In Part 1 of this series, we looked at using keywords to get better, more targeted results from your Personal Profiles.  Today’s post will focus on streamlining your results by considering the sources you search.

It’s fairly obvious that searching fewer sources means you’ll have fewer results.  True, there are times when casting the broadest possible net is the best strategy.  If your topic is obscure, or if your aim is to track all coverage of a topic, you’ll want to search the largest possible selection of sources to find content.  However searching over 4,500 sources can result in… well, too many results.  Despite your best efforts in optimizing your keywords, sometimes words are used in contexts you didn’t intend.  We want to show you how careful selection of the sources that you search can provide you with a better proportion of results that are relevant and worth your valuable time.

Each Profile Stands Alone

The basis for these source selection tips is the fact that each Profile can have its own set of sources attached to it.  That is to say, the source selection you make for one individual Profile does not affect any existing Profiles, nor does it influence the source selection of any future Profiles.  You can make separate source selection decisions for each Profile, depending on the topic, along the vectors described below.

Consider the Medium

The first decision you can make regarding source selection is that of which media to include.  FPinfomart offers many choices, including:

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Trade Publications
• News wires and PR wires
• Online news
• Blogs
• Twitter
• Television
• Radio

Obviously, selecting content from each of these media types will get you the broadest possible coverage.  But perhaps certain media won’t produce relevant results for a particular topic.

Your first source narrowing option is presented on the keywords input page, where you’re asked to decide upon a subset of “News” type sources, as well as whether you wish to search for any blogs.  The default selection for new Profiles to search ALL available sources, from all available media.

Initial source selection options, on the Profile creation/edit form

It is possible, at this point, to narrow your source selection to a single News source (News includes all media types listed above EXCEPT blogs and Twitter), a library of news sources (one of our “pre-set” libraries, or one you’ve created previously) and/or the same options for blogs.

However you’ll have more power and choice if you choose the 3rd option, “Let me select from the full list of news sources.”  (Note:  a similar option for Blogs will be available in the near future.  In the meantime, you must select either all blogs, a single blog, or a blog category).

If you do select the “Full list of sources” option, once you’ve clicked the “Create” (or “Save,” if you’re Editing an existing Profile) button, you’ll be presented with the complete list of available News sources.

At this time, you can use the “All” and “None” links to select or deselect those media which you wish to include or exclude from your results, based on your decision as to which is most appropriate.

Select or Deselect sources by media for more relevant results.

Consider the Geography

Another vector along which you can narrow your source selection is by geography.  Perhaps your topic is relevant only to a certain region.  Or, you prefer to read the results only from local community papers, excluding the major papers.  You may want only Canadian results.  Whatever your geographic criteria, you can customize your source selection accordingly.  Simply browse the geographic categories, selecting or deselecting some or all of any category (such as National, the various Provinces, International, US, UK, etc.)

Consider the Subject Matter

Newspapers are great for covering topics in almost any range of interest.  Just about any subject can be covered in a newspaper.  However for really subject-focused topics, browse our selection of trade publications and blogs.  You’ll be able to select sources that concentrate on the field specifically relevant to your search query.   Exclude anything that wouldn’t conceivably have relevant content.

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If a Profile were on a finance-related topic, I might choose these Trade Publications and exclude all others. [click for larger view

Will you use this source combination again?

Now that you’ve carefully perused our complement of sources and selected just those relevant to this Profile, consider whether this is a combination of sources you might use again in future.  If you’ll be creating other Profiles on similar topics, you can save yourself some time by saving this source selection as a Library.

To save your source selection as a library, simply type a Library name in this box.

To save your source selection as a Library, scroll to the bottom of the source selection screen.  Simply type a name for the Library into the box (use something that will help you easily identify it in a list of other source Libraries you may create in future), and click Save.  Your source selection will be applied to your Profile, and the Library will be saved for use in any other Profiles.  Your source Libraries are also available in Archives search and Quick Search.

The next time you wish to apply an existing Library to a Profile, use the Select Libraries option on the initial Profile creation/edit form.  Select the desired Library from the drop-down menu, and you’ll skip the rest of the source selection process.

NOTE:  Blogs are NOT included in source libraries at this time.  We will be offering the ability to create a selection of blogs and add them to Libraries, in the near future.

Sorting results after the fact

If you still prefer to search a broad spectrum of sources and then “slice and dice” your results after the search is completed, you can use our Navigators to view subsets of your search results.  Navigators are located in a column to the right of your results.  A number in brackets next to a Navigator indicates the number of hits within your results set belonging to that group.  Clicking any Navigator will narrow your results set to just those which match that particular criteria.  Two Navigators especially relevant to this discussion are Medium and Region.

Click one of the Navigators to narrow your results set by Medium, or by Region.

Wrapping Up

It’s tempting, when beginning a media monitoring exercise, to set up your searches for maximum volume of results.  Most people quickly find however, that quantity doesn’t equal quality.  There are two main methods to stem the tides of news volume:  by optimizing your keywords, and by careful selection of sources for monitoring.  Streamline your media monitoring by ensuring that only relevant content hits your screen.

I hope this two-part series on narrowing your Personal Profile results has been helpful.  Got an idea for another topic you’d like to see explored in-depth?  Let us know in the comments!

There are as many ways to use FPinfomart.ca as we have customers, but there’s no escaping the fact that Personal Profiles are a fundamental tool in Media Monitoring.   For many of us, one of the issues we face is navigating that very fine line between ensuring we are aware of all relevant coverage, and getting so many hits that we are overwhelmed by sheer volume of information.

When it comes to Personal Profiles, there are two key strategies in fine-tuning your results to include as much relevant content as possible, while excluding less-relevant items.  We’ll address each of these in a two-part series.  Today, we’ll look at using keywords to get relevant hits.  Tomorrow’s post will focus on source selection strategies.

