United States

Ann-Derrick Gaillot is Meltwater's content writer. She joined the Americas team in March 2022 with nearly a decade of experience in content writing, copywriting, editorial, and culture journalism.

Content Writer

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

Author: TJ Kiely

Pride Month 2022 is upon us, and the only things more ubiquitous than rainbows are discussions of the meaning and power behind the month-long holiday. Beginning with the first Gay Pride march in New York City in 1970, an explicitly political event commemorating the Stonewall Riots a year earlier, Pride Month has since become a global celebration of LGBTQ+ communities, culture, and history. 

As the holiday has grown, more businesses and corporations have come to mark it with special marketing campaigns, limited-edition product lines, and representation in local Pride marches. But these efforts haven’t always appropriately honored the social and political gravity of the celebration. Every year, a large subset of Pride marketing's target audiences — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and their allies — speak out against its corporatization.

Brands, companies, and corporations have much to learn from their audiences and customers when it comes to how to approach Pride with self-awareness and tact. We analyzed thousands of online conversations and content about Pride marketing for insight on what brands should consider for this Pride Month and the ones to come.

1. Consumers anticipate Pride Month marketing

2. Many are also wary of Pride month marketing

3. LGBTQ+ audiences care about real-life issues

4. Pride is an opportunity to pass the mic

5. Pride is an opportunity for transparency

6. Businesses observing Pride Month is still significant

When Millennials were kids (and Gen-Z was non-existent), companies and brands generally didn’t observe Pride Month to the extent they do today. A turning point came in 1994. That year, IKEA debuted the first American TV commercial to feature a gay couple and a major consumer attitudes study highlighted the gay and lesbian consumer base for the first time.

Fast forward to today, consumers are more than just used to Pride Month marketing. They hotly anticipate it. Across channels, mentions of Pride and mentions of brands, companies, and corporations started to soar on May 31. 

As talk of Pride marketing rose, so did mentions of rainbow-washing, a term used to describe the hollow and sometimes outright hypocritical ways companies market to LGBTQ+ consumers in June.

This reflects audiences’ familiarity with Pride marketing and their frustrations with how consumerism has come to dominate the commemorative month.

In the last week of May, one of the most retweeted tweets about brands and Pride poked fun at the idea that the month has become more about marketing than honoring the 1969 Stonewall riots. It reached 454,000 people in one day.

Meanwhile, the piece of content that garnered the most engagement in that period was a TikTok explaining what rainbow-washing is. 

Don’t let 🏳️‍🌈washing distract you & make you complacent to the very real issues that still exist. #pridemonth #rainbowwashing #lbgtq #ally

As this Twitter keyword cloud shows — with the words corporations, rainbow capitalism, and logos looming large alongside legislation, crowdfunding goals, and community — consumers are discussing the disconnect between Pride marketing and their values. 

Does this mean you should trash your rainbow logo? No! But as conversations about Pride marketing continue throughout the month, pay attention. These comments, posts, and tweets offer clues to what your audience values most. 

Speaking of what your audience values most, let’s look at popular hashtags. The last week of May, #pride and #pridemonth were understandably the two most popular Pride- and brands-related hashtag on Twitter. But, not far behind in third place was #dontsaygay, which beat out both #pride2022 and #pridemonth2022.

This year, many are using the month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ resistance and resilience to rally support against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill and many others like it in the United States. 

Not every brand needs to, or should, position itself as an authority on LGBTQ+ issues during Pride month. But any doing Pride-specific marketing owes it to its audience to be knowledgeable about the civil rights threats LGBTQ+ communities face today.

On Twitter, the most blistering criticism comes in the form of jokes and memes. On June 1, one joke format in particular became the go-to for critiques of Pride marketing. 

Skewering ad campaigns of Prides past with the phrase “that’s why this Pride month, I’m partnering with,” these tweets highlight corporate attempts to shoehorn brand ambassadors’ lived experiences of marginalization and oppression into marketing content. The below tweet reached more than 24,000 people in one day and helped inspire numerous other twists on the joke.

Beneath the punchlines is very real exasperation with how companies position lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people and their traumas in campaigns. At the same time, audiences want brands that engage in Pride marketing to also engage in efforts that benefit LGBTQ+ communities. 

Other than cash donations, the best thing brands can offer LGBTQ+ activists, change-makers, and leaders are their platforms and resources. Hiring LGBTQ+ creators and shining a spotlight on community events and organizations is one way to start. Most importantly, let whomever you collaborate with lead the direction of the campaign and compensate them fairly. Otherwise, you might find yourself being the central focus of a viral meme next year.

Along with marketing, audiences also spent the first day of Pride discussing how to wield collective effort and consumer power for change. 

