MarketingBASE found the clip management system particularly handy; it's no longer necessary to review clips daily--and because the Boolean search engine enables deeper cross-referencing. Within this clip database system, the customer can search at any time for additional key words. It is also possible to sort clips by date or media source. CyberAlert also enables each user to forward a particular citation or even a whole folder of clips to another person.

Similar to CyberAlert, eWatch provides a daily alert and Web access, but offers fewer features and options by comparison, according to MarketingBASE.15 The e-mail alerts do not hotlink to the URL cited. eWatch saves results for only two weeks. At this writing, eWatch does not include a working search function, although the user instructions describe a search capability. eWatch does include some Web services not currently offered by CyberAlert, including monitoring investor relations message boards such as Motley Fool and Silicon Investor. Company Sleuth provides the same services free of charge--but only for public companies.

MarketingBASE was unable to test Cyveillance, which delivers a monthly analytical report, compiled by its editors. The Cyveillance service is more geared to identifying schemes that involve traffic diversion, counterfeit products, and inappropriate product promotion by channel partners.

Among the three services examined, CyberAlert seems to offer the best value and most flexible terms. At the time of the MarketingBASE article, CyberAlert charged $395 per month per search string on a month-to-month agreement with quantity discounts to $295 per month. The eWatch charge is based on numbers of users and is on an annual contract basis. Pricing of Cyveillance begins at $80,000 annually.

Summary and Conclusions

The burgeoning Internet has created a new information and communications revolution. Almost every industry and product category is changing with lightning speed as both dotcom and brick-and-mortar companies enter e-commerce and consumers exploit Web benefits. In the Internet economy, new companies must find novel ways to succeed, and established firms must innovate to survive. The race to market and growth in competition require innovative ways to find, gather, and process information needed for business planning, reputation management, and protection of brand equity.

As a result, automated Internet monitoring services are rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for reputation management, competitive intelligence, and infringement monitoring for most companies.

By combining the best attributes of search engines (in-depth coverage of the visible Internet), electronic news aggregators (timely coverage of news sources), and traditional clipping services (delivery of all found articles) into a single, automated, time-saving, and customized information retrieval service, the automated services are quite clearly the most effective and time-efficient tool now available for Internet monitoring and Web clipping. On the whole, Internet monitoring and clipping services, such as CyberAlert, are more effective and less expensive than assigning staff to find news and other articles about a company and its products on the Internet. With their relatively low costs – starting at about $300 per month -- they are an affordable productivity tool for almost any sized company in almost any industry or business, almost anywhere in the world.

Mining information on the Internet is a vital component of a well-designed reputation management and market intelligence program. However, finding information on the Internet is only the first step. For that information to be useful in corporate decision-making, it must be processed – stored, organized, evaluated, analyzed and then reported to key decision-makers – up to and including the CEO – in an actionable form. Well-formed intelligence will lead to better-informed decision-making. For virtually all companies, a cohesive and well-executed program of Internet monitoring and intelligence will undoubtedly lead to better business performance.

References

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[ Note: Editorial Media & Marketing International ceased operations in December of 2000 and the above mentioned links are no longer available. ]

13. Gray, R. PR and the Internet. PR Week (UK). February 11, 2000. Available at: http://www.prweekuk.com/uk/bprac/internet.htm. Accessed August 22, 2000.

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17. Kassel, A. The last word on monitoring and clipping services. Searcher Magazine. September 2000; 8:8, 22-35. Available at: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/kassel.htm. Accessed August 26, 2000.

Note From CyberAlert: This article is designed as a professional educational program for widespread publication. It is copyright by CyberAlert, Inc., but may be copied and published at will in its entirety or in part, provided the article or excerpt carries appropriate credits for the writer, Amelia Kassel of MarketingBASE (http://www.marketingbase.com) and for CyberAlert, Inc.(http://www.cyberalert.com).

The proper bibliographical citation is: Kassel, A., Internet Monitoring and Clipping: Strategies for Public Relations, Marketing and Competitive Intelligence in http://www.cyberalert.com/whitepaper.html. The copyright owner would appreciate notification of publication. Please send notice to comcowic@cyberalert.com. ]