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A highly creative storyteller who can come up with inspired ideas and turn them into even more amazing marketing campaigns, TJ Kiely leads Meltwater's global content efforts. For the past 10 years, he has been executing marketing campaigns and content programs that drive measurable results for some of the world's largest brands. 

Director of Corporate Marketing & Global Content

See all blogs written by TJ Kiely, Director of Corporate Marketing & Global Content at Meltwater. Social media management ★ digital marketing ★ ...

Author: TJ Kiely

Travel influencers inspire wanderlust in the common traveler. They reveal unseen places, share experiences, and bring attention to destinations to encourage visitors. For businesses that rely on tourism, creating an influencer marketing strategy with specialized travel influencers can help you get more bookings, more visibility, and even the potential to go viral.

Finding influencers to promote your brand or business is the first step. Let’s explore the top eight travel influencers and why it pays to work with social media stars with built-in audiences.

Collaborating with Travel Influencers: Best Practices for Brands 

A travel influencer is someone who has a sizable social media following and frequently posts content related to travel and tourism. Most importantly, they have audiences who trust their content to make their traveling or purchasing decisions.

Many travel influencers have followings of 100K or more and make a living posting travel-related content. They partner with cities, hotels, restaurants, attractions, and other tourism-dependent places. Through this content, influencers weave stories of people and places while bringing their followers along for the journey.

For businesses that thrive on tourism, travel influencers are a key part of their sustained success. Influencers play an important role in inspiring travel. They highlight unique places and share them with the masses, which can help bring in new traffic and customers for life.

Unlike traditional advertising that often feels scripted, these influencers offer relatable experiences and honest reviews that resonate with their followers. Their collection of content—from stunning photos to first-hand stories—serves as a digital treasure map, guiding us through hidden gems we might never discover on our own.

Travel flourishes through shared experiences. As travel costs grow higher, travelers want to ensure they’re getting their money’s worth. Many people turn to the internet to learn more about a place they’ve never visited to see if it’s likely to be worth the expense. With the help of travel influencers, businesses can stand out to new audiences, attract more customers, and create buzz around their brands.

TIP: Don't miss our other blogs featuring top influencers across industries and platforms, including technology, gaming, music, Twitch, and more.

If you’re looking for travel influencers, our influencer marketing suite is a great place to start. 

Klear lets you search through a growing database of influencers based on your criteria. You can filter by industry (such as travel), audience size, social media channel, and other options to find the best-fit influencers for your goals.

We’ve done some of the hard work already by finding eight of the best travel influencers.

Russian photographer Murad Osmann turned travel photography into a viral art form. You may have seen his iconic “Follow Me” series on social media, where he captures stunning landscapes from around the world while his girlfriend, Natalia Zakharova, leads him through enchanting destinations.

He’s been rated as one of the top travel influencers by Forbes and has garnered more than 3.2 million followers on Instagram. His work not only showcases beautiful places but also highlights the magic of adventure and companionship.

Pedro & Pauli (82 Klear Score + Travel Expert Badge)

Travel couple Pedro and Pauli are among the top Instagram travel influencers, with highlights from their global travels. They tell stories through their content and feature some of the world’s most beautiful hotels and bucket list destinations.

With over 1,900 posts and 111K followers on Instagram, the pair continue to inspire their followers to see the world with the one you love.

Kiersten Rich aka The Blonde Abroad (90 Klear Score)

Travel blogger and social media travel influencer Kiersten Rich has been to 75 countries and doesn’t hold back about sharing her adventures. Her photos have captured the attention of more than 500K followers on Instagram as she highlights the glamorous side of travel.

She has also mastered the art of family travel with a baby and shares tips and insights on those experiences. 

Alex Strohl (97 Klear Score + Photography Expert Badge)

One of the top travel influencers on Instagram, Alex Strohl shares his travels with nearly 2 million fans. From cold, remote locations to underwater scenes, Alex aims to show his followers places they’ve never seen before.

In addition to travel, Alex is also an accomplished photographer. He combines his two passions to become one of the most famous travel influencers on social media and treats every trip as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Drew Binsky (89 Klear Score + Travel Expert Badge)

Drew Binsky is the man who has visited every country in the world — and is eager to share his experiences with more than 1.1 million followers on Instagram. He’s also an active YouTuber, where he highlights the interesting stories of people he’s met along the journey.