Many people in the target audiences for Pride marketing are eager to support small businesses and organizations led by members of the LGBTQ+ community. If that doesn’t include you, this is a great time to help someone else shine.

Is the company behind your brand a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people? Does it put its money and resources behind the values it markets during Pride Month? In many ways, June is an opportunity for LGBTQ+ communities to look back on their legacies of resistance and take stock of where they are today. The same can be true for institutions, organizations, and businesses. What strides can you celebrate and in what ways are you not doing enough?

On the flipside, if your Pride Month marketing has nothing to back it up, don’t be surprised if people start asking questions online. As eager as consumers are for information on where to spend their money, they are also eager to learn where not to. Another much-retweeted statement came from left-wing think tank Data for Progress promoting its report on the companies that fund anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the United States. Two May 26 tweets reached more than 156,000 people in less than a week.

As we've covered, the week of June 1 featured thousands of prominent and far-reaching conversations and pieces of content with funny, thoughtful, critical, and positive statements and observations about Pride Month marketing. And like the below TikTok, which garnered the most engagement across channels in that time period, they are generally pro-LGBTQ+ rights and representation. 

happy pride month! 🏳️‍🌈 #pride #pridemonth #canada #banks #corporations #funny #satire

At the same time, one of the pieces of content that received the most engagement across channels was a homophobic and transphobic call for people to stop supporting businesses that celebrate Pride. Some of the more than 46,900 people who engaged with the tweet were critical of its message, but the vast majority liked and/or retweeted it without comment. 

In the United States, the number of major businesses that publicly oppose anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has grown steadily over the past few years. Still, proposed laws attacking protecting access to healthcare and freedom from discrimination at work, in school, and in public continue to gain ground.

What’s clear is audiences aren’t passively consuming feel-good Pride content. As they’ve gotten used to branded shows of support for LGBTQ+ communities, they’ve also become more critical and thoughtful of the impact that marketing can have. As a general rule, whatever Pride initiatives your organization takes, start from a place of intentionality, informedness, and community-mindedness. Your efforts and outputs have more potential for positive, or negative, impact than you may think!

6 Pride Month Marketing Insights for Brands: What to remember when showing support for LGBTQ+ communities in June

6 Points for Brands to Remember during Pride Month

Earlier this year, Meltwater Engineering Director Sebastian Spier sat in on a Zoom presentation that gave him a new perspective on how curiosity and passion can make way for innovation. As he sat in his Berlin home, a colleague hundreds of miles away gave him and several other participants the lowdown on how he saved his team thousands of dollars by optimizing a software cluster on the Meltwater platform in his spare time. 

“It was about how an engineer [on a team where] they have a day where they can work on a problem that has been itching them for a while,” Sebastian says. “It was a great story of how giving people liberty in what they work on yields great ROI.” The presentation, “120 to 24 Nodes,” by Meltwater engineer Alexander Gunnarsson, was one of many sessions that took place during the 12th official Devopsicon. But don’t confuse Meltwater’s twice-a-year, company-wide, knowledge- and skill-share spectacular with any old professional conference.

In the simplest terms, Devopsicon is an “unconference”, meaning it has no agenda set ahead of time. Rather, attendees propose and facilitate their own sessions, with the ability to come up and host new ones on the spot. The result is an event whose success is directly in each attendee’s hands. “I think that's one really cool thing about the event,” says Sebastian. “It puts everybody in charge.”

Devopsicon unofficially started at Meltwater in 2015 as a collaborative effort between the Gothenburg, Sweden, and Berlin engineering departments. Initially, they came together to discuss and plan how to update Meltwater’s processes with a DevOps mindset. After a few iterations, the departments went to Agile Coach Jeff Campbell for guidance on how to structure the growing event. He introduced them to the unconference structure and the official Devopsicon was born.

“The way a regular conference is structured, you get really excited by the keynote. And then the conference goes on for two or three more days, during which time you're just absorbing more and more content but not actually able to do anything about any of the content you've gotten until you get back to your job,” Jeff explains. “With the unconference format, if you hear about something in the morning that you think is really interesting, you can basically be doing something about it, come the afternoon.” 

Meltwater’s unconference is a place where people from all over the company meet, discuss, learn, and solve real problems that they face in their daily work.

It’s something we do a few times a year and is attended by about 80 people and lasts 5 days. It is a mix of conference talks, discussion groups, and working sessions. We use an unconference approach to allow flexibility in the schedule and for the programme to emerge as the week progresses.

An unconference itself is a conference with no pre-set agenda. Rather, the agenda is set by by the attendees daily, and is continually revised throughout the event.

