Feature Image: Succession, by Trusted Reviews, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The season three opener of HBO’s smash-hit Succession on Sunday night wasted no time in picking up right where it left off two years ago.
Logan Roy’s media empire — Waystar Royco — is crumbling, after his son Kendall went public with accusations of sexual misconduct and paying millions in hush money to kill damaging stories.
After ousting his father, Kendall goes on the offensive in an effort to take over the company. He quickly understands the importance of getting his media monitoring set up, a task which he delegates to Cousin Greg, saying he needs a read on the ‘sociopolitical thermometer’.
Unfortunately for Greg, “the internet is big” and he quickly finds himself out of his depth and in need of assistance. So here’s a few ways NewsWhip could help cousin Greg.
1 – Create a crisis dashboard to see all media coverage in one place
To get an instant overview, Greg should use Spike to develop a crisis dashboard that displays all content mentioning anything to do with “Kendall Roy”. This would give him a real-time feed of mentions of Kendall from web publishers and other online sources covering the most important social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube.
Greg can display these feeds with the most recent at the top but he can also display them using Spike’s predictive measurement. This surfaces the articles and posts that are predicted to get the most public engagement at the top of the feed. With this, Greg can filter out the noise and focus on what’s resonating the most with the public. This is essential if Greg is to give Kendall clear recommendations with confidence.
2 – Identify the most influential media and journalists
To complete his dashboard, Cousin Greg would add the top authors and top websites leaderboards to his dashboard. These leaderboards would show Greg the most influential media and journalists that are talking about Kendall, ranked by public engagement. As Kendall plans his next move and begins his media offensive he’ll need to know who to reach out to first.
3 – Set up real-time and predictive alerts to stay up to date on what matters
With Kendall’s situation evolving in real time, Greg will want to make sure he’s instantly aware of any breaking news stories or emerging crises. By creating a real-time alert, Greg will instantly be sent an alert for any new articles published about Kendall or Waystar Royco.
For Greg to really show his superpower, after a few hours in the media cycle, he could switch to predictive alerts that will tell him if a story is predicted to hit a set number of interactions and engagements. If the story is predicted to pass this threshold then Kendall and Greg may need to react. By getting a head start with the predictive alerts, Greg can preempt the media response and be prepared.
4 – Help Greg put the situation into perspective
Now that Greg knows what’s happening, and he’s prepared for any new stories that might surface, he’ll want to look at how big the situation is in the context of Logan Roy’s issues and how investors are feeling about WayStar Royco. Using boolean search terms, Greg could create searches for the company name, Logan Roy, Kendall Roy and other terms to see where the media and public interest is focused and understand what’s getting the most attention. This compare view makes it easy to understand how big the crisis is and gives greater confidence in Kendall and Greg’s comms decision-making.
5 – Add notes and export the data to give Kendall real-time updates
Lastly, Greg will want to tell a clear and compelling story and will want to be clear in his recommendations to Kendall. To support this, Greg can add notes to the Timeline so he can track what happened and when. This helps Greg to note the articles that mattered, and a note on the authors he needs to build relationships with or where he needs to set the record straight. Furthermore, Greg will be able to export his Timeline to a PowerPoint presentation to give Kendall peace of mind about the ongoing situation.
We don’t envy Greg as he tries to keep up-to-speed with this fast moving, real-time situation. With so much at stake for Greg, his boss Kendall and the future of WayStar Royco, Greg needs the best tools at his disposal.
Using NewsWhip Spike, Greg would have access to the only real-time media monitoring technology that predicts the stories, issues and topics that will trend in the future, allowing him to make faster, smarter and more precise decisions, thus hopefully guaranteeing him a seat at Kendall’s future media empire. Though you never know when it comes to the Roy family.
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