your website or product page.

In Prowly, this is made simple. When building a monitoring query, you can specify your target URL—like your homepage or a specific landing page. This allows you to track only those mentions that include a backlink.

From there, you can analyse:

• The quantity and quality of those backlinks
• The domain authority of referring media outlets (powered by Semrush data)

For reporting, you can set up a dedicated dashboard that lists all articles with backlinks, filtered and sorted by key criteria—such as media category, country, or domain rank. This gives you a clear picture of which PR efforts drive real SEO value.

💡 If you're running a backlink acquisition campaign, use Prowly’s Media Database to group targets by audience demographics and traffic insights, assign tags to track progress, and monitor results directly in your custom dashboards. You’ll know exactly which media tiers are delivering valuable links—and which ones aren’t.

#7 Domain authority: The SEO twist to digital PR

Modern digital PR combines the storytelling power of traditional media outreach with an online spin that benefits search visibility.

One key performance indicator? The domain authority of the media outlets where your stories appear.

In Prowly, you can create widgets to display top-performing mentions based on the criteria that matter most to your strategy. For example:

• Show only mentions from high-authority domains
• Filter by country, estimated reach, or sentiment
• Highlight mentions from specific verticals—such as the Advertising industry—that offer the most value to your brand

How can you measure how well your PR campaign landed with high-quality, reputable outlets?

💡 You can simply generate a report that lists positive or neutral mentions, sorted by domain authority. This allows you to tie your PR success not just to visibility, but to the long-term SEO benefits it brings.

#8 Support and onboarding

Configuring queries can be time-consuming and complex, especially when aiming for precise results.

Hands-on onboarding assistance and quick access to a real person can make or break your experience. And when coverage is missed (because it happens), you'll want a reliable customer support team that doesn’t keep you waiting.

That's why the best media monitoring tools offer more than just software; they come with a knowledgeable and responsive support team to help you get the most out of the platform.

💡 Before choosing a tool, ask what’s included in onboarding, how support is handled, and whether it's part of basic pricing or an add-on.

#9 Custom query building

Whether you’re tracking a product launch or analysing competitor buzz, query flexibility is key.

Getting relevant results starts with setting up custom monitoring queries that go beyond basic keywords. A powerful media monitoring tool should let you fine-tune your searches with:

• Boolean operators
• Inclusion/exclusion filters
• URL tracking
• Domain rank prioritisation
• Language or region-specific parameters

This helps you focus on what really matters, avoid irrelevant noise, and tailor your monitoring to specific campaigns, verticals, or target audiences.

#10 Organizing and working with mentions

Monitoring hundreds of mentions is one thing. Making sense of them is another. Look for tools that help you organize and prioritize your results so you don’t get overwhelmed.

In Prowly, you can:

• Assign Tiers to mentions based on media outlet value
• Mark key mentions as Favourites
• Add Tags for campaigns, clients, or sentiment
• Filter mentions by region, category, domain authority, and more

This structure allows you to quickly zero in on what’s important and create segmented reports that actually tell a story—perfect for multi-client agencies or brands juggling many campaigns.

#11 Ease of use (User experience)

Don’t overlook the day-to-day usability of the platform, because media monitoring is a task you and your team will be doing daily. If the interface is clunky, slow, or hard to navigate, adoption suffers and so does your ROI.

Choose a tool with a clean, intuitive UX that’s easy to learn with thoughtful design choices that support productivity. A well-designed dashboard, drag-and-drop functionality, and clearly labelled filters can cut hours from your reporting and daily workflows.

💡 Always take the free trial. If it feels frustrating to use within the first hour, it’s not the one.

#12 Pricing structure and hidden costs

Media monitoring pricing can be tricky. Some tools offer a low starting price—but only for a limited set of features. Others might charge extra for:

• Additional users
• Backlink or sentiment data
• Media database access
• Mentions volume
• Premium support or onboarding

💡 Before committing, ask what’s included in the base price, what add-ons are charged separately, and how flexible the pricing is as your needs grow. Also, check whether NLA-licensed content (for UK coverage) is included or requires an extra fee.

Transparency in pricing = fewer surprises down the line.

Tips for effective media monitoring in the UK

Once you have your tool for media monitoring, it's important to know that just having the right toolset is not quite enough. Here are some tips to ensure you get the best value from media monitoring software.

Set up relevant keywords

Besides your brand name, make sure to cover relevant keywords around your product.