This might sound chaotic to you, and if you’re not practiced in running them, it can be. However, with a bit of structure and the right preparation, it allows a group of people to continually respond to changing situations and new information.

https://underthehood.meltwater.com/blog/2018/01/16/how-to-organise-an-unconference/

DevOpsiCon (Meltwater's Un-Conference)

Sessions generally take one of a handful of formats: standard presentations with closing Q&As, quick presentations called “lightning talks”, discussion groups, and “get shit done” sessions where participants come together to actively work through a problem.

And while most sessions were DevOps-related in the early years, these days topics reach far beyond the software development and operations framework that gave it its name. Sessions can be as closely or loosely tied to technical work as desired.

“When I first heard of this idea of an unconference, I wondered how the heck that was gonna work. But people always come up with all kinds of creative ideas and we end up keeping the conference overflowing with sessions and options,” says Christina Arsenault, Meltwater’s Senior Director of Global Support who also helps with logistics, recruiting, and support for the event. 

After attending her first Devopsicon in Gothenburg in 2016, she joined the planning group. “I was amazed at how it could bring so many different areas of the company together that, even with your best efforts, can get siloed,” she says. “People might have assumptions about an area of the company they never dealt directly with. And all of the sudden they have a good acquaintance that they've made that now they can reach out to when they have ideas. You would see so many things after every Devopsicon that came about because people made that connection. I think that is just priceless.”

Like most events before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Devopsicon used to take place in person, alternating between Meltwater’s large Engineering offices. (Read more about how Meltwater handled the nuts and bolts of Devopiscon here.) Present-day, pandemic-safe Devopsicons take place remotely. Events like a virtual “after party” help make up for the spur-of-the-moment social encounters and brainstorms that made the in-person event so special. 

The new format has made the event more accessible than ever, as people who normally could not travel for the event can now hop in from wherever they are. Plus, the wonders of video conferencing can, in some cases, allow for a different level of intimacy. As Sebastian points out, the format let facilitators bring participants right into their kitchens for a latte session and a popular cake decorating session. That would have been impossible in the earlier days of the event.

Devopsicon 12, which took place from April 26 to April 29, had more than 250 proposed topics. In the end, about 250 participants took part in five sessions occurring simultaneously for 14 hours a day, for four days straight. Like previous virtual Devopsicons, the recordings of the sessions immediately result in a sizeable knowledge bank.

It kicked off with "Technical Coaching: A Way to Spread Skills and Build Culture," a keynote presentation by Technical Agile Coach and software developer Emily Bache. Topics of the many subsequent sessions spanned an inspiring range. From using Meltwater data to drive sustainability for the company and clients to a how-to presentation about the features of design software Figma. From a live hacking JavaScript session to a presentation on how brain chemicals can be leveraged to strengthen teams. From a meeting among 3D printing and modeling enthusiasts to a “lightning talk” about terraforming GitHub to a discussion of how to improve the onboarding process for new hires. 

(Read more about what Meltwater engineers are up to in their official blog Under the Hood.)

“I think for new hires, or if Meltwater buys a company and then we bring their engineers to Devopsicon, they will have a sense of what type of crowd Meltwater is immediately,” says Sebastian. “It will tell you that it's serious, but not to a fault. There are so many subtleties that wouldn't happen in a formal onboarding process that will happen in an event like this. It's one of the signature events for product and engineering, for sure.”

Today, Sebastian starts each day with a cappuccino he made himself using skills he learned straight from the coworker thousands of miles away who held a barista tutorial session at Devopsicon 12. It’s just one result of the untold number of connections and sparks born every six months at Meltwater’s favorite collaborative event.

Meltwater's unconference • Devopsicon 12 • Not your average tech conference

Devopsicon 12, Meltwater's Beloved Unconference

Meltwater’s unconference is a place where people from all over the company meet, discuss, learn, and solve real problems that they face in their daily work.

It’s something we do a few times a year and is attended by about 80 people and lasts 5 days. It is a mix of conference talks, discussion groups, and working sessions. We use an unconference approach to allow flexibility in the schedule and for the programme to emerge as the week progresses.

An unconference itself is a conference with no pre-set agenda. Rather, the agenda is set by by the attendees daily, and is continually revised throughout the event.

This might sound chaotic to you, and if you’re not practiced in running them, it can be. However, with a bit of structure and the right preparation, it allows a group of people to continually respond to changing situations and new information.

underthehood.meltwater.com/blog/2018/01/16/how-to-organise-an-unconference/

DevOpsiCon (Meltwater’s Un-Conference)

Have you heard the news? Meltwater earned multiple distinctions at G2’s 2022 Best Software Awards earlier this year! Along with being named one of the top 10 Best Marketing and Digital Advertising products, we were also featured as a Best Software Product, Highest Satisfaction Product, Best Global Seller, and Best Product for Enterprise, Mid-Market, and Small Businesses. 

