Clipping: What is it and why should you use it in your brand?

When you are in charge of a brand, you have to be aware of the image that is shown of it. That is to say,you have to know what the media say about it, what users are saying about it among other things.

At the end of the day, a large percentage of your company's reputation will depend on what others think about it.

That’s why it’s so important to be aware of its impact and the type of media coverage it gets.

Now, we know that being aware of each of these details can take a lot of time and work, but thanks to the fact that this is the age of technology, you have programs that will facilitate and automate all the work.

So it’s a very good time to work with clipping and improve your company's decision making.

In case you don't know what it's all about yet, we'll give you all the details you need:

What is clipping?

It’s a media monitoring strategy based on tracking all the media coverage of a company. Whether it’s a small brand or an internationally recognized one.

The idea is to collect everything that is said in the different existing media about the company in order to know what is the media impact it has had.

Of course, today there are many types of media, more than in previous decades. But the more each of them is taken into account, the more accurate your business analysis will be.

That’s why in order to work well with clipping you should review newspapers, magazines, radio, television, websites, blogs, social networks, among other things.

The ultimate goal of this strategy is to take each and every one of these data to make an accurate analysis of the image that others have of your brand.

That is, you will be able to know what is being said about your company, what has been the impression of customers and even your competition.

Of course, this means that you will encounter both positive and negative comments, but all of them must be taken into account in order to improve your work.

Why is it so useful for companies?

Clipping should be understood as an investigative and analytical tool that allows you to recognize the feedback that others have about your brand.

How are you going to improve on the failures you have, if you have no idea where you have failed?

That is exactly what clipping helps you to do: analyzing the comments of others to find negative comments that allow you to correct mistakes and using the positive comments to strengthen what you have done well.

The media is the ideal place to find out what everyone thinks about you. Either by expert journalists or by your own clients.

In addition, it’s something that will be of great help in all departments of your company, both in marketing, to improve the reach of campaigns, and in sales, to strengthen the relationship that your salespeople have with customers.

By any standards, this is a very useful strategy that all companies should apply in order to learn from their own mistakes and improve.

What are the objectives of clipping?

In case you are still not entirely clear about the functionality of clipping and why it’s something you should use, you should recognize its objectives.

It’s a strategy that fulfills several types of functions and each one of them is important, so it’s time for you to know what they are:

• Improving your company's reputation.

• Building a better image of your brand.

• Identifying errors in time to avoid a business crisis.

• Having a better control of the company's discourse.

• Analyzing your competition and evaluating your positioning.

• Calculating the value of your corporate image at a social level.

• Identifying in time opportunities to appear in the media.

• Recognizing the journalists who cover your field of work.

• Better measuring the impact of advertising campaigns.

How does clipping work nowadays?

Clipping is a strategy that has been used for several decades and is still very important today.

Of course, the way in which it has worked over time has varied significantly.

Years ago, all data collection work was done manually. That is, a team of employees would go through newspaper publications and radio broadcasts to identify what was being said about the brand.

This is hard work that requires a lot of time and, above all, a lot of concentration. Fortunately, this is something that has now changed, and thank goodness it has, because today there are many other means of communication.

Thanks to advances in the age of technology, various software and computer programs have been created to facilitate the data collection process.

These are known as clipping services and offer you the possibility of configuring it to your taste and needs.

So, it’s all a matter of leaving the whole process of data collection in the hands of these types of programs so that you can then analyze all the information that the program has gathered.

Best of all, even the analysis process can be made even simpler, as some clipping services will produce reports summarizing everything they have gathered so that you can use them as a basis for analysis.

How is clipping categorized?

Before starting to work with clipping, you should bear in mind that it’s a strategy that is divided into different types.

This division will depend and vary according to what you want to know about your brand. The larger your company is, the more data you will be able to find out about it.

Therefore, you should know that among the existing types of clipping there are:

Clipping according to subject matter

• Brand clipping.

• Sponsorship.

• Competition.

• Sector.

• Events.

• Reputational.

Clipping according to coverage

• Digital media.

• Radio.

• Written press.

• Television.

• Social networks.

• Paywalls.

• Influencers.

• Multimedia.

Clipping according to location

• National.

• Regional.

• International.

Clipping by duration

• Of topics of indefinite continuity.

• Of a specific event.

Steps to follow to apply clipping in your company

You have already identified how positive it is to use clipping no matter what sector your brand belongs to.

Therefore, if you are interested in starting to work with a clipping strategy, you need to know which are the steps to follow for its correct application.

Keep in mind that there are various aspects of clipping that you will need to customize according to your business needs, but other than that, the steps to follow will always be the same.

In order for you to be much more prepared to apply this strategy, we will explain briefly the steps you must follow.

1. Analyze and identify your objectives

As with any other business process, the first thing you should do is recognize the objectives you want to work with.

After all, the application you give to clipping will depend on what kind of information you want to obtain about your brand and what you want to use that data for.

As mentioned, there are several types of clipping and it is important that you decide which one to work with first.

2. Select the clipping service that best suits your needs

Once you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve through this strategy, it will be time to get started and for this you will have to choose a clipping service that suits your needs.

Fortunately, this will not be complicated, since you will find several types of software that can do this job.

Of course, each of them will vary according to their capabilities, features and prices, so it is important that you do some research on what type of software will work best for what you are looking to achieve.

3. Set the appropriate settings in the clipping service.

If you have already selected which clipping program you are going to work with, it’s time to set the proper settings.

The best of all is that this type of service allows you to completely customize the settings.

Therefore, you will be able to choose which topics you want it to review, which media it will have to track, until what date to review the publications and all that kind of details.

Keep in mind that the more specific the configurations you make, the better the results you will get through the software to form the database you want to work with.

4. Carefully analyze the data collected

Now, after all this, comes the most important step of all: analyzing the data obtained.

At this point you have the option to manually review each and every piece of data collected or to rely only on the information that appears in the software report.

Either way, you will be ready to perform an accurate analysis of your brand image.

You will then be able to meet with your entire team to measure your company's reputation and identify whether your business objectives have been met as expected.

5. Make the appropriate business decisions

To finish the whole clipping process properly, you need to make the right decisions.

As mentioned, all the data obtained will allow you to make better business decisions on various aspects of your brand.

Whether it is to better redirect a marketing campaign, to better organize your store spaces or to work in a deeper way on better customer service.

Based on the data obtained, you will be able to make these informed decisions and be certain that they will bring positive results for your company as a whole.

After all, there’s nothing better than taking into account the opinion of customers and external users to offer better products, services and shopping experiences.

Benefits of using clipping in your company

If you have come this far, but you still have your doubts about clipping, it’s because you need to know the benefits that this strategy offers.

Keep in mind that no matter what type of data you want to track or to which labor sector your company belongs, you will be able to use clipping to your advantage to obtain benefits at different levels.

To give you a better idea of all this, you should know that the main benefits of clipping are:

• Learning to respond intelligently and in a reasoned manner to negative criticism.

• Identifying the constructive opinions of users to obtain new business ideas that meet their needs.

• Defining much more precisely who your target audience is.

• Being prepared to avoid and combat any type of business crisis.

• Quantitatively measuring your marketing campaigns and their impact on your customers.

• Identifying valuable data about your current competition.

• Recognizing market trends more quickly to stick to them.

Undoubtedly, as soon as you start working with clipping, business analysis will be done in the shortest possible time and you will be able to make decisions that set a better course for your company.

Being aware of what others are saying about your company is fundamental and will provide you with specific data to improve your entire marketing campaign.

Now that you know more about this strategy, what do you think about it, is it something you would use with your company? Leave your opinion on the subject in the comments section.