dna13

Checklist for Evaluating Communications Management Platforms

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Piggybacking off of an earlier post on the quality v. quantity conundrum of reputation management, the process of selecting the most appropriate PR software for your needs is riddled with obstacles. For starters, new solutions seem to emerge almost daily, making it difficult to know where to begin. Then, you must assess each provider's capabilities against your own needs:

• What breadth and depth of media coverage is sufficient?
• What level of analysis are you looking for?
• Reporting capabilities?
• Customization?
• Alignment with other organizational activities?

With all of these questions in mind, the following checklist outlines the most important areas to evaluate when selecting a communications management platform:

• Issues-centric analysis: This functionality allows users to classify every piece of data, from internal activities to social media conversations, and assign it to a specific issue/topic/campaign. This enables rapid retrieval, roll-up reporting, demonstration of ROI through customizable reports, and identification of trends and patterns.

• Aggregated and integrated monitoring coverage: This functionality provides traditional media, online media and social media reports, and aggregates data based on highly targeted parameters.

• Automation: The most effective communications management applications can be rapidly deployed, configured and reconfigured as needed, and have comprehensive customization options. The biggest failure of most automated applications is the lack of customer service and back-end support, so consider this when seeking a solution.

• Security: It is critical that the software platform have permission-based security clearances that are aligned with workflow and organizational hierarchies.

• Collaboration and convenience: The most strategic communications applications use topic-specific collaboration functionality that ties together corporate users, agencies, spokespeople and the C-suite. Collaboration functionality should also promote sharing information across the enterprise. Likewise, convenience is critical and hinges on easy deployment and a user-friendly interface.

• Media relations/research: Media relationships remain a vital part of PR success, and your communications management platform should support the process of cultivating these relationships by providing information surrounding journalists/bloggers interests, reporting histories, biases and engagement preferences.

For more information on evaluating communications management platforms, check out dna13's white paper, "How to select PR software that safeguards branding".