Drew’s unique brand of storytelling alongside the imagery of beautiful and offbeat places he’s been makes him a one-of-a-kind travel influencer. And of course, he hasn’t neglected to reveal some hidden gems right here in the USA.

Samuel & Audrey (74 Klear Score +Travel Expert Badge)

Another traveling couple, Samuel & Audrey are among the top Instagram travel influencers with more than 51.5K followers. Also known as That Backpacker, the duo focus on video content as they explore the world.

Canada, Argentina, and the great outdoors are key themes on their Instagram page. They’ve shared nearly 1,000 posts of their adventures with their followers, which include a mix of travel tips and personal experiences.

Colleen Roden (86 Klear Score + Lifestyle Expert Badge)

Colleen travels and lets her 364K Instagram followers know about it. With most of her destinations based in the U.S., she’s also taken fans on digital trips to the Caribbean.

Her IG content is a mix of wanderlust, family life, pets, and lifestyle posts. She’s also not shy about sharing food pics, fashion, or the experiences she enjoys while she travels, including hot air balloons and rooftop igloos.

Digital nomad Stefano Cicchini is a leading travel influencer on Instagram, with 331K followers. He shares his journeys to international destinations, capturing everything from beaches to bustling markets.

In addition to his work as a travel influencer, Stefano collaborates with luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz. He’s equally passionate about food, which he features prominently on both his social media and blog.

Klear makes it easy to find influencers for your respective industry or niche. Click here and fill out the form below to see it in action!

Whether you’re working with the top Instagram influencers or on the hunt for a micro-influencer, you need to know how to collaborate with them. Good communication, clear goals, and win/win situations will help your efforts go further.

With this in mind, let’s look at some best practices to follow to make travel influencer collabs a success.

Top travel Instagram influencers can be standalone campaigns or part of a much larger influencer marketing strategy. Get clear on how your collaboration fits into your overall marketing goals.

For example, are you inviting several influencers to the launch of your new hotel or attraction? Do you want one influencer to cover a specific event? 

Whatever your goals, make sure your influencer partners understand what you want to achieve so they can do their best work.

Influencer collaborations should never be one-sided. You will need to offer something in return. 

In some cases, this might be a trade-for-content. You offer an experience for free (e.g., hotel stay, meal, visit to your attraction, etc.) and the influencer will create content based on their experience.

Or, if you’re working with well-known travel influencers on Instagram, you may need to offer additional compensation. Influencers rates will vary, based on audience size and the complexity of the request.

When you can create win/win partnerships, you’ll have a much better chance of reaching your goals and building valuable relationships.

You can outline the specifics of each influencer collaboration with our influencer proposal template. This template acts as a detailed brief to keep you and your travel social media influencers on the same page. 

Here, you can specify important things like:

A template prevents you from having to reinvent the wheel with every new campaign and partnership.

TIP: Learn more best practices for beefing up your influencer marketing strategy when you download our free Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

No matter your influencer marketing goals, Meltwater’s Klear platform can help you craft a winning strategy from start to finish. Klear helps you find travel influencers on Instagram and other social media channels, vet them according to your brand goals, and connect with them to create powerful travel-related campaigns. 

You can also track campaign performance from the same interface, allowing you to see the impact each influencer has on your brand.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below!

Learn how travel influencers shape the tourism industry and boost brand visibility. Discover our top strategies to find and connect with them — read more here.

Top 8 Travel Influencers

Tech has become an essential part of our everyday lives, and people expect the tools and products they use to function seamlessly. In an industry where credibility is paramount, tech influencers play a critical role.

What is influence, you ask? We define influence as the ability to sway people’s decisions and opinions. A person who has influence typically also has expertise, along with a heaping side of creativity and charisma that other people relate to. They have a unique ability to connect with others authentically, which makes them a trustworthy source of information.

The tech industry is massive and growing every day. While this is a good thing for tech companies, the sheer size of the market makes it harder for companies to differentiate themselves. Highly influential people can help tech companies by showcasing their products, talking about their brand, and putting them in front of their target audience.

Curious to know which tech influencers to work with and how they can help you step up your influencer marketing strategy? Read on to see our top tech creators and tips for finding and working with them.

