How to Do a Media Analysis: 14 Steps
1. Define your objectives: Clearly outline the goal of your media analysis. Is it to understand the coverage and sentiment around your brand, or to evaluate the performance of a specific PR campaign?
2. Select your media sources: Choose which media outlets, platforms, and formats you’ll be studying. Consider traditional media, social media, online news sources, blogs, and peer-reviewed studies.
3. Determine the time frame: Establish the period for which you want to analyze the data. It can range from a single day to a full year or more, depending on your objectives.
4. Establish measurable parameters: Decide on specific aspects you want to measure in your analysis, such as topic mentions, sentiment (positive or negative), reach, engagement, and share of voice.
5. Collect the data: Gather all relevant articles, posts, tweets, comments and other content from your selected sources. Use manual research or media monitoring tools for efficiency.
6. Analyze content themes: Look for common themes and trends in the content you’ve collected. Identify recurring subjects and key talking points that relate to your brand or topic.
7. Assess sentiment: Evaluate whether the overall tone of the content is favorable or unfavorable towards your subject. Use tools like sentiment analysis calculators for objectivity.
8. Calculate reach and impressions: Estimate how many people have been exposed to your analyzed media content by accumulating numbers like audience size, views or followers.
9. Measure engagement: Track interactions such as likes, comments, shares, and retweets for social media posts related to your subject for insights into consumer interest or opinions on certain topics.
10. Determine share of voice: Calculate what percentage of overall conversation around an industry topic is attributed to your brand compared to competitors or other related issues.
11. Create visual representations: Develop graphs, charts or infographics presenting key insights from your data analysis for easy understanding and clear communication.
12. Evaluate effectiveness: Assess how well your findings align with your initial objectives. Were the goals met, exceeded, or did they fall short? Use these insights to come up with actionable improvements.
13. Report your findings: Compile the insights gained from your media analysis into a comprehensive report that presents the data, conclusions, and recommendations in an organized fashion.
14. Apply insights to future campaigns: Use what you’ve learned from your media analysis to inform and improve future PR and marketing initiatives. Integrate the lessons learned into strategies to maximize performance and attain your objectives more effectively.