That’s seven (seven!) distinctions in total. And most importantly to us, they are based on thousands of authentic reviews from real users. With that, thank you to all of the Meltwater users that have shared reviews and comments on G2. Here’s what some of you had to say:

“We use Meltwater for EVERYTHING! Newswire distribution, social media, and more recently all-media tracking.”

“Meltwater's omnichannel listening is the best out there. To be able to search across ALL channels (including Reddit) for mentions is incredible.”

“Meltwater has all the information that we need, when we need it. If something is missing, we have a direct contact to reach out to and they always respond and add our new sources same day.”

“Meltwater has been great to work with for both their social analytics as well as their ability to connect with media across the globe, giving our office the reach we are looking for.”

“The user experience is so good, it's intuitive, and working with social listening is easy for everyone includ[ing] people without experience in data.”

“I appreciate that the platform is constantly evolving. I've used it for nearly two years, now, and in that time, new features that I've both requested, and didn't know I wanted, have been added that have improved the platform.”

We’re proud to rate high in the features that matter most to marketing and PR professionals: Social Media Analytics, Social Media Monitoring, Media Monitoring, Social Media Management, PR Analytics, Social Media Suites, and Media and Influencer Targeting. And as the pioneer in media intelligence and the only all-in-one solution for PR and social media, Meltwater is committed to keeping user feedback at the heart of what we do as we keep growing and improving.

Are you a Meltwater user who wants to share your review? Tell us about your experience directly on G2. New to Meltwater and want to check out the excellence behind the hype? We have a demo with your name on it. Request one today.

Thank you! A member of our team will be in touch shortly

Meltwater proudly celebrates multiple wins at the 2022 G2 Best Software Awards

Meltwater Wins G2 Best Software Awards

Meltwater Celebrates G2 Best Software Awards Wins

Celebrating International Women’s Day, 2022

Today, communities across the globe are coming together to celebrate International Women’s Day! A lot of progress has been made since IWD was first observed in 1911. But as of 2022, the gender pay gap, violence against women, transmisogyny, and other injustices are still pressing issues. Along with being a time to celebrate women’s achievements, IWD is an occasion for people everywhere to heed calls to action to accelerate gender parity. This year’s IWD theme is #BreakTheBias, urging awareness of, and action addressing, the conscious and unconscious biases that hold women back in the workplace every day. 

Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn’t enough, action is needed to level the playing field.  — (IWD 2022)

Here at Meltwater, we’re committed to diversity, inclusion, and championing every member of our team. That’s part of why Comparably named us one of the Best Companies for Women and Best Companies for Diversity in 2021. You can read more about our diversity and inclusion initiatives on our Careers page.

There’s always more that we can do and learn when it comes to recognizing and celebrating women. So for IWD 2022, we asked three members of the Meltwater family to share their insights on being women in leadership.

1. Julia Nill - Enterprise Director, EMEA

Women in Leadership: Julia Nill

Julia joined Meltwater in 2015 as an International Management Trainee, quickly advancing to become a Managing Director of Meltwater Africa 2020, she co-founded the Women in Tech initiative at Meltwater, becoming a leading voice for gender equality. Julia is based in Cape Town and is currently the Enterprise Director of Meltwater EMEA.

Have each others’ backs. A practical example is on Zoom calls. If someone has a great idea and it’s your female colleague, take yourself off mute and acknowledge how good that idea was and celebrate that on the spot.

Be or get a sponsor. Someone that is there to help nurture your career and see opportunities, see strengths, see where you can improve, and therefore help further where you want to go.

Prioritize. You have to know what matters to you, what you want to fill your day with. We all have the same amount of time, so it’s up to you how you want to use it. I have found a great way of prioritizing the things that fuel me and that give me energy. And that means that I can bring my best self to work, but also my best self at home.

Define success for yourself. Someone's success is often all you see, but it is only the end result of someone’s late nights, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. It’s difficult to separate what success means to you and what it should look like for you if you're too busy looking at someone else's version of it.

Above all, be authentic, be real, and stay true to yourself. Probably the three most important ingredients for success I can think of. 

2. Laila Mousa - Account Executive Director, Middle East

Women in Leadership: Laila Mousa

Laila started with Meltwater in 2010 as a Sales Consultant, part of the team responsible for establishing Abu Dhabi operations. Since then, she’s risen through the ranks, building out crucial markets for Meltwater in the Middle East, becoming an Account Executive Director in 2020, and leading the team responsible for some of Meltwater’s largest accounts in the region.

Lean on your support system. My parents were the most amazing mentors that I have had. I’m very proud of them, and I really lean on their shoulders for everything so far. 

Fake it until you make it. When I started at Meltwater I considered myself closed off, shy, and having major stage fright. I still remember my first visit to the Saudi market with a client. At that point, women doing business in Saudi was very rare and very unheard