How to Identify the Best Tech Influencers

Best Practices for Collaborating with Tech Influencers

Finding the Top Tech Influencers with Klear

A tech influencer is someone who shares more than just the latest gadget reviews on Instagram or X. They serve as a bridge between the tech industry and its customers.

Tech creators use their expertise and personality to build connections with others. They do this via social media, blogs, or other online channels. Their content helps others learn about new brands and companies, see how products, services, or software work, and make informed buying decisions.

The key is the ability to create relatable content. Tech influencers excel in building communities around their personal brand, sparking conversations and engagement from their audience. They strike a strong balance of being a knowledgeable powerhouse and an approachable friend — and brands can leverage this balance to their own benefit.

Our Klear influencer marketing platform helps brands find influencers related to their niche and audience, including technology influencers. We’ve done the heavy lifting of finding the best tech influencers based on Klear score, which looks at audience size, engagement rates, authenticity, and other essential metrics.

Want to see how Klear could help you scale your influencer marketing? Click here and fill out the form below for a personalized demo!

With nearly 3 million followers on Instagram, Lewis Hilsenteger is one of the biggest tech influencers. He built his brand around the “unboxing” trend. But rather than just opening packages, he strips technology products to their bare bones and talks about what’s inside.

Lewis transforms the often dry realm of gadget reviews into an engaging experience that feels more like catching up with a friend than watching a product demo. He tells stories about the gadgets he showcases and creates a sense of wonder and excitement with his content.

Macro influencer Judner Aura has 3.25 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 300K followers on Instagram. He uses his channels to review technology, particularly mobile devices and accessories. You might also know him by the moniker “UrAvgConsumer.”

He’s the type of creator who doesn’t just review gadgets; he explores how they fit into our daily lives, making tech feel accessible rather than overwhelming. His style is a mix of humor and authenticity, which draws in viewers and makes his content enjoyable to watch.

YouTuber Marques Brownlee (also known as MKBHD) has an impressive 19.2 million subscribers who love his consumer tech channel. His content spans the full spectrum of retro tech and modern-day favorites, which caters to a broad tech audience.

He’s created content for popular brands and products like the all-electric VW Bus, Apple, Beats by Dre, and Samsung. He also touches on hot-button and niche topics like AI, 3D printing, and even golf tech.

Technology influencers aren’t always individuals. Case in point: Linus Tech Tips, a popular YouTube channel with more than 16 million subscribers, is driven by a team of “professionally curious” tech experts.

The team specializes in consumer tech and aims to educate and entertain with content. They explore a wide range of products and ways to use them, from upgrading computer components to deciding whether to buy newly released tech gadgets.

Sara Dietschy is one of the top tech influencers on YouTube and Instagram, with nearly a million subscribers. She releases multiple videos each week, blending tech insights with creativity and entrepreneurship.

The new mom uses her vibrant personality to highlight tech reviews and lifestyle vlogs on her channel. She also has a natural ability to break down complex topics into insights that are easy to digest and fun to listen to. 

A gaming influencer and technology enthusiast, Austin Evans is among the best tech influencers because of his natural affinity for all things tech. He’s amassed a following of more than 5 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 500K Instagram fans. 

Austin aims to help others make sound buying decisions by reviewing new gadgets and exploring unique tech products. From buying technology from Wish to relying on AI product recommendations on Amazon, nothing is off limits.

SuperSaf (89 Klear Score + Tech Expert badge)

British YouTuber SuperSaf is one of the most popular tech review channels on YouTube. Hosted by Safwan AhmedMia, his content pulls back the curtain on some of the most talked-about consumer tech.

SuperSaf talks a lot about smartphones, offering in-depth reviews and side-by-side comparisons of the latest models. He has also collaborated with other trusted tech creators, including MKBHD and Linus Tech Tips.

Former NASA engineer Mark Rober has become a recognizable name and face in the tech world. He uses his YouTube channel, which has more than 58.4 million subscribers, to talk about all things science, gadgets, and tech in a user-friendly manner.

He’s earned the approval of adults and kids alike, especially with his monthly toy builds via his company CrunchLabs. His commitment to the world of science has made him one of the biggest tech influencers in the media. It also helps that viewers can always expect to see cool things like lasers, robots, and explosions in his content.

