Did we get any coverage? Search me…
There’s nothing like a stuttering economy to encourage chat about bringing PR in-house. Though as an aside I’m intrigued that people immediately believe it’s cheaper, sorry more cost-effective to build in-house teams, even though quite often it’s not cheaper.
As budgets tighten, all over the web conversations spring up about how to do PR and PR research on the cheap. The most popular ‘tip’ I’ve seen recently on e-mail lists and web sites is:
“Hey dump those monitoring firms and subscription services, Google’s news search engine is all you need.”
Pardon? Have any of these folks used it? It’s a 1 out of 100 for accuracy, reach and depth. Try it out. Unless your client/employer is regularly on the news pages of the AP, Wall Street Journal and USA Today this search engine is not for you (yeah sure your client is top of the news every day…sure 🙂
In fact, people who can’t afford clipping services are typically small and private. If you rely on the Google news search engine you may get depressed.
So what’s a solution? Well it’s not perfect, it’s not guaranteed to track every hit, but waaaay better than Google News Search are free consolidated search products like Copernic (or shell out $40 for the more detailed version) and manually tracking your key targets. Though in my opinion paying for a clipping service (online or offline) may be a better, more productive use of your time….
Murphy's Law 