Scaling Media Relations: From Excel to Customized Coordination Tools
When I first started in media relations, I was part of a team of two. It was easy to track things in Excel and yell across our stuffy little room as new requests for statements came in.
Two years later, I was working for an agency of 15. We all had our own Excel lists and pitched media just about every day. Reporting was a painstaking process of collaborating with junior staff to compile outreach efforts and media hits to show the impact of our work.
Fast forward five years and I was leading a team of six at a mid-sized university. To try to bring some order to the chaos and pull us out of our silos, we started using an out-of-the-box project-management system and came up with some hacks to meet our editorial content needs. There were no analytics—it would have been complicated to set up even if we’d known what KPIs to track—but at least we had something.
Several years later, I joined an even bigger university and the problem of keeping track, quantifying and showing the impact of all the media work across the university became even more important.
What became clear is that old-school methods of Excel, Google Sheets, or generic project-management software could only get us so far. It was either too simple and wouldn’t allow us to get the important team-level info we needed to make good communications decisions, or it was overly complicated, leading to team members throwing up their hands in understandable frustration.
We needed a middle ground: something that would be the perfect blend of standard features and customizable options to meet the team’s specific requirements.
We needed a platform that would allow team members to collaborate and contribute to media and issues work, with a little extra customization. Our solution was designed to accommodate just that. With the ability to add more team members, customize service units, types of services and campaigns, our new system gives media relations leaders the flexibility they need to boost productivity and efficiency and demonstrate the impact of their team.
So, if you’re tired of cookie-cutter solutions that don’t quite fit your team’s unique needs, give Broadsight Tracker a spin and experience the power of customization!
