One of Memo’s superpowers: Custom Flash Reporting. Custom Flash Reports are exactly what they sound like: on-demand readership reports around a customer-chosen topic, delivered in a flash.
Flash Reports provide easy to understand summaries of readership around a specific topic or news cycle (a product launch, a crisis, etc). They break out the top-read publishers and articles on the topic so that our customers can better understand how the news is impacting their brand or industry.
We compiled a quick list of 10 ways Memo customers leveraged Custom Flash Reports of late to track a news cycle, reflect on launches, or simply better understand something new.
1. Tracking an incident or crisis
Whether it’s tracking readership around a recent price hike, incident in a sports stadium, lawsuit filed, court settlement, or union strike, we pull Flash Reports all the time tracking breaking brand news so that our customers can see quickly how many people are reading about the incident or crisis, what articles are attracting readers, and which publications are drawing the most attention to the news. This helps comms teams better plan their next step should readership spike.
2. Monthly leadership news analysis
Leadership. They can be seen as visionaries, chaotic captains, or anything in between. Some of our customers request Flash reports around specific leaders on a monthly or quarterly basis. Knowing what articles and narratives about your CEO attracts the most readers helps them strategize for the month, quarter, and year ahead.
3. Reflecting on a product announcement or campaign
Perhaps one of the most common ways our customers leverage Custom Flash Reports is to reflect on a specific product announcement or campaign. Anything from celebrity ad campaigns, to a new product launch, to a data report, we recap readership for the overall campaign and surface the publications and reporters that drove the most impact. Not only does this help our customers showcase the success of their work, it can also help them strategize for what’s up next.
4. Recapping buzz around annual events
Annual events are an enormous lift for so many of our customers. We tend to recap coverage and readership for sports events and corporate events pretty frequently. It gives our customers a way to measure the success of event PR and also contributes to the brand’s return on investment.
5. Measuring the impact of PR for budget negotiations
When so many corporate headlines revolve around layoffs and losses, budget negotiations undoubtedly get tougher. We’ve seen some of our customers requesting Flash Reports around the Memo Readership Value (MRV) for a full month, quarter, or year of press coverage. MRV calculates the cost it would take through real advertising channels to drive the same amount of traffic to a piece of content as readers to a specific article. This helps them measure, in dollars, the impact of PR and justify spending when purse strings tighten.
6. Understanding industry news cycles
Industry disruptions and competitor crises can shake things up for any brand. Not knowing how things will pan out or worrying you might get caught up in the news cycle could be cause for concern. We recently worked with many customers to track news around brand boycotts so they know what (and who) is driving the most readership in case things take a turn.
7. Uncovering narratives around earnings
Earnings. During times of economic stress, they have pretty much everyone on the edge of their seat. We work with our publicly traded customers to recap earnings coverage, uncover narratives across highly-read coverage, and surface publications creating the biggest draw in readership around earnings news. Not only does this help our customers report back to leadership how earnings were received, it can also help them strategize for the quarter ahead.
8. Measuring impact of corporate initiatives
Just because corporate social responsibility efforts are good for the world doesn’t always mean that they are easily justified parts of the business. Sad but true. Our team created Flash Reports for a handful of customers who wanted to measure the MRV of recent ESG initiatives. The goal? They demonstrated that the true value of PR around their efforts help justify the spend it takes to get ESG initiatives off the ground.
9. Surfacing macro industry trends
Memo’s Insights team compiles a quarterly Macro Trends Report that’s only for our customers so they can see readership, top publications, reporters, and other readership trends around major news. Some customers also like to see Macro Trends on a monthly basis for their specific industry. This is a summary of the highest-read topics for them (and their competition) and includes total readership, average readership, volume of articles, and any changes in readership by topic month-over-month. Our customers typically use this to reflect on their own comms efforts while also thinking about how they fit into unfolding industry conversations.
10. Understanding the impact of regional politics on a brand
The intersection of politics and business can often be a tricky one. We recently worked with a couple of our customers to track readership around local politics in places where they had a presence so that they could better understand how many people were reading about issues that could impact their employees, brand, or even their bottom line. Having a clear understanding of readership was a clear first step in creating a “in case of emergency” plan for comms and the brand at large.
Product Tip: Create Flash Reports in your Memo Dashboard
Custom Flash Reports are great for tracking stories not already captured in your Memo dashboard, or when you’re short on time to filter coverage.
But if you have all the coverage you need and can spare a few minutes, it’s easy to automatically generate and email PDF summaries right from your Memo dashboard. Here’s how:
- First set the filters for the relevant date range, brand(s), and topics/tags.
- Click the graph icon in the upper right corner.
- Name your report, preview the PDF, and enter any email recipients
To learn more about Memo’s approach to comms measurement and Flash Reports, get in touch.