As I’m updating my resume and looking over past work, I came across some media tracking spreadsheets I’d crafted. The company is international, but the data I had was (mostly) national (US), with little bits of Canada thrown in. Anyway, what I received were spreadsheets from an agency covering all media stories. The main thing I did with this was break it down by focus (positive vs. negative, for the most part).
So, I’ve been considering what I would do differently now. This is just a stream of ideas, so please understand them as such. I would like to build reports with more depth. Look at regional coverage. Map out city by city, etc, across the globe if possible. Layer this on top of a map. Then with that report I’d break out positive, negative & neutral focus. It’s important to note that it’s hard to ascertain focus when one doesn’t see the coverage. Anyway, I also thought it would be good to look at what’s generating the coverage: new products, new markets, “issues” (which should be tracked by individual issues/campaigns. It would be elucidating to track how the issue moves across the landscape.). I also would add social media to this. I want to see/show how awareness is impacted by those tools.
On a technical note, I would not use Excel for data collection. Collect raw data in a database. The challenge is being proactive with the structure. I’d love to build something that was accessible at a more macro level. Perhaps with SQL and displayed in a Sharepoint site. I have an aversion to myriad individual databases globally distributed.
Anyway, I’m learning and growing.
