For a small municipality, reaching visibility in the media requires strategic and consistent communication. Elin Antonsson, Communications Strategist at the Municipality of Hjo, explains how All Ears’ media monitoring has helped increase the municipality’s visibility, save time, and prioritize the right communication efforts.

Despite being a small municipality with only 9,000 residents, Hjo appears frequently in the media. The municipality is discussed in podcasts, radio, TV, and social media. In just the past six months, Hjo has reached more than 11 million people.

This demonstrates not only the relevance of their initiatives but also how important local news can gain national attention.

Elin describes media monitoring as a foundation for understanding what works and what doesn’t in their communication efforts.

“Our monitoring primarily confirms that the messages we want to share are actually reaching the public, but it also helps us analyze what we might need to change. For example, if we have important information that doesn’t receive enough visibility, we can use All Ears to understand why.”

“Being able to see that we’re being heard and that people are talking about us is incredibly important. Without media monitoring we would have missed a huge amount of information. It also saves us a lot of time and creates a sense of security within the organization, because we know we’re not missing anything.”

Hjo doesn’t only monitor mentions of the municipality itself. They also track conversations within several relevant areas such as education, healthcare, and environmental issues.

Whenever a relevant mention occurs, the team is notified immediately and receives detailed reports showing where and when the mention happened and what impact it generated.

“We’re always first on the ball”

Today’s fast-paced media landscape often comes down to speed. For Elin, it’s about responding quickly and maintaining control over the municipality’s communication.

“Audio is extremely difficult to monitor manually. In the past, if we were away for a weekend we could miss a lot of coverage, and catching up afterwards took a lot of time. Now it feels reassuring to know that we have full visibility and that we can act quickly.”

Elin explains that monitoring is often used to respond quickly to criticism, but just as often it helps identify and highlight positive coverage.

“We find the small details within media coverage — things we previously would have missed because of the enormous amount of content being produced. We use the monitoring to track negative mentions and respond quickly to criticism, but also to highlight and share positive publicity.”

More time to focus on the future

One of the biggest benefits of All Ears’ monitoring platform is the time it saves.

Hjo describes itself as a city of the future, and being able to allocate resources efficiently has been crucial to the municipality’s development.

“Being informed in this way has created ripple effects in several areas. Through All Ears we’ve built stronger relationships with local media and participated in several interviews, for example about our sustainability initiatives and environmental work. For a period, this became a topic that appeared in the media every week — something we would definitely have missed without All Ears.”

Ultimately, it’s about having control over your own communication and being able to influence how you are perceived in the media landscape.

“For Hjo, it’s about owning our communication. All Ears does much of the work for us. It provides security and reassurance. Hjo is a small municipality, but I can imagine that larger cities or companies could miss significant financial opportunities if they don’t monitor spoken media.”

About All Ears

All Ears was founded to help organizations monitor, understand, and measure the new landscape of spoken media.

We are the first media monitoring platform with full coverage of spoken media. Today we analyze TV, radio, podcasts, YouTube, and social platforms across multiple countries.