When working with our clients, we often build a media map – a picture of the titles that are relevant to that client and the topics that particular spread of media is covering.
The logic, of course, is that by understanding their media landscape we can develop content that media will find interesting and useful. And that leads to coverage.
Sometimes a client will have genuine ‘hard’ news, or something that demands attention regardless, but generally it is far more logical to understand the media’s agenda and ride on it.
As we often work with Apollo Research to evaluate PR campaigns (and indeed have ’share of voice’ metrics tied into some of our client contracts), it was only a matter of time until the bright idea struck – Chameleon commissioning Apollo Research to produce a landscape view of technology oriented coverage in the UK. Just moments later, the analysis was named the Technology Media Landscape.
In the UK, Apollo Research logs the details of over 30,000 stories a month across 350 titles: national and regional newspapers, business technology, consumer technology, vertical industry, general business, and lifestyle magazines. That’s as comprehensive a database as you’re likely to find for this type of analysis.
So, if you’re an in-house marketer at a tech company, feel free to download the report and have a read. It’s an industry-wide view and will hopefully give an insight as to what technology issues the media are most interested in. Consider the angles your company has on the ‘biggest risers’ topics, for example. It’s an easy way to attach your brand to the things journalists are writing about.
If you’re another PR agency, feel free to download a copy, cut and paste the graphs and pretend it’s your own. If it means that as an industry tech PR practitioners become a bit more useful to journos, then it’ll have served its purpose.
2 Comments
Mark Samuels
2 June 2009
03:26pm
Interesting stuff. One of the things I picked up was that the issues you think are most pertinent are not necessarily the most talked about.
Take (what I thought to be) the ubiquitous term ‘cloud computing’, which was the biggest riser at the start of the year – but still only makes 46th in the most covered themes list.
Like you mentioned, Steve, different audiences – CIOs and IT directors, for example – have different priorities to technology professionals and gamers. And if not, I guess I can expect to have loads of CIO-focused pitches that mention games software, digital television and mobile handsets.
Martin Veitch
3 June 2009
12:58pm
Hm, cloud computing: Only in IT could you have something nobody can define rise by 500 per cent. Not surprised to see other people are also bored (or nauseated by hypocrisy) on green/CSR stuff. Tape drives and optical media will seem like Camp coffee and Fray Bentos to young ‘uns.
2Comments
Technology landscape
Posted by Steve Loynes June 2 2009 12:13pm