In partnership with Critical Mention.

Today's dynamic media environment is characterized by never-ending noise and by consumers who crave content across multiple platforms. Accurate, real-time intelligence about conversations related to your clients or brand has never been more important.

It makes monitoring the media a crucial element of PR.

The trouble is that some providers complicate things. If you've worked with media monitoring software, you've probably had to sift through irrelevant charts, create complex dashboards, or call a supplier because they've missed a clip you need for a client—all activities that zap your time.

Enter Critical Mention.

Founded in 2002, the company seeks to revolutionize media monitoring and provide communicators with an understanding of the influence that coverage in one medium has over another so that firms can devise effective strategies.

Recently, I sat in on a demo of one of Critical Mention's flagship products, AllMedia.

Take your own test drive of Critical Mention here.

As the name suggests, AllMedia is a one-stop tool for real-time media monitoring. The product monitors TV, radio, online news sites, blogs, social media, review sites, and Internet forums. Monitoring results are delivered via email 60 seconds after they've been broadcast or appeared online. It’s incredibly fast—handy when a boss is freaking out.

More valuable is the intelligence that AllMedia gives a user about how one medium influences another.

“In today's environment you have to tailor the message to the medium,” said Kye Strance, Critical Mention’s senior vice president of product development. “What you communicate to bloggers may be quite different from the messages you use when interacting on Twitter or Yelp.

“Knowing what messages are working in specific media allows an organization to create communications strategies that drive the bottom line."

Strance is right, and AllMedia is unique because it gives users information and detailed analysis at lightning speed.

Among my pet peeves about monitoring platforms are restrictions on the number of search terms, or the amount of content one can monitor. It's irksome because good PR professionals understand the value of monitoring a client's name and competitors, plus industry-relevant keywords and phrases that are tied to search engine optimization.

AllMedia allows for unlimited results and monitoring terms at no extra cost. It’s what sets this product apart.

People who work in public relations must constantly demonstrate the return on investment of their activities. This creates a real need for monitoring solutions that produce easy-to-understand reports. On this point, AllMedia scored very well. The reporting mechanism monitors sentiment and can even pull specific quotes out of news pieces. All info is readily shareable with the C-Suite or clients, and it’s packaged in an attractive way.

“When we sat down to create this product, we knew it had to be about more than giving end users the ability to create loads of charts and graphs that sowed confusion," Strance said. “Solid, easy to understand analysis is critical to showing ROI.”

The technology that powers AllMedia is second to none. According to Strance, the company listens to the equivalent of 45 hours of radio and TV content every minute. That’s some serious listening power that’s competitively priced with the rest of the industry.

We've entered an era in which immense pressure is placed on communicators. We need to be constantly aware of what's being said about our company or clients in the external environment across all media. It's scary at times. The need for solid media monitoring, with easy-to-use features, has never been greater. Critical Mention's AllMedia is one of the best products out there.

Highly recommended.

Give Critical Mention a try here.

Jackson Wightman is a PR Daily contributing editor in Montreal.

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