For example, if you represent a shoe brand, you'll wish to track your brand name and keywords such as "running shoes," "outdoor footwear," "lightweight shoes," and others that are relevant for your target audience.

Monitor regional and national press

To understand the bigger picture, monitor the entire UK media landscape, but don't forget to include regional papers and press.

Track your competitors

Add your competitors' brand names to the mix so you can stay on top of their online presence. Thanks to real-time mentions, you can track an ongoing crisis that you can use to your advantage.

Track TV and radio mentions

While online media monitoring should be your primary concern, the UK still has strong TV and radio landscapes that are worth dedicating time and attention to.

Analyze sentiment regularly

Great media monitoring software does sentiment analysis by default for each mention. As these analyses come in, monitor for major trends and changes to see how your target audience perceives you.

Regularly review data and adjust strategies

Based on the metrics in your dashboards, you may adjust your public relations strategy. For example, a great response to a particular campaign can be a sign to continue with similar messaging and platform placement.

Time to get moving

The UK is a unique market for media monitoring because traditional press and TV are very much alive and play a pivotal role in public perception.

While monitoring online sources is a great start, it often won't be enough to give you a clear overview of how your target audience perceives your brand.

A good media monitoring tool does all of the heavy lifting while you analyze and interpret your results, allowing you to adjust your strategy on the go.

With Prowly, you get all the features needed to monitor your online and offline presence, build relationships with journalists, and create and send great press releases all in one place.

The post Top 5 Media Monitoring Services & Tools in The UK (2025 Guide) appeared first on Prowly.

Tracking media mentions is essential for understanding your brand’s visibility and reputation across all channels. Just like other core PR metrics, mentions need to be consistently and accurately monitored to measure the impact of your work.

This includes keeping tabs on both traditional media coverage and online conversations, where discussions about your brand may be occurring organically — and often without your involvement.

In this guide, we’ll explore what media mentions really mean, how to track them effectively, and how they fit into your daily PR workflow.

What is a media mention?

A media mention on the best days in PR feels like kicking a field goal. It's a major score! On the most challenging days, negative press mentions can throw a wrench into your best-laid plans and pivot your PR campaign into a new direction. 

The definition of “media mentions” can also depend on a PR campaign's goals. For a specific campaign or client, the definition may also include mentions on social media and in online discussion forums.

PR professionals track media mentions for the brands they represent and their competitors. They also track keywords related to the brand's industry to determine the most discussed topics at the moment.

Tracking media mentions is a frequent and regular task for PR. It is often done daily to keep track of what news is breaking online.

Why are media mentions important?

So why is so much time and energy invested in tracking media mentions?

Because media mentions increase brand awareness, a critical function of PR for a brand's sales funnel.

Here’s why they matter:

• Visibility
  Every mention expands your reach. Whether it’s a feature in a niche blog or a shout-out on social media, mentions put your brand in front of new audiences — often organically.
• Social proof
  Mentions act as third-party validation. When media outlets, influencers, or communities talk about your brand, it builds trust and credibility in ways ads can’t.
• SEO impact
  Online media coverage often includes backlinks — helping you climb search engine rankings and drive long-term organic traffic.
• Measurable PR results
  Tracking mentions over time helps you connect PR efforts to tangible outcomes like reach, sentiment shifts, share of voice, and sales conversions — essential for reporting and budget justification.
• Crisis monitoring
  Mentions help you spot emerging issues early. Real-time alerts mean you can act fast before a small problem blooms into a brand crisis.
• Stakeholder confidence
  Regular media visibility boosts your reputation with investors, partners, and internal teams. It shows your brand has momentum.

In monthly PR reports, media mentions are also highlighted and assessed for individual value. They are typically what a PR's client or supervisor views as “results” at the end of a PR campaign.

This is exactly why a PR professional wants to catch all media mentions and identify the particular value of each one.

How to track media mentions

Tracking media mentions is one of a PR professional's most important tasks. It's that one PR task that will never get skipped because it's so closely linked to measuring the value of your work.

PR professionals use one of three methods to track mentions:

• Media monitoring tools
• Google Alerts
• Manual searches

→ Media monitoring tools

Media monitoring tools and brand monitoring tools do all the heavy lifting for you, automatically tracking media mentions and sending you alerts based on your custom filters. They're reliable, provide data in a user-friendly manner, and can even generate your monthly PR reports.

