Best News Monitoring Tools for Real-time Updates

Here’s some news for you: Tracking news doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking.

Undoubtedly, news monitoring is crucial, especially for PR professionals like you. The thing is that there’s a great number of media monitoring tools out there that can help you with that.

But which of them are worth your time, effort, and budget? We can help you to decide, of course!

Here you’ll find the 5 best tools for news tracking with real-time alerts.

Let’s jump to it!

What is News Monitoring?

News monitoring is the process of keeping track of what is mentioned in media, online and offline, about a specific topic of your interest. That topic can be anything, from your brand name to industry-related issues.

How to Monitor News Effectively?

News monitoring has always been an integral part of media monitoring and PR.

Surely, as a PR professional, you can’t imagine doing your job in a vacuum, without knowing what is being said on the TV or online about your clients. Even more, without being up-to-date with the latest news in your industry.

In the past few years, Artificial Intelligence has significantly changed the way we used to do media monitoring.

Read More: 4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Affect Social Media Monitoring

Can AI news monitoring be way more effective than traditional news and broadcast monitoring? Sure! It has been a much easier process since AI-powered news tracking tools came to play.

Try Mentionlytics for FREE

Benefits of Intelligence News Media Monitoring

The main benefits of AI in online news monitoring, as we see it, are:

1- Topic/Keyword Precision  — You can avoid the information clutter and focus on specific news articles that are highly related to the topic, brand, or keyword of your interest.

2- Time-saving — You save precious hours of your day by having all relevant news collected and categorized automatically in a dashboard or a report file.

3- Monitoring Capacity — You can see all news that matters to you from the entire media world (web, traditional media, social media platforms), something impossible to do manually.

4- Automated Analyses — You have automatically analyzed all the news pieces into comprehensive insights, no matter their volume.

5- Real-time Alerting — You can be instantly aware of any news that comes up regarding your brand or topic, with just an email or notification.

So, how do you monitor media and news? Just leverage an AI-powered news monitoring platform to enjoy all these benefits.

We have gathered here a brief list of the best news tracking tools out there that can support this mission. Let’s have a look!

Best News Tracking Tools

There are so many news tools available today. To help you decide which of them are worth your time — and budget, here are the best news tracking tools.

Tool #1: Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a powerful tool for brand management that can offer you news monitoring services and social listening. It can help you keep track of all news items of your interest on the entire web and social media, with real-time notifications!

It’s a great choice if you work for clients investing in digital PR campaigns and having a robust online presence. The Mentionlytics platform is user-friendly, really straightforward, and has been rated by its users 4,9/5 on g2.com. However, we should admit that our platform is still young, but battle-tested!

Its key features include a news and mention overview dashboard, customizable reports, social media monitoring, the share of voice, trending topics, and of course Real-Time Alerts! You can try Mentionlytics media monitoring for free.

Pricing: Starts at $69 per month.

Tool #2

Cision Communications Cloud is a well-known, multifunctional PR and Marketing Communications tool. It can help you keep track of news across various media sources, from traditional ones to social media.

It’s an established solution in the market, so it’s a verified platform with many reviews online that can give you a general idea of it. However, it’s quite expensive and, according to user comments at review sites such as g2.com, not very easy to use.

Key features include real-time alerts, social analytics, media database, newsroom, outreach, monitoring and listening, and data management and analysis.

Pricing: You have to get in contact with them.

Tool #3: Meltwater

Meltwater is another tool for monitoring news both online and offline. It actually provides media tracking across print media, the web, social media, and even broadcast news monitoring. Meltwater can also help you with media analysis.

It has a straightforward platform and is user-friendly. Although, you can’t have a free trial.

Key features include media database, newsroom, real-time alerts, monitoring and listening, impact measurement, and sentiment analysis.

Pricing: You have to get in contact with them.

Bonus: Check out our list of Meltwater Competitors and Alternatives.

Tool #4: Prowly

Prowly is an alternative PR automation service that provides news monitoring software. It can be used not only for tracking news about your brand online but also for finding journalists and managing contacts.

It has an easy-to-use interface and offers a 7-day trial. Nevertheless, it’s a relatively new solution in the media monitoring game.

Its key features include media database, real-time alerts, newsroom, outreach, reporting, and content creation and distribution.

Pricing: Starts at $479 per month.

Tool #5: Muck Rack

Our last pick is Muck Rack. It’s a PR software provider that offers good news tracking services. Muck Rack’s solution monitors both traditional and online media and keeps you up-to-date with its email alerts.

It’s a practical PR tool with good reviews. However, it doesn’t also offer a free trial.