TIP: Don't miss our other blogs listing the top influencers across multiple industries and platforms, including music, gaming, Twitch, and more!

Whether you want to find the best tech influencers on Instagram or use creators to promote your products on YouTube, it all starts with knowing who to look for. While this will vary according to your business and goals, these basic tips can help you spot the best tech influencers in the wild.

Do a search on the social platforms where you want to promote your brand, such as Instagram, YouTube, or X. Search for hashtags related to your product or brand, such as #AI or #iPhone16, then see who’s creating content using those hashtags.

You can also use search features to find relevant content. For example, on YouTube, you can search for “iPhone 16 Pro Review” and see who’s creating content. This will help you create a shortlist of candidates that you can explore further.

Set up Google Alerts (a free tool) to track tech-related news in the media. For example, if you are creating an AI product, you might set up an alert to track all news stories related to AI (or something more specific). 

As you receive email alerts, you can check out the news coverage for yourself. See who’s writing the articles, where they’re being posted, and which experts are quoted in them.

Podcasts often feature tech influencers and other figures in the industry. Make a list of tech podcasts, then check out who is guest speaking on them to find potential influencers.

Influencer marketing platforms like Klear remove much of the guesswork when searching for influencers. You can use advanced search tools to filter results based on channel, audience size, level of influence (Klear score), and other criteria. 

As you start reaching out to tech influencers, there are a few things to keep in mind that will increase your chances of a successful collaboration. We suggest doing the following:

Do your homework. Make sure the influencer’s style, content, and audience match your brand.

Be clear and upfront about your goals. Whether it’s brand awareness, product reviews, or driving sales, let the influencer know exactly what you want to achieve.

Allow creative freedom. Influencers know what their audience likes, so let them do their best work.

Offer value in return. Whether it's through payment, free products, or experiences, give them something worth their time.

Share the content. Once the influencer posts, amplify it by sharing it on your social media or website to get more exposure.

TIP: Learn more about how you can work with influencers of all kinds in our Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Klear, a Meltwater offering, gives you a direct connection to influencers in the tech industry. Our platform gives you end-to-end influencer management, from finding influencers that match your criteria to communication and performance tracking. 

Centralize your influencer marketing efforts and see how you’re creating ROI and value with every collaboration. 

Discover how tech influencers are shaping the industry and learn key strategies to engage them. Here are our insights and tips on using tech influencers.

Top 8 Tech Influencers

The media industry is seeing a rapid shift as AI tools become more accessible and widely accepted. AI in public relations is becoming more commonplace as busy PR agents seek ways to react faster and appropriately. But how exactly can you use AI in PR?

Right now, it’s a bit of a gray area. AI can help to streamline things like detecting trends and getting ahead of crises. But there are also ethical considerations in using AI for PR. Algorithmic bias, data privacy, and misinformation may impact how a PR team responds to a situation.

Still, the benefits of using AI in public relations often outweigh the risks. Let’s explore AI PR, how they intersect, and how you can use AI in PR safely and ethically. 

We define artificial intelligence in public relations as the application of AI technologies to various PR tasks, including audience research, trend analysis, and content creation.

PR is a data-heavy role that relies on analyzing large volumes of data. PR specialists review this data to help companies position themselves in the market, respond to crises, and maintain a desirable image. What a human team of data analysts can do in days, AI can do in minutes.

In addition, AI can help to automate manual tasks to free up human PR professionals. This might include posting social media content, building media lists, creating press releases, or responding to customer comments, for example. 

As AI grows in sophistication and function, so will its use cases for public relations.

TIP: Want to learn more about AI-powered PR tools? Check out our free Data-Driven PR Playbook. 

Companies are already exploring AI’s benefits in public relations, and there’s plenty of room for new use cases to make an impact. Currently, AI public relations offers the following advantages.

AI can be everywhere all at once, which makes it a helpful tool for keeping tabs on your brand and competitors. You can use AI to monitor trends, keywords, and online media in real time and be ready to respond when something shifts.

Companies can use AI to spot potential crises and take action to reduce damage to their reputation. Monitoring public sentiment will help brands protect their image and even find opportunities to improve it.

Public relations professionals not only need to be artful in crafting messages; they also need to tailor those messages to the right people. 