Tracking media mentions using media monitoring tools help you:

• Track mentions across digital, print, broadcast, social, and podcasts
• Save hours by automating what would manually take days
• Analyze sentiment, reach, and trends and present it all on one dashboard
• Stay ahead of crises by catching negative press early

Some tools, like Prowly, let you monitor both digital and print & broadcast media. To ensure you don't miss anything important, make sure you're tracking mentions across all core media channels, including:

• Broadcast
• Print
• Online news and blogs
• Social media
• Discussions and communities
• Podcasts

Print media mentions

While less immediate, print mentions — such as those in newspapers and magazines — still carry prestige and long-term brand value. With print monitoring, you can get instant access to several global, national, regional, and local newspapers, trade publications, consumer magazines, and business journals.

Make sure your monitoring tool can track both and digital and print mentions.

Broadcast mentions

TV and radio still shape public perception, especially in regional or traditional markets.

Broadcast mentions are harder to track manually — this is where media monitoring tools shine.

Online news & blog mentions

Still the go-to source for industry updates and breaking news. Mentions in online publications or influential blogs often signal credibility and authority. 

Tip: Track branded keywords, executive names, and campaign mentions.

Social media

Mentions here spread fast — and wide. Social buzz can amplify a campaign or spiral into crisis.

Tip: Monitor platforms like X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram for brand mentions, hashtags, and sentiment.

Discussions & communities

Your brand might be discussed in forums like Reddit, Quora, or niche Slack groups — often with raw, honest feedback.

Tip: Use tools that pick up on mentions beyond the mainstream.

Podcasts

Podcasts are an increasingly influential space, especially in B2B and niche industries. Mentions here often come with more in-depth commentary.

Tip: Some advanced tools even transcribe and index podcast content.

For a more detailed guide on how to effectively conduct media monitoring, including setting up queries and analyzing your results, check out our article: How to Do Media Monitoring: Tips & Best Practices.

→ Google Alerts

The second method is using Google Alerts, which is often tempting because it’s a free service that’s simple to set up. However, we’ve already written about how limited its results can be.

Many mentions get missed, and the alerts aren’t always timely. Essentially, it’s not reliable enough to trust with this important task.

After trying both methods, most PR professionals decide to track brand mentions most easily, using media monitoring tools.

→ The manual search

This is when a PR professional searches for brand names and keywords in multiple search engines to find mentions. Yes, we’re talking about entering a list of keywords one by one into Google and looking through pages of results.

Since media mentions tracking is usually a daily task, you can quickly see how much time this can take away from a busy PR pro’s schedule! Even if this work is delegated to a junior team member, there is a substantial cost involved with the necessary labor hours.

How to never miss a media mention

With so much at stake, it’s no wonder PR professionals turn to automated PR software like Prowly to get solid media monitoring coverage and build impressive PR reports that “wow” their clients.

Here is what you need to do to stay informed: 

1. Set up comprehensive monitoring

In Prowly's media monitoring, you can simply set:

• Brand names
• Spokesperson mentions
• Keywords
• Backlinks
• Specific authors

The tool scans online news sites, blogs, and discussion platforms like Reddit to dig up relevant media mentions — even picking up backlinks to your website and campaign URLs.

Not only can Prowly's media monitoring tool find international mentions, but it can also find mentions before Google has even indexed them, so you can see them earlier than a manual Google search would provide. 

2. Set up filtering

Customize your monitoring to focus on what's most relevant: 

• Source types: Choose between digital, print, broadcast, or social media sources.
• Geographical filters: Narrow down mentions by country or region.
• Language preferences: Monitor mentions in specific languages.

In the Prowly Media Monitoring, you can set up email alerts tailored to your preferences — so when you start your workday, your latest media mentions are already waiting in your inbox. No more manual scanning.

3. Add context & insight

Prowly doesn’t stop at finding mentions — it adds context with detailed metrics like:

• Sentiment
• Domain authority
• Estimated reach

Your results are presented in a clean, easy-to-navigate dashboard, letting you analyze, strategize, and act faster.

You can also track advanced metrics like Share of Voice and AVE alternatives, giving you a fuller picture of your PR impact.

4. Create custom PR reports

PR automation software turns recurring tasks that feel like a chore into a valuable dashboard where campaign results can be analyzed and reported quickly. 

With PR automation, you spend less time chasing mentions and more time responding strategically.
Plus, having faster access to results-driven data helps you pivot underperforming campaigns or double down on what’s working.

