In 2016 we launched the new Media Contacts Database. That was a huge project – a complete rebuild of our existing media database focusing on ease-of-use, something we knew users wanted. And we were all very proud of the results. But its story didn’t stop there, this is a service that we are continuously developing. We’ve loved listening to client feedback throughout 2017 and have made further enhancements to the service based on your ideas.

“2017, here are some of your best bits…”

Influence Indicators

We want users to be able to intelligently identify influencers in a large list of results. This will save them time researching each journalist and clicking back-and-forth between the results pages. So early in the year, we added data from Moz to the service. Now clients can use Moz’s Domain Authority score along with circulation figures and Twitters follower counts to intelligently refine their search results to find the main influencers.

Richer Profiles

ResponseSource strives to have the best media information available. This year, our proactive Research Team have been recording extra contact and outlet information such as online circulations, radio audience figures, data sources and ranges. Extra social profiles on Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat and many more have also been added. These complement the existing social data available for Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Linkedin.

Recent Articles

The improvement we’re most proud of this year is the indexation of article data in the Media Contacts Database. Clients can now search over 10,000 UK journalists by the words they have written. Reviewing what a journalist has recently written about gives a much better idea of what they are interested in. To help this process we’ve also analysed the most frequently mentioned keywords for each journalist so that clients can easily pick out hot topics and keywords.

Latest Media Moves and More

Our Research Team produce a daily news bulletin. The Media Bulletin focuses on UK media news, new outlet launches and major publication changes. They are often the first source to publish a story and these valuable insights have now been integrated with the Media Contacts Database. Our media news shows on the profile pages of contacts and media outlets to keep clients informed.

As well as media news, we’ve started to display headlines from media outlets blogs and RSS feeds. These headlines, straight from the outlets themselves, will give you an immediate update on what they are interested in right now.

Processing Feature Suggestions

Discovering relevant features for clients is our bread and butter. Our list tools even suggest features that would be of interest to each user (based on the saved search criteria) so that users don’t have to keep re-running the same search over and over again throughout the year. We take care of that!

Feature List Suggestions were available in 2016 but were so fruitful that clients needed a better way to manage the suggestions. We listened and in Spring, we added new actions to allow suggestions to be ignored. These buttons work on a list-by-list basis, so ignoring a feature in one list wouldn’t hide it everywhere. After all, it may still be relevant to one of your other (future) campaigns.

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Our Research Team is rather punny

12 Dec 2017

Workflow Improvements

We’ve been gathering user feedback since the service launched. We’re always looking to improve and listening to our users has resulted in several great tools being developed. These workflow improvements and widgets help clients process the information they need faster. Helpful widgets like the following have been added throughout the year:

1. Quickly add a contact to a Press List from the Press List page – no more starting a new search every time.
2. Add notes to contacts from within the Press List page – no more clicking on each profile to update notes.
3. Media Outlet features lists and feature search results now show clients which features they have already saved into their list. No more uncertainty and needless re-saving.
4. Widgets have been added to contact and outlet profile pages to give clients quick access to their notes, press lists and distributions.
5. Search results can now be sorted by more options to give you total control: online circulation, twitter followers etc.

What’s Next?

2017 has been a great year for the service and it’s moved from strength to strength. With the continued support of our clients, we’re looking to continue this momentum in 2018.

Keep on sending in your questions and ideas. We love hearing from you (honest!). Keep checking back here for future product updates or subscribe so you don’t miss anything.

From all of us here at ResponseSource, have a very merry Christmas and prosperous new year.

Adam is the Web Development Team Manager here at ResponseSource. Follow him on twitter for more musings on productivity, development and beer @anrpalmer