Welcome back to another Ask Me Anything, a weekly series where we talk to our friends, our viewers, and our community about all of their pressing needs, questions, wants, and desires.

Let’s take a look at the mailbag to see which questions are burning this week.

Here’s a good one:

Have you done a breakdown of media mentions monitoring services? I currently use Cision and after spending a lot of time last night, trying to pull mentioned charts into their automatic report generator and customize it, how I want, I gave up and restorative resorted to screen snips in my own PowerPoint. Granted, I’m a bit grumpy about it this morning, but I’m not sure if another service is that much better or if this is just the way it is.

Best Media Monitoring Services

Been there, done that. Sometimes it’s much easier sometimes to just take a screengrab and throw it into a PowerPoint.

It’s not the way it’s supposed to work, but I totally get it.

Here are some other options:

  • CoverageBook. Billed as an easy way to “showcase and share PR results,” CoverageBook turns all of your coverage links into beautiful reports.
  • PR.co. This is the first of three PRM (public relations management) software companies I can recommend. They help communications teams publish news, manage contacts, send tracked emails, and manage complex editorial workflows.
  • Prezly. Another PRM, Prezly provides software for communications teams that want to do more. Manage your media relations, create online newsrooms, and publish and pitch your stories.
  • Prowly. The last of the three PRMs we like, Prowly helps you find relevant media contacts and send eye-catching visual news releases to make media relations simple.
  • MuckRack. MuckRack is an all-in-one PRM, results reporting, super cool tool.
  • BrandWatch. BrandWatch is true social media monitoring so they’re not going to have the media contacts and CRM and results in one spot, but I do like to combine them with MuckRack for some clients, depending on goals and volume of social media mentions.
  • Brand24. Brand24 is another social media monitoring tool, which I use for my own business. They bill themselves as online reputation management for communications teams, but I personally like how accurate their results are, based on keywords.

There are many options for you, but what you end up using depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

If it’s simply because you’re trying to get everything into a report that makes sense, I would probably use a CoverageBook or something like that.

If you’re trying to keep everything in one place with a (for lack of a better term) CRM and attach results with pretty charts for reporting, then I would look at one of the PRM tools.

Personally, my favorite is MuckRack because it has everything we need in one place. I do combine it with BuzzStream and with Brand24, but that isn’t necessary. Sometimes we use multiple tools based on the client’s needs.

But MuckRack, in my opinion, is the best all-in-one tool. Plus, I also use it as a “journalist” and really like that interface, as well.

Have a Question For Us?

If you have a question for a future AMA—or for my summer intern— you can drop them below or join us in the (free) Spin Sucks Community.

You can also find us on social media, email us, or stop by with a bottle of wine for porch drinking.

See you after the Fourth of July holiday!

Gini Dietrich

Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO, and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks (the book). She is the creator of the PESO Model© and has crafted a certification for it in collaboration with USC Annenberg. She has run and grown an agency for the past 19 years. She is co-author of Marketing in the Round, co-host of Inside PR, and co-host of The Agency Leadership podcast.

View all posts by Gini Dietrich