Getting started with media mention monitoring

PR pros approach media mention monitoring in three ways: manual research, Google Alerts, or media monitoring tools. 

All can provide data to analyze and report, but only one approach provides real-time, thorough data with details like sentiment, reach, and media outlet importance. 

If you’re ready to try a media monitoring tool (with added PR reporting!), we’re here to help you get started as soon as possible.

The post Media Mentions Guide: How to Track Media Mentions Effectively appeared first on Prowly.

But here’s the thing: you’re not just watching from the sidelines. You’ve got the tools, the access, and the voice to step in and handle it. Whether it’s a negative comment gaining traction or a bigger issue bubbling up, there is a way to take control.

This is what social media crisis management is all about and this guide will show you how to stay prepared, respond smartly, and bounce back stronger.

What is a social media crisis?

A social media crisis occurs when a brand receives negative attention online which then spreads rapidly. Social media crises typically happen on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and similar ones.

Every social media crisis has one thing in common: they incur lots of damage in a short time period, all thanks to the fast-paced nature of social media as a communications channel.

But how do you know if you're dealing with a proper social media crisis instead of a regular Tuesday morning of unhappy customers?

Here's a side-by-side comparison of a regular problem (e.g., a few negative comments) vs. a full blown crisis.

When a crisis strikes, you'll need a crisis management tool to help you determine and mitigate damage. This is where platforms such as Prowly help, providing media management tools to spot problems early on.

Why social media matters in crisis management

Social media has the power to either calm the storm or make it worse. It all comes down to how you use it: work it into your crisis plan and it can make life easier—or ignore it, and risk turning a small issue into a big mess.

Platforms like Twitter (X), TikTok, and Instagram act as accelerators in a crisis. A single tweet, video, or comment can:

• Go viral within minutes, reaching millions before your team has even drafted the first response.
• Shape public opinion instantly, often before full context is available, potentially leading to massive reputation damage.
• Attract media attention, as journalists now source breaking stories from viral posts.

Here are some examples where the social media manager acted too late, wreaking havoc on the brand's reputation:

1️⃣ OceanGate’s Titan sub disaster (2023)

When the sub went missing, TikTok and X were flooded with memes, theories, and panic. OceanGate failed to update in real time, letting misinformation dominate the narrative.

Here is a part of Guillermo Söhnlein's (co-founder and former CEO of OceanGate, Inc.) publication "OceanGate & Titan - Lessons Learned in Crisis Communications":

2️⃣ Airbnb hidden camera accusations

Multiple TikTok posts about hidden cameras in rentals went viral, but Airbnb didn’t respond until traditional media picked it up, losing control of the story.

3️⃣ Volkswagen’s prank ad gone wrong

A fake kidnapping teaser video sparked outrage on Instagram. VW deleted it too late and screenshots kept circulating, making matters worse.

P.S. Here’s an article that might come in handy if you’re looking for a tool to measure the impact of your communication efforts.

Crisis management strategy: key pillars

To do social media crisis management well, you need a plan and a strategy. Each crisis management plan will be different depending on your audience, the social media guidelines for a specific platform, the amount of potential damage, etc.

However, these are the main pillars of every good social media crisis management strategy:

#1 Preparation

The best time to prepare for a crisis is before it happens. Having a plan in place helps your team stay calm and act fast.

Key steps

• Assign roles: Who monitors social media? Are we using any tools to track negative publicity? Who approves responses? Who contacts legal? Clear ownership speeds up reaction time and helps you mitigate damage.
• Prewrite holding statements: Draft templates for common issues (e.g., data breach, service outages, public backlash, or something specific to your industry/service/product).
• Conduct simulations: Run mock drills with different scenarios to test your plan and response time.

Why it matters: Confusion costs you in the first 30 minutes of a social media crisis. Clarity and coordination win trust with your target audience and the press.

#2 Monitoring

You can’t manage what you don’t see. Active social media monitoring lets you spot emerging issues and trends before they explode.

What to monitor:

• Brand mentions and hashtags
• Sentiment shifts (positive → negative)
• Influencer or media activity
• Customer DMs and replies

Why it matters: A single tweet or video can go viral in minutes. Early detection gives you a chance to get ahead of the story.

#3 Communication

When a crisis breaks, your communication must be cohesive and trustworthy, both externally and internally.