Profile Title vs. Keywords

One of the most common “rookie mistakes” we see customers make is entering keywords in the Profile Name box, and leaving the keywords box blank.  The Profile Title is simply a name you give each Profile to be able to distinguish one Profile from another (don’t forget, you can have up to 100 separate Profiles in your account!)

Make sure you use the Profile Name box to give your Profile a title. The title you place in this box is NOT searched. Keywords or phrases you wish to search belong in the next 3 boxes, but at least ONE keyword must be entered in the "Match Stories..." box.

Synonyms, concepts, and alternate spellings

As mentioned in the previous section, after the title, the only other mandatory box on the Profile form is the one labeled “Match stories that mention ANY of these phrases…”  Use this box to enter the words or phrases you wish to search for, with one per line (hit enter after each word or phrase).  Do not use any quotes, Boolean operators (such as or, and, or not), or any other search syntax here.  I like to call this a “what you type is what you get” box.

Once you’ve selected the focus of your Profile, do a little brainstorming.  What words or phrases would you expect to appear in news articles (or TV broadcasts – more about that later) about this topic?  What are some of the synonyms for those words?  Are there other ways of referring to an individual?  Who are all the players in the industry?  Are acronyms or nicknames ever used?  Some examples to consider are shown in the following screen shots.

List all members of a list separately.

Make sure to include nicknames and variations of acronyms.

When your keyword is a name, consider variant spellings, titles, and middle names.

When creating a Profile that will include Television content, make sure to consider common mis-spellings of your keywords.  Since TV monitoring relies on the closed-captioning of programs, it is wise to take into account potential phonetic spellings of less common words, names, and other ways keywords may be transcribed by a captioner who is in a hurry or unfamiliar with the topic of discussion.

A Series of Sieves

I like to think of the three keyword boxes on the Profiles form as a series of sieves, each with a finer mesh than the one above.   The articles in our database represent the material to be sorted, and your keywords make up the sieves.  The first (“Match Stories…”) keyword box is the sieve with the largest holes.  Any stories that make it through to the second sieve can then be filtered again by the second keyword box, the one labeled “And Require…”  Any material left after this second filtering can then be passed through the third sieve with the smallest holes, the “But Exclude…” keyword box.

There are times when using only that first sieve is appropriate.  When you want to retrieve every single article that mentions your company name, you’ll use only the first “Match Stories” box, and leave the others blank.  But perhaps you wish to subdivide your topic, or only retrieve articles that not only mention an organization, but also mention keywords describing a particular aspect of that organization.  If that’s the case, you’ll want to employ at least one of your finer-meshed sieves as well.

Choosing a Narrow Topic

It is best to search the narrowest possible topic with each Profile.  That doesn’t mean  you should use only one keyword.  There may be multiple keywords required to describe your topic (see the section on synonyms, above), however the narrower your aim, the more precise your results may be.  For example, create one Profile for your company name and/or its spokespeople; one for your competitors; and a third for your products, and another for regulatory bodies related to your industry.  You may end up with two or more similar Profiles – for example, one for Mergers & Acquisitions in your industry, and a second for new hires in your industry.

Following are three examples of similar but separate Profiles.  It would be overwhelming to create a GENERAL Profile that retrieved every article that mentioned any of Canada’s major banks.  But perhaps there are specific aspects of the banking industry we’re interested in tracking.  We would create a separate Profile for each “sub-topic.”  The keywords in the “Match Stories…” box might be the same (or very similar), while the keywords we use to create the second and third sieves (the “And Require” and “But Exclude” boxes) will vary.

Where are you looking?

There is a drop-down menu to the right of each keyword which will help you specify exactly where in an article we should look for your keywords or phrases. Search “Anywhere in Story” for the broadest possible search.  Restrict your search to “Headline or Lead” to narrow your results to only articles focused on your particular keywords.  Select “Byline” with a keyword of a journalist’s name to find articles written only by a certain individual.  The narrowest possible search is to restrict your search to “Headline” only, which would retrieve an article only if your keyword(s) appeared in the title.

Filter it

We offer several checkboxes on the right of the Profiles form that allow you to narrow your results by eliminating certain content types.

• The Editorials filter excludes any article whose story type is classified as an Editorial.
• The Letters to the Editor filter excludes any article whose story type is classified as a Letter to the Editor.
• The Sports filter excludes any article which originated in the Sports section of the newspaper.
• The Arts, Life, Homes, Food filter excludes any article which originated in the Arts, Life, Homes and Food sections of the newspaper.
• The News Briefs filter eliminates columns of short news summaries, where the title or headline of the column is ‘News Briefs.’
• The Stock Market Summaries filter eliminates lists of stock market results.
• The Caption Only filter excludes any item which has no story text. For example, the caption of photos or other images that ran without an accompanying article.
• The CP Wire in papers filter excludes articles whose source is CP Wire (Canadian Press). This allows you to cut down on duplicate results. This Filter will NOT exclude the original CP Wire articles.  It only eliminates those versions printed in newspapers.
• The Obituaries filter excludes Obituaries and death notices.

A moving target

What’s important today may be yesterday’s news tomorrow.  New spokespeople are hired; new products are introduced, and others fall by the wayside.  Competitors come and go, and campaigns have discrete start and end points.  You can always delete obscure Profiles, and edit existing ones to tailor your keywords to match what’s relevant now.

Keep up with changing priorities - Edit or Delete Profiles as needed.

Coming tomorrow – Part 2 – Source Selection Strategies

I hope you’ve stuck with me through this lengthy tour of the many strategies you can use to optimize your Profile results with your keywords.  Come back tomorrow for part 2 of this series – using source selection to narrow your results to those relevant to you.