| Sonal Moraes 
Have you ever heard of the term infomania? Alongside several other newly recognized words, infomania is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via mobile phone or computer." For those in PR or communications, you likely experience infomania on a regular basis not only by choice, but because it's your job. It makes perfect sense to use Google Alerts or paid monitoring services to receive tailored articles right at your fingertips, but media monitoring can lead to ingesting an overload of information. Take a step back to consider whether you're really using news clippings to the best of your abilities. Do you ever dread opening up your inbox because you know there are dozens of scheduled email alerts waiting for you? Are you in a routine where checking your daily alerts almost feels mechanical? Perhaps you've gotten into the habit of skimming through the articles and not reading them as closely as you know you should. It's still the beginning of the year, so use this time to evaluate if your email alerts are really setting you up for success. Here are some tips that can help ensure you're not soaking information in and spitting it out as part of a routine, but instead are effectively managing your news clips and positively impacting your work. 1. Get a leg up on spring cleaning by starting with your inbox. This is kind of a no-brainer, but sometimes hearing the advice helps us take action. Just as having monitoring alerts is imperative to your job function, you may also have other alerts set up in your inbox like marketing information from your favorite clothing store, job openings, etc. This clutter certainly won't help on mornings when you open up your inbox and can't find the important news alerts that you need to read buried under things that you simply want to delete. Make time to organize your inbox via folders, automatic filtering, etc. and then review if you really need to receive all of the automated alerts you set up so you can better focus on the alerts that matter. 
2. Revamp your keywords. Sometimes things change, and so should your keywords. If you haven't touched your keywords since setting up your alerts or if you can't remember the last time you made any adjustments to your alerts, now is the time! The only way you can be satisfied with your morning alerts (or whatever time you receive them) is when they're specific to what you're interested in that given moment. If you're working on a campaign geared towards a niche that's different than the normal search, temporarily change your keywords to match that need. Alerts are rarely set in stone, so make the most of the flexibility. 3. Think about your cadence. Are daily alerts really what's best for you? It all depends on your end goal. Alerts don't have to be daily, although that's what tends to be most common. If your job is heavily focused on crisis situations or depends on catching a clip before an end client/upper management does, then instant or daily alerts are the way to go. If you collect alerts to create a report at the end of the week and your news volume isn't overwhelming, maybe weekly emails would be best. Your alerts' frequency really comes down to how you choose to organize yourself and understanding how you perform best. Not everyone will have the same cadence, so don't be afraid to break the mold. 4. Track industry trends. There are a couple major reasons why you'd want to track industry trends. First, if you'd like to be the individual that upper management notices for having current events locked down on your niche industry, having a news feed delivered to your inbox can help make that happen and push you ahead. Secondly, tracking industry trends can help you uncover new competitors that may not have been on your radar, or can allow you to piggy back off of tactics working for others in your industry. Just be cautious when you set up these alerts. If your keywords are too broad, you may find yourself back to a place where you see the alert hit your inbox and immediately delete it. Make sure you set up terms that will provide value and give you a purpose in making time to thoroughly read the clips. These tips may seem like common sense, and that's because they are. Infomania can easily take over the time you spend in and out of work, so try carving out one mere hour each day to apply these tips and see the positive impact they can bring. Coupling the simplest of actions with a tool that helps you save and export your monitoring results can relieve you of complexity down the road. Download At What Cost? Justifying a Media Monitoring Service to learn how to select a solution that will provide you actionable intel. And here's to more relevant email alerts and less cluttered inboxes in your future! Author Sonal Moraes is PR Newswire's Director of Customer Engagement, sharing expertise and practical use cases around media monitoring and targeting platforms. Follow her at @PRNLeisure where so co-curates PR Newswire's Twitter and Pinterest channels dedicated to leisure topics like food, travel, fashion and more. | 
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