Best practices:

• Align internal and external messaging: Everyone from customer support to leadership should know what’s being said and how to say it.
• Respond quickly and humanely: Don’t hide behind PR jargon. Acknowledge the issue and show empathy.
• Stay visible: Use your main social accounts to update regularly, even if you’re still investigating.

Why it matters: Silence looks suspicious. Consistent messaging builds credibility and diffuses confusion.

#4 Recovery

Once the crisis subsides, the real work begins, as you begin restoring your brand’s reputation and preventing future issues.

Post-crisis checklist:

• Conduct a debrief: What worked? What didn’t? Where were the bottlenecks?
• Engage your audience again: Be transparent about what you’ve learned and how you’re fixing things in the future.
• Rebuild goodwill: Launch campaigns that refocus on customer value and trust.

Why it matters: Brands that bounce back strongest are the ones that take accountability and evolve from the experience.

💡 Prowly tip

Prowly can support your crisis response across all four pillars:

• Preparation: Use Prowly’s media contact database to build press lists for crisis-specific outreach, so you can contact the right people to rebuild trust fast.
• Monitoring: Track brand mentions and earned media coverage in real time with Prowly’s media monitoring features.
• Communication: Distribute press releases directly to journalists, influencers, and stakeholders through Prowly’s newsroom.
• Recovery: Analyze coverage and sentiment post-crisis to understand how your message was received and where to improve.

Crisis management plan for social media

A solid crisis plan gives your social team structure and speed when everything feels chaotic. Here’s what it should cover:

Internal roles and escalation paths

Define who’s responsible for what. Assign a crisis lead, social media monitor, content drafter, and legal/comms approver. Include an escalation path. Who gets notified and when? Clarity here saves critical minutes and prevents even bigger problems.

Holding statements

Prewrite flexible, situation-agnostic messages for common crises (outages, data breaches, backlash). These allow you to acknowledge the issue quickly while you gather more info. Adapt them for Twitter (X), Instagram, LinkedIn, and the press.

Approval workflows

List who must review and approve messaging before it goes live. Include time limits (e.g., 15-minute response window) and backup contacts in case key people are unavailable. Speed is everything.

Response playbooks

Document step-by-step actions for different scenarios, like negative media coverage, customer injury claims, or viral complaints. Include:

• Platform-specific tone guidance
• Sample replies
• Decision trees (when to respond vs. when to stay silent)

Enhancing prevention: account security + internal comms

You can prevent most social media crises simply by doing your homework and staying prepared.

1. Keep your accounts secure. Create unique passwords for every social media platform, change them regularly, and use two-factor authentication to stay safe. Determine different access levels for each team member.
2. Regularly review scheduled content. Make sure that the content that is just about to go live doesn't interfere with the "hot" debates going on at the moment of pushing the content out.
3. Include internal messaging as the first step in the response. Keep everyone on the same page within your team before going public with any kind of response.

Here's a mini checklist to keep you prepared for all situations:

Social media crisis management checklist

Real-world social media crisis examples

(Un)fortunately, examples of crises happening on your social media platform are very common.

The great news is that you can learn a lot from their mistakes so you can prepare a better crisis response for yourself in the future.

#1 KFC's UK chicken shortage fiasco

In 2018, KFC UK temporarily closed over 600 restaurants after switching to a new logistics provider (DHL), which failed to deliver chicken on time.

Customers flooded social media with complaints and jokes. KFC responded with humor. Most notably, there was a full-page ad showing an empty bucket rebranded as “FCK,” earning public sympathy for its honest and transparent response.

How Prowly could have helped:

• Media monitoring would have allowed KFC to detect rising sentiment shifts and trending keywords like “chicken shortage” or “DHL fail” in real-time.
• Using press release tools, the PR team could have issued proactive statements to explain the issue early and maintain control over the narrative.
• With media contact management, they could’ve quickly reached key journalists to frame the story positively before it spun out of control.

#2 United Airlines passenger dragging incident

In 2017, a passenger was forcibly removed from an overbooked United Airlines flight.

A video of the incident went viral, sparking outrage. United's initial response was defensive, calling the passenger “disruptive,” which only worsened public perception. Eventually, they apologized, but the delayed and tone-deaf reaction caused lasting damage.

How Prowly could have helped:

• Crisis monitoring would have flagged the viral spread of the video immediately, before the backlash peaked.
• Using automated alerts, United’s PR team could have been notified about trending content involving the brand.
• Media sentiment tracking would have shown the overwhelmingly negative tone, nudging leadership toward a more empathetic and timely response.
• Press room features could help publish updates and apologies faster.