Its key features include media database, media distribution, real-time alerts, monitoring and reporting, and local and international media coverage.

Pricing: You have to get in contact with them.

That was our list of the best news monitoring tools that can help you stay on top of your brand, industry, and competition.

Let’s explain now what PR professionals, like you, can use news tracking for.

What is News Monitoring Used for?

Keeping an eye on the news can work miracles for your Communications strategy.

We aren’t talking about just PR clipping, but having a well-organized and neat news monitoring service can take your PR efforts to the next level.

Below we analyze the 8 main reasons why PR and marketing communications professionals are leveraging news monitoring.

1- Monitoring Your Reputation

First of all, monitoring online and traditional media for news on your brand is a fundamental part of reputation management.

Interestingly, over 40% of PR experts see the media as unbiased. To understand what people believe about your brand and how they perceive it, you have to know what journalists and reporters say about it. The media and its people are opinion leaders after all.

2- Accessing Top News Sources Fast

News tracking platforms are great in giving you access to prestigious and trustworthy news sources in a fast and easy way. Just a few clicks and you can be informed about what’s going on in your industry or even the world with the credibility of major news outlets.

3- Managing Crisis

When working in PR, sometimes you have to deal with reputation crises. News monitoring can be invaluable under such circumstances.

Time matters when facing crises, so you have to know what the media is publishing about your brand every moment. That’s why many AI-powered news monitoring services offer real-time updates by email, to be up-to-date all the time.

Read More: The 5 Most Crucial Crisis Management Steps

4- Finding Trending Topics in the Industry

We can’t stress this point more: To keep your brand vibrant you should engage it with trending topics. Could you think of a better way to spot trending topics than by global news monitoring?

Our advice: Don’t forget to pay attention to podcast monitoring. Podcasts can give you much detail on trending topics and viral news, as people are having in-depth discussions.

5- Measuring Share of Voice

A media monitoring report that includes news on your competitors and the industry can help you measure your brand’s share of voice. That way you can understand in which media channels your brand’s doing better than your competition and which ones need improvement.

6- Taking Care of Negative News

Negative news monitoring is the key to preventing reputation crisis escalation.

In PR, it’s all about knowing what others say about your clients. You should always be aware of any negative news for them online and offline so that you can perform any damage control actions or pivot your strategy.

7- Understanding Your Target Audience

To get insights into what your audience wants, you have to know what people are talking about lately.

To achieve this, monitor social media which is a great way to do that, however social networks, especially Twitter, are tied to the latest news. So, you have to know what’s in the media currently.

Also, when you monitor local news, you can advance the localization of your PR campaigns and deeply connect the audience with your clients and their brands.

8- Finding Influencers

Last but not least, news tracking can help you with influencer marketing. If you have an idea of the people who are trending in the news lately, you can include them in your next campaigns to capitalize on the buzz around their name.

Also, you can identify through the news items who of those influencers are the best fit for your brand’s voice and purpose.

If you’re still unsure whether you should be tracking news, keep scrolling!

Who Should Monitor News?

To be honest, everyone should keep an eye on the news. But there are 3 professional roles that must monitor news daily or weekly to be aware of what’s going on, or their work could be compromised.

1- PR professionals

It goes without saying that people working in PR have to know what’s being said about their clients in the media. It’s part of their job after all.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the time to check the news thoroughly every day. You should be able to monitor the news for your brands’ mentions, competitors’ media coverage, and hot trends in your industry. That way, you can keep a record and work on them when it’s most convenient.

2- Social Media Managers

News can be an invaluable source of content inspiration for social marketers. You can be up-to-date with what the media are talking about and participate in relevant discussions on social networks — Twitter pops up in your mind.

Furthermore, you can jump into new trends and create relatable content that people will want to engage with. For example, monitoring Reddit news can help you dive deeper into your brand’s niche and come up with out-of-the-box ideas for new posts.

3- CEOs

The CEO’s role is to see the bigger picture of their business and be able to position it correctly in the industry and compared to their competition. That’s why CEOs should have access to global news monitoring.

If you don’t care about complicated media monitoring platforms, you can always turn to free news monitoring alternatives, like Google Alerts. They’re simpler and easier to use. However, the results you’ll get aren’t always complete and trustworthy.

Conclusion

At this point, you surely have comprehended the importance of news monitoring to your PR. News tracking and social media monitoring tools are great helpers when it comes to reputation management, content ideas, and competitor analysis.

Pick an AI-powered tool that will take the manual work of news tracking off your daily to-do list and provide you with invaluable insights for your PR and marketing tactics. Don’t choose just PR clipping, but complete media monitoring services.

Try Mentionlytics media monitoring now for free!