Glossary
The terms this website works with, each in one or two sentences. Every article uses them in exactly this sense.
The three approaches
- Source-First Intelligence
- Market and competitor monitoring that starts with the sources: you decide whose publications you follow and work with their own content, instead of searching the open web for keywords. A way of thinking, not software. Question: who? More: The Source-First Manifesto
- Topic-First
- Monitoring that starts with a topic or search term, whoever uses it and wherever. Includes keyword monitoring, media monitoring and social listening. Question: what? More: Topic-First: Monitoring by Topic and Keyword
- Platform-First
- Monitoring that starts with a platform: you follow all entries of one kind on it, such as all new job ads in a region, usually filtered by fixed fields rather than keywords. Question: where? More: Platform-First: Monitoring a Platform as a Whole
Core terms
- Source
- The sender of information you follow: a competitor, supplier, customer, association, authority, opinion leader or an individual in a public role. Always specific. More: How to Monitor Competitors: Source-First in Practice
- Channel
- The medium through which a source publishes: LinkedIn profile or company page, newsletter, YouTube channel, website with blog or RSS feed, press section. A source usually has several channels. More: How to Monitor Competitors: Source-First in Practice
- Platform
- A place where many senders publish entries of the same kind and which a third party operates: job board, procurement portal, register, marketplace. A competitor’s company page on LinkedIn is a channel; LinkedIn as a whole is a platform. More: Source or Platform? Source-First vs. Platform-First
- Content
- Everything a source publishes, regardless of channel.
- Signal
- Relevant information drawn from the content you follow. Not “what was published” but “what it means for us”. More: How to Monitor Competitors: Source-First in Practice
- Noise
- Hits unrelated to what you want to know: irrelevant mentions, duplicates, spam, content without an identifiable sender. More: Sources, Not Keywords: Source-First vs. Media Monitoring
- Primary source
- The sender’s own publication, such as the managing director’s LinkedIn post, the press release, the study. A report about it is a secondary source.
Related fields
- Market monitoring
- Following a market on an ongoing basis: over a longer period, you track how competitors, customers, suppliers and the wider conditions develop. Unlike market analysis, which examines a market over a bounded period. More: Market Monitoring: Definition vs. Market Analysis
- Keyword monitoring
- Monitoring that starts with search terms: you get every hit containing a word, whoever uses it. Never meant here in the sense of SEO rank tracking. More: Sources, Not Keywords: Source-First vs. Media Monitoring
- Social listening
- Analysis of what third parties say about a brand, product or topic on social networks and the web, often with sentiment analysis. Built for brand perception. More: Sources, Not Keywords: Source-First vs. Media Monitoring
- Media monitoring
- Systematic collection of coverage about a company or topic in press, broadcast and online media. Follows reports about someone, not their own publications. More: Source-First in Context: Competitive Intelligence and OSINT
- Competitive intelligence
- The process of gathering and analysing information on competitors and the competitive environment and making it usable for decisions. Source-First is a stance on where this information comes from, not a replacement for it. More: Source-First in Context: Competitive Intelligence and OSINT
- Market intelligence
- Like competitive intelligence, but covering the whole market: customers, demand, regulation, technology, not just competitors. More: Source-First in Context: Competitive Intelligence and OSINT
- OSINT
- Open source intelligence: insight gained from publicly available information. “Open source” here means publicly available, not open-source software. More: Source-First in Context: Competitive Intelligence and OSINT