#3 Balenciaga's controversial ad campaign

In late 2022, Balenciaga faced severe backlash for an ad campaign featuring children holding teddy bears in bondage gear.

The imagery sparked accusations of exploiting children and promoting inappropriate themes. The brand was slow to respond and their initial statement blaming other parties made things worse.

How Prowly could have helped:

• Pre-campaign media intelligence tools could have flagged risky themes or similar controversies in the media space so they could have smelled trouble from a mile away.
• Media monitoring would’ve picked up on early criticism before it snowballed into a full-blown crisis.
• Crisis communication tools would have supported faster internal alignment and timely responses, helping the company resolve issues before they got to the press or relevant influencers.
• Prowly's influencer and journalist database could have helped Balenciaga engage voices of trust to clarify intent and shift the conversation.

Best practices in social media crisis communication

When you're preparing your crisis response team and overall strategy, there are a few things you can implement that are universal across industries and clients.

👉 Pause automated posts

When trouble is brewing, the last thing you want to do is create scheduled posts promoting your latest product or post photos from your Christmas office party.

When the first signs of a crisis show up, stop all scheduled and automated posts until the crisis is resolved.

👉 Respond quickly and consistently

One of the easiest ways to ruin your company's reputation is to not respond to negative comments or to do so when it's too late. Respond promptly across your social media accounts and reassure customers and bystanders that everything is going according to plan.

👉 Be human and transparent

Don't try to sugar coat a crisis by pretending it's not happening or responding to everything except the issue at hand. Recognize your mistake and own up to it; you'll have to do that sooner or later. The sooner you do it, the better for your crisis management team and company.

👉 Monitor sentiment and adapt messaging accordingly

Base your response strategy on the sentiment of the mentions that come in for your brand. For example, if the majority of mentions across social media posts are negative, it means you should spend more time addressing concerns. And when the sentiment switches to positive, you can adjust the content to suit your social media strategy.

PS. you can use Prowly as your PR coverage tool during a crisis to make educated decisions in real-time. Prowly sends you relevant mentions and performs sentiment analysis, helping you spot spikes in negative sentiment or any major changes with ease.

Tools for managing a social media crisis

Managing crises can be done manually, but why bother when there are so many tools to help you get results more quickly and easily?

Prowly – best for PR-focused crisis management

If you work in PR, Prowly is your crisis HQ. It provides everything you need to communicate quickly and effectively during a social media emergency.

• Quick press release distribution: Share updates instantly via your newsroom or directly with journalists.
• Custom media lists: Build and segment outreach lists for urgent, targeted communication.
• Media monitoring: Track brand mentions and earned media coverage in real time.
• Journalist engagement insights: See who’s opened your emails and what’s getting attention.

Prowly helps you stay in control of the story when it matters most—getting your side out fast and to the right people.

Brand24 – best for real-time social listening

Brand24 keeps its finger on the pulse of the internet. It monitors social media, forums, blogs, and news sites to alert you when your brand is mentioned, especially when sentiment turns negative.

You can get real-time alerts for keyword spikes, influencer mentions, and trending hashtags. It’s particularly useful in the early stages of a crisis, when a single post or video might start picking up steam.

While it’s not a PR tool, Brand24 is excellent at spotting a storm before it hits, giving you time to react and prepare messaging.

Conclusion

To get out of a social media crisis unharmed, you need to do just a few things well. Plan ahead for uncertainties, act fast when a crisis happens, and communicate clearly about what happened. Everything else is a walk in the park.

Don't take crisis management for granted. Build a crisis management strategy and document it. As time goes by and social media platforms change, refine your strategy on the go.

Last but not least, use tools such as Prowly to monitor your social media and get quantitative data on crises as they unfold.

The post Social Media Crisis Management: How-to Guide for 2025 appeared first on Prowly.

That’s why brand protection has become a core PR function. It’s not just about managing reputation after a crisis, but preventing one in the first place. With the right tools and strategies, PR teams can monitor threats, spot misinformation early, and keep their brand narrative under control.

In this guide, you’ll find practical tips, real risks to watch for, and the tech that helps modern PR pros stay ahead of the damage.

What is brand protection?

Brand protection includes all actions a company takes toward preserving the integrity of its identity. This includes the name, logos, taglines, its tone and voice, the way people talk about it online, and how their audience feels about the brand in general.