AI can improve audience targeting by finding hidden commonalities between individuals that might not be obvious on the surface. AI can shine a light on shared interests, behaviors, and actions to help you learn about your audience on a deeper level. 

AI can help companies reduce manual effort and perform tasks much faster, and these benefits extend to PR and AI. Faster, more in-depth data review frees up human analysts while providing better insights. Companies can save on labor costs and do more with their existing resources.

PR teams face a myriad of tasks in a given day, but their most important work centers on strategy and optimization. PR automation can handle day-to-day tasks to free up time and let employees focus on more complex work, allowing teams to operate more efficiently and avoid getting bogged down in busy work.

See Meltwater's AI-powered PR solutions in action! Click here and fill out the form below to schedule a personalized demo.

Public relations and AI are already becoming an inseparable combination, and new use cases are likely to emerge over time. Let’s look at some examples of AI public relations to see how AI tools can add value to your strategy.

AI-powered chatbots can help PR teams communicate important information at scale. Whether there’s a new product launch or you’re fielding media inquiries, adding an AI chatbot to your website will engage visitors while allowing you to keep a consistent brand voice.

AI in marketing can streamline social management to help you stay connected with your audience at all times. Use AI to find the best times to post on each channel, know what type of content resonates with your audience, and even post content on your behalf.

Generative AI can create images and text based on natural language prompts. Tools like ChatGPT for PR or Meltwater's own AI PR Assistant can give you first drafts of press releases, blog posts, and other types of content that are ready for you to edit and fact-check. 

AI can also come up with headlines, rewrite drafts for different audiences, or create social media posts based off the drafts you create.

TIP: Check out our free Data-Driven PR Toolkit, which includes includes ready-made AI prompts and more resources for PR pros to be more efficient! 

Audience sentiments can affect your public image. Whether you’re recovering from a crisis or creating a new campaign, AI can take your audience’s temperature at all times so you’ll know how you’re appealing to them.

You’ve probably set up Google Alerts for your brand name and related keywords. But this free feature falls short of telling you how people are talking about you (not just where you’re being published online). Your alerts also don’t cover the entire web, so you’re only getting part of the media picture.

AI can step in to fill the gaps by monitoring your brand’s presence online in real time. It can do a better job of cutting through the noise and finding stories and mentions that matter to your company. You can also use AI media relations to find relevant publications and journalists to help you expand your coverage. 

Safety and ethics in PR are critical to maintaining trust with your audience. AI as a whole is facing ethical concerns that spill over into the PR world. While these concerns are not unique to public relations, they do need to be taken seriously and mitigated as much as possible. 

Generative AI is far from perfect. It uses large amounts of data to “train” on, then can produce responses according to this data. However, AI doesn’t get it right all the time. 

When AI receives bad data as part of its training (which, with out-of-the-box tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, can include the entire internet), it will regurgitate this same bad data in its responses, which can render them useless. 

AI tools also make up information, a phenomenon called hallucination. AI models want to give you what you’re looking for, so they will often make faulty inferences and create hypothetical examples without telling you that they’re doing it. If you’re using AI to create something with high-stakes consequences (e.g., financial reports or disaster responses), the last thing you want to do is spout falsehoods.

Pro tip: If you’re unsure if your AI model has generated hypothetical information, simply ask it; they will usually tell you and regenerate without it.

Remember that generative AI models aren’t designed to create epic content. They’re really just geared to predict the next word in a sentence until it forms a complete thought. It has no knowledge beyond what it’s been trained on, so it can’t be considered a silver bullet for PR pros. 

You might accidentally share top-secret knowledge

Every time you use AI technologies, those technologies are learning from your inputs. This is how they improve over time, which means all the data you feed it could potentially be used in the future.

Take Samsung, for instance. The electronics brand learned about knowledge sharing the hard way when it realized employees leaked sensitive data into ChatGPT. 

It’s a tough lesson to learn, but use this example as a warning. You shouldn’t use AI tools for highly sensitive data unless you know for sure the information is staying within your organization’s servers. And even then, companies may need to create their own protocols about what can and can’t be input into AI platforms.

AI has the potential to create bias in its responses, especially if it’s trained on data containing bias. While bias might not be intentional, it can certainly cause more problems if those biases go unnoticed before you release any information or content to your audience.

