Top Online Research Resources for PR and marketing Professionals
By Palin Ningthoujam on May 20, 2008 in NBD, featured, research
My team and I develop PR pitches for our prospective clients. This is one of my KRAs. Planning requires, besides understanding the client’s business and requirements, a lot of research on the industry, the competition, and the current image that the client has in the market. This involves primary researches like speaking to journalists and domain experts. But before that we need to conduct a host of initial secondary research that involves scanning through a lot of print and online media. I am sure this is the same with every team in any PR agency. So what are the various sites we visit on the internet to gather our initial understanding of a subject or vertical? The requirements and solutions depend from client to client but on an average, these are some of the top sites that you can start off with.
1. Search engines – Google is the obvious answer, and there’s no contesting that. Additionally, we have Google News Search, if you want to scan through news reports; and Google Blog Search, if you want to scan through blog posts. These are pretty useful search engines that you can use in case you don’t find much headway on a normal Google web search. I also use an addon like Customise Google on my Firefox in times of absolute desperate situations when I need to run a query on other search engines like Yahoo or Live, as sometimes they throw up different results.
Sometime, when these search engines are not sufficient, there are specialized search engines like Truveo and Blinkx for video and audio search, Pipl for people search, and Twing for search within Internet forums.
You can compare Google and Yahoo search engines with SearchBoth. See screenshot below:
2. Wikipedia – We all know Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia contributed by everyone. Now the credibility of Wikipedia has been debated by many before, but I still think that it can be a good resource for reading up on a new technology, place, person, or a subject e.g. public relations. I understood more clearly about PR from Wikipedia than any text book I read in school. You can also use Wikipedia to get media profiles.
3. IBEF -The Indian Brand Equity Foundation site is a credible site to get information on various industries in India. Take a look at the links on the left side of the page. You can read up the summary and latest news reports of various verticals including automobiles, auto components, aviation, banking, biotechnology, cement, financial services, food industry, gems and jewelery, healthcare, information, technology, insurance, IT enabled services, media & entertainment, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, real estate, retail, semiconductors, steel, textiles, telecommunications, and tourism & hospitality.
4. India in Business – This is an Indian government site created to help foreign investors in India but you can take advantage of it as well. There are essays on the Indian economy, different industries in India, and alot on foreign investment regulations. There are sections on the Union Budget and Economic Survey of India.
5. Indobase – This is a good site to get the names of major events in India categorized according to industry and cities.
6. Industry association sites – Industry association site like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, and ASSOCHAM are good places as they keep on publishing free reports that you can quickly download and read. There are good content on the sites themselves. Besides these four, we can go to sector specific association sites. For example, for anything on online and internet data in India, we can go to IAMAI. There are associations for each sector.
Do you know of any good research resource? Share it in the comment.
Popularity: 13% [?]
On May 20, 2008, Moksh Juneja said:
Technorati is also good place to start your search!
On May 20, 2008, Shashank Jaitely said:
Hi Palin, a very thought of post. I am sure many will bookmark all the sites mentioned here…:-)
I think you have covered all free online resources. There are some paid ones that at a very reasonable fee can provide research, analysis, insights, opinions at one dashboard view. ISI Emerging Markets is one of them (http://www.securities.com/ch.html?pc=IN). Then for international data, we of course have factiva and thomson reuters. They are again paid.
But I think the fee you pay them is peanuts as compared to the data and insights they provide for you to sound intelligent during the pitches.
I am of the view that in the knowledge based industry like ours, it is the amount of collective knowledge (brain and resources) that an agency has becomes the deciding factor for any client in the situation where the cost is not a parameter.
On May 20, 2008, Hemant Arya said:
Exhaustive research tools, Palin! May be we can also use social networking sites and gather some interesting information on the client’s team. We can creatively use it to build rapport during the pitch meeting.
On May 20, 2008, Zigmas said:
I try to collect info about Web research tools (online research or Web clipping tools).
You will find info about it on my blog http://zig,masb.wordpress.com
or
http://www.ziki.com/en/zigmasb
Cheers
On May 20, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Moksh, Technorati is a good tool and I have heard many people finding it useful. Somehow I haven’t been able to use that one quite well.
On May 20, 2008, Bhawna said:
Hi, a good comprehensive list. This will sure be of help.
Cheers! Bhawna
On May 20, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Shashank, thanks. Now I remember we did a post before on this subject before:
http://snipurl.com/29pxa
Days of Information Overload and Insight Scarcity – Crack Research Tools for PR Commandos!
On May 20, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Thanks Bhawna, the idea is to share what we have discovered so that it can help others. Talk about open source community!
Hemant, nice spin. Yes that’s something we can do.
Zigmas, seems to be a nice collection out there. I will check it out more at leisure.
On May 20, 2008, Zigmas said:
Sorry
I have made a mistake in the URL of one my blogs
The right one is
http://zigmasb.wordpress.com
On May 20, 2008, Vaishali Shah said:
Thanks and the post is very useful…i also wanted to know about media watch…the way companies outsource to agencies to publish their media watch of competitors and events happening in their own sector..how can i get detailed information on such things?
On May 20, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Vaishali, see if these help:
http://snipurl.com/29qbb
http://snipurl.com/29qbc
On May 20, 2008, Amita Malhotra said:
Hey palinn,
thanks a lot, this is useful stuff.
cheers
amita
On May 20, 2008, Vaishali Shah said:
Thanks:-)
On May 20, 2008, himanshu kapadia said:
great work palin, i come from old school so i rely more on ground- the old dip stick surveys, talking to the employees, even watchman give great inputs, once when i visited a companys showroom and i was just pretending being one of the customers the MD recognised me as he too was at that venue and was impressed by the homework i was doing and gave the assignment without a pitch. I belive online or ofline at the end the client should see value in hiring you in any business, job, etc.
On Aug 8, 2008, Msnli.com said:
Exhaustive research tools, Palin! May be we can also use social networking sites and gather some interesting information on the client’s team. We can creatively use it to build rapport during the pitch meeting.
On Oct 10, 2008, BM said:
Hi Palin,
I agree with Himanshu, I am also from the old school and rely more on dipstick studies or perception audits..listed few idea’s:
- Understanding the company, its business, services and products – 7 S (The Seven-Ss is a framework for analyzing organizations and their effectiveness. It looks at the seven key elements that make the organizations successful, or not: strategy; structure; systems; style; skills; staff; and shared values)
- Environment scan: understanding the industry scenario – PEST analysis (political, Economic, Socio cultural and Technological factors)
o Preparing white papers, relevant to subject and industry
- Assessing the regulatory framework
o Policy positing papers
- Market potential of the company and its products and services, SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis)
- Competition mapping – SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis)
o Influence in media
Share of voice
Advertising campaign and spend
Various agencies working for them
- Media dipstick study or media perception audit – New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai & Hyderabad (depending on the target markets)
- Dipstick study of the company Website
o By key stakeholders
On Oct 22, 2008, Eugene said:
Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene
On Oct 28, 2008, rayn said:
Great advice!!!