You may think this mostly involves guarding trademarks, intellectual property rights, or even intellectual property infringement, but that's not entirely true.

Nowadays, complete brand protection includes things like:

• Real-time monitoring of your brand online, including mentions across news, online outlets, magazines, social media platforms, and forums
• Consistent messaging across all channels that the clients can see, such as websites, press releases, Amazon storefronts, NGO one-pagers, etc.
• Rapid crisis management to prevent excessive brand abuse and keep the narrative under control when something puts you in boiling waters
• Impersonation defense, especially from deepfakes, fake social media accounts, people spreading misinformation, and doing general consumer harm

If there's one sentence you should remember from this list, it is its key message: your public relations, legal, marketing, and customer service efforts should all be on board when it comes to your brand reputation.

🎯 Their ultimate goal? Continuous support to help you remain a trusted brand with honest consumer engagement. This is something that will multiply consumer trust for decades.

Why is brand protection important?

Many enjoy the fact that, thanks to social media accounts and the way media is done now, brands can grow faster. You know, overnight millionaires (and I'm all for it).

However, that kind of speed of light can also generate a lot of vulnerability due to misinformation, unauthorized use of a brand's materials, brand abuse, and counterfeit trade.

Without a strong brand protection program, even the most popular brands on the market can suffer significantly. That includes both financial and reputational damage.

Top risks when brand protection fails

If your brand protection efforts aren't really thought through, you're putting your business at risk in so many ways:

• Loss of customer trust – if your dear audience sees fake accounts, counterfeit products, and then peeks at your site only to discover misaligned messaging between all social media accounts, you're down several points already in their book.
• Legal action and revenue loss – if you've failed to make sure your intellectual property rights such as trademarks, domain names, and product images are secured, it can lead to really (and I mean really) expensive disputes, lawsuits, and dips in revenue. There are dozens of small companies that forgot about it and had to close their business in the long run.
• Damage from bad actors – think of things like digital brand abuse, illicit trade, and trademark infringement such as fake listings on online marketplaces. Couple that with threats on the dark web, and swift action is not optional but essential.
• Unauthorized use of brand assets – whether someone uses your logo without permission or sells your products without a license, this can not only hurt your sales but also confuse consumers. I know you may think that people will know explicitly which website is real and which is fake, but to be quite honest here, many people are not tech-savvy and will not know. Plus, impersonators can get really, really good at what they do.
• Cyber threats – things like phishing, ransomware attacks, and similar. Well-known brands have entire teams that deal with these sorts of events. But hey, before you say they have the budget for that kind of brand protection (which is true), you can always do everything you can to replicate their brand protection efforts yourself.

When brand protection fails: the Burger King example

On March 8 2021, Burger King's UK branch came out with a campaign intended to promote a new scholarship program for women, aimed at increasing the number of female chefs in the culinary industry. Sounds great, right? Yeah, well... their slogan said "Women belong in the kitchen".

This isn't a joke. So many people have perceived it sexist, especially given the context of International Women's Day. Brand protection experts must have had a field day with this one.

The engagement on that tweet has lead to widespread criticism, quickly outpacing any explanations anyone might have said.

Moving forward, Burger King UK eventually deleted the original tweet and issued an apology where they've acknowledged their error in not providing context upfront. However, the damage has already been done.

💡 P.S. In case you'd like to find out how PR pros manage crises beyond the general advice, this article spills the tips they don't usually talk about with others (with many more examples).

3 key brand protection strategies that work

Damage control is cool, but have you ever heard of building a smart, proactive brand protection system that decreases threats and increases trusts? Exactly.

Here are three most effective brand protection strategies:

#1: Put PR at the forefront

A strategic, well-organized public relations team does more than just build organic visibility. They help protect the brand from crises, misinformation, and brand abuse before it grows into something bigger they can handle. A strong PR strategy can help:

1. Establish a consistent brand online, including messaging, narrative, and mission
2. Build long-term relationships with key journalists and industry partners
3. Highlight positive press and diminish unfriendly noise, such as social media backlash
4. Take immediate action against brand abuse like spam comments, trolls, and threats
5. Monitor the industry in various ways, including using advanced tools for collecting mentions

💡 Beyond that, PR teams can also flag 🚩 potential unauthorized use of messaging, product visuals, or trademarks. This kind of alignment is crucial if you're in spaces like e-commerce, where bad actors can engage in illicit activities connected to selling counterfeit products.

