Reach provides the foundations of media impact by making target audiences aware of an event, its character and ambitions. The scale and nature of that impact, however, is determined far more by the way in which these audiences react to the media coverage they are exposed to. That reaction is driven largely by the tone of this coverage and the way in which they engage with it.
Understanding how your event is being portrayed, how audiences are responding to what they watch, read or hear, and the sentiment with which they do so will help you understand the extent to which your media goals are being achieved and identify any changes in content strategy that could improve outcomes and results. For example, measuring social media engagement can identify which platforms and content types perform best, while tracking engagement rates over time will allow you to link changes in audience or sentiment to specific campaigns or activity.
What to measure
Tone of media coverage is relatively simple to capture: an article, programme, video or post can be positive, neutral or negative in its portrayal of an event.
The quantity of analytical data generated by social media platforms, meanwhile, should make them your primary focus in monitoring engagement. In the social media context, engagement is a measure of the extent to which followers interact with or respond to specific content they encounter on a platform.
The recommended ASOIF measure here is:
- Number of engagements with event-related content (ASOIF reference IM-SM2.3)
These engagements can be aggregated from across social media platforms, for example:
- Likes, shares and comments on Facebook
- TikTok likes and comments
- Likes on Instagram
- Retweets and favourites on X (formerly Twitter)
- Pins on Pinterest
- Views and comments on YouTube
Hashtags (#) are another useful means of aggregating engagement as they are recognised across multiple networks (X, Instagram and Pinterest) and can offer another perspective on levels of interaction and the sentiment underlying them.
Tone and engagement: How to measure it
The tone of media coverage is a standard metric for media monitoring services, or it can be evaluated in-house if you have a limited budget and a relatively small set of publications and channels to focus on.
You can employ evaluation consultants to track engagement and sentiment across social media channels for you, or there are tools available to help you do it yourself. Some of these are available through the social media platforms themselves; others are managed by third-party providers. The latter’s tools can build customised dashboards that provide a real-time view of activity across all channels.
Hashtags can be monitored in the same way as posts and other social media activity. As well as those created and curated by your event’s media team, you should also monitor others created by platform users or which are related to participants in it (e.g. athletes).
Tone and engagement analysis in action
Case study: 2022 UEFA Women’s European Championships