AI is no substitute for human review. PR professionals need to examine every output with a fine-toothed comb, whether text, video, or imagery, to ensure fairness and credibility.

We’ve already covered the fact that AI can hallucinate, but it can also create half-truths or confident-sounding claims that need to be fact-checked. 

In PR, the human touch is crucial. Technology should complement human discernment, not replace it. Even if a claim seems obvious, do your due diligence to fact-check every item. Back it up with multiple sources, if possible.

Using AI for PR is becoming more acceptable, provided you have the right guidelines in place. AI is still very much like the wild west, where there is little settled law and nearly anything is possible. Everything needs to be scrutinized to avoid potential mishaps.

Meltwater leverages AI for PR with its data-driven suite of media tools, including sentiment analysis, audience analysis, social media management, media databases, and our AI-powered press release generator. It’s built for PR and marketing professionals who need access to real-time data and suggestions on how to apply the data to their strategies.

Explore the impact of AI in public relations, for better or worse. Uncover benefits and examples shaping the future of communication strategies.

How Does AI in Public Relations Work?

Social listening has been around since long before AI entered the picture. But adding the AI element makes a great tool even better. Why, exactly? It’s because AI doesn’t just give you data — it also spells out for you what that data means, why it’s important, and helps you decide what to do next.

AI in social listening and media monitoring gives you next-level insights into your online presence. It lets you be everywhere your audience is and helps you understand how and where you’re succeeding.

Let’s put AI social listening into perspective and see how it can make you a standout on every channel.

How AI Improves Social Listening and Media Monitoring

Identifying Brand Conversations with AI Social Listening Tools

Using Social Listening Tools AI for Competitor Analysis

Additional Use Cases for AI in Social Listening and Media Monitoring

Meltwater: The Best AI for Social Listening

We define AI social listening as using AI to surface conversations on social media related to topics you care about. It relies on large language models and data science to identify mentions and understand the context of what’s being said.

Unlike manual social listening methods, AI social listening can sift through millions of comments, posts, and mentions in real time. This helps brands uncover trends and sentiments that might otherwise go unnoticed. AI tools also excel at filtering out irrelevant conversations so you can focus on what matters most.

AI social listening tools offer a bounty of benefits to brands, including:

Detecting and preventing potential crises

Automating repetitive tasks like social media posting

Something that makes AI social media monitoring particularly exciting is its ability to predict behaviors and trends. It looks for emerging topics and patterns before they become mainstream. For example, AI can detect a spike in interest around a specific topic or keyword. 

This gives brands an edge over competitors who aren’t using AI social media monitoring. They can pivot their strategies and become part of the conversation early, allowing them to be a leader and not a follower.

It’s not just about taking part in conversations, though. Ultimately, AI’s capabilities allow brands to build stronger connections with their audiences and show they’re in tune with what their followers think, feel, and need. 

Small businesses can use social listening tools just as larger brands and enterprises do. No matter the popularity of your brand, topics, or keywords, social listening AI tools work the same way.

That’s because whatever your business size or industry, people are talking about things related to your business. They might have had bad experiences with your company but aren’t talking directly to you about their experiences. Or they might be sharing your products or services without tagging you. 

With AI for social listening, you can become part of these conversations even when you haven’t been invited.

We suggest starting by identifying brand-related conversations. Social media monitoring tools like Meltwater let you monitor unlimited keywords so you never miss a conversation. As you monitor keywords, you’ll also see spikes and shifts in popularity for these terms.

AI works to understand the reasons behind these shifts. For example, if you’re monitoring keywords related to “sustainability” and suddenly everyone is talking about it on social media, AI will reveal what’s driving the new interest. Maybe it’s because of a new law being passed, a popular campaign for another brand, or viral content from an influencer, for example. 

Whatever the cause, you now have a “what” and a “why” to help you figure out how to enter the conversation.

See how Meltwater's AI-powered social listening and media monitoring tools in action! Click here and fill out the form below to schedule a demo.

Once you’ve identified relevant conversations, you can use AI to analyze sentiments about those conversations. AI can detect nuances in language, such as tone of voice, and know how people feel about topics and whether conversations are largely positive, negative, or neutral. 

AI can also understand what the conversation is actually about. For example, if a conversation is about Titanic, it can detect whether people are talking about the movie, the failed Titan submersible, or the ship itself.