By collaborating early and often with legal teams, they can help you to prevent brand abuse and protect your intellectual property.

#2: Respond quickly to digital brand abuse

Brand abuse doesn't discriminate, so it doesn't matter if you work for a small company, or for well known brands. Both are vulnerable to sudden crises.

Whether it's a poorly written social media post, a leaked memo, an email that was never supposed to be analyzed through the public eye, or the discovery of counterfeit goods on popular online marketplaces, you need to protect your brand reputation. While not all crisis management tips make it into textbooks, here's what PR pros actually do when things go left.

But, what can you do now to protect yourself from all of these?

1. Draft pre-written responses for different threat scenarios, like unauthorized use of assets, leaked sensitive information, patent infringement etc.
2. Choose the right platforms, channels, people, and keywords to monitor. That way, you have full visibility into where the issue that arises began in the first place.
3. Create clear, actionable steps for how to respond in a crisis in case it's not covered in the pre-written responses you provided. Make sure to state who is responsible for what.
4. Make sure top management has full visibility on your brand protection strategy. Make sure they understand their approval is needed, so that everything is ready for when you need to quickly respond. Early detection is cool, but what happens when it will take you several days to get a "yes" from all of your superiors?

#3: Monitor your brand anywhere and everywhere

Most brand protection solutions fall short because they haven't incorporated a good media monitoring strategy.

Prowly's Media Monitoring isn't only useful for tracking mentions from your pitching efforts. It can also aid you in a full, comprehensive brand protection strategy.

Let's take a look at some of the activities you should be doing:

#1 Monitoring multiple channels including online, print, and broadcast

That way, you can monitor your brand holistically everywhere.

The sources you should track include news outlets, magazines (both online and print), broadcast, Reddit, and other forums.

#2 Setting up automated alerts for important mentions

I'm sure you'd want to know when something happens, right away.

💡 If you're getting dozens of comments within an hour, Prowly will send you an email alerting you that something is going on. Same goes for other types of alerts, depending on your needs.

#3 Analyzing sentiment

Sentiment analysis is great, and we know that. What's even more useful is monitoring sentiment in different places.

For example, try setting up queries for different social media platforms and compare whether or not your brand is more liked on one platform versus the other.

💡 With Prowly, you can gather concrete data and filter it by engagement, sentiment analysis, number of mentions, share of voice, and many more.

Curious to see how Prowly helps brands stay ahead of digital brand abuse and protect their reputation? Start your free 7-day trial. No strings attached, no credit card needed.

Top brand protection solutions and tools

To make sure your brand reputation is where you want it to be, it's time to explore the tools that can give you control, clarity, and the power to act fast whenever you need to.

The best tools allow you and your team to collaborate closely, prevent digital brand abuse through effortless media monitoring, and enforce all the essential components of a good strategy in day-to-day life.

Here's a quick comparison of leading brand protection tools:

These platforms help brand owners and coworkers protect their business by finding mentions that can reveal unauthorized use of assets, track sentiment, and all the other components that go into brand reputation management.

Curious to learn more? Dive into a complete breakdown of the best reputation management software options out there. Or simply...

Why consistency in messaging matters?

Imagine some of your online platforms are filled with content for Gen Zers, talking about the environment, ethical practices, and consumerism.

Then, other digital platforms you manage are completely disconnected: there, you often run ads that say things like "the right time to buy is NOW" or "don't miss out on this event of a lifetime." See the divergence?

The way your (or your client’s) brand shows up in Instagram posts, press releases, chatbot responses, sales materials, and more is a series of touchpoints that together tell the world who you are. If they don't sound aligned, it takes away from your brand's credibility.

And fragmented brands harm consumer trust. Therefore, don't forget to include consistent messaging in your brand protection program.

Brand protection isn't easy, but it's worth it

Protecting your brand is hard, but if you don't do it, no one else will. The better, stronger, and more interesting your brand becomes, the more attractive it becomes to bad actors who want to tarnish what you've achieved.

They won't just target your logos or write some spam comments. Now, with artificial intelligence and machine learning, they can do some real damage. By ignoring brand protection solutions, you're not just risking a small dip in your revenue: you're risking your entire brand.

To end it all on a positive note, there are ways you can do your best to prevent it: media monitoring solutions, pre-written responses, internal frameworks on how to handle things when they come up. Prevention is better than reaction.

The post Why is Brand Protection Important in PR? Useful Tips and Strategies appeared first on Prowly.