Most importantly, you gain these insights in real time. Meltwater’s social listening suite sends you instant alerts when it picks up on topics that matter to you, allowing you to take quick action.

TIP: Check out our social listening guide for more insights into how social listening works and what you can do with your findings.

Social listening tools with AI can keep tabs on competitors in a similar way as you monitor your own brand. You can track competitors’ brand names, products, or relevant services to get real-time alerts when someone is talking about those terms. 

Just like AI breaks down what’s important about your brand, it can reveal sentiments, shifts, and even engagements related to your competitors. You can see how your audience feels and responds to other companies’ campaigns and content, allowing you to pivot your strategies when needed.

You’ll also get an inside look at what competitors are posting, which can inspire new ideas. By tracking competitors, you might discover new audience segments, revenue streams, or products or services that can give you an edge.

TIP: Our in-depth guide on competitor analysis has more details to help you benchmark your organization against the competition.

Social media reporting is a key element of AI listening tools. Without reporting, you have data but no easy way to act on it. 

AI makes it easy to compile findings into easy-to-read reports. Social listening AI tools are usually customizable so you can focus on the insights you care about. 

Using your social media reports, you can decide which conversations to drill deeper into. Platforms like Meltwater offer multiple layers of insights so you can get macro and micro views of your performance.

AI-powered summaries can help you quickly understand brand alerts. Use these summaries to choose how and where to focus your efforts without having to comb through large amounts of data.

TIP: Learn more about about the AI-powered summary capabilities in the Meltwater suite right here!

The third criterion of the best social listening tools for 2024 is the ability to track and measure your social performance. This is the area where AI shines brightest, as it shows you how all of the actions you take make an impact on your goals.

Social media analytics measure a variety of things, including:

Performance metrics, such as views, clicks, and reach

Each social media channel you use has its own built-in analytics. These can give you basic insights that are specific to each channel. But using a social listening platform like Meltwater can centralize your metrics and provide AI-powered insights about your performance.

AI not only collects metrics; it also analyzes them to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy. It crunches the data and shares it with you in plain language so you can easily understand what it all means. 

You can go beyond what people are saying and avoid getting bogged down in engagement metrics. You can also connect past actions to current results, such as how your response to a shift in mentions or sentiments paid off. AI connects the dots for you, leaving you to skip some of the guesswork and take all the credit for your results.

We’ve covered the tip of the iceberg about AI’s role in social listening and monitoring. But it doesn’t end there — let’s look at some other use cases where AI can help you gain an edge on social media.

AI can sift through vast numbers of online conversations to spot who’s talking about your brand or industry the most. More importantly, it can find who’s getting the most attention. 

AI social listening tools help you discover influencers who may not be on your radar but are already engaging with your target audience. Instead of manually searching for influencers, AI shines a light on the voices that resonate. This saves you time and helps you connect with the right people to boost your brand's visibility.

TIP: Download our Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing for more tips and tricks to supercharge your influencer program!

AI social listening tools can detect shifts in sentiment early on. If people start expressing negative feedback about your brand or product, AI picks up on that trend before it spirals out of control. 

For brands, this ability is like a superpower. You can address issues before they become full-blown crises, allowing your team to step in with the right messaging or solutions to preserve your reputation.

Social listening tools can track customer feedback in real time, so you can respond quickly to any complaints or questions. AI will pinpoint recurring issues or patterns, helping you improve your services or products based on what customers are saying. 

Plus, your team has all the information they need to prioritize responses to the most pressing concerns. This helps ensure no customer feels ignored, leading to faster, more effective customer support — and happier customers.

When choosing AI for social listening, make sure it can help you connect as many dots as possible. AI isn’t a substitute for the human touch, but it can empower the way you work, speed up the way you analyze data, and take action at timely moments.

Meltwater is one of the best social listening tools for 2024, giving you the full package of social media monitoring and analysis. With the ability to monitor unlimited keywords, you never have to miss a conversation that matters to your business. Meltwater surfaces relevant mentions while filtering out the noise, leaving you with only the most essential data to drive your decisions.

Discover the power of Al in social listening with Al social listening tools and media monitoring. We explain how it works and help you understand your audience.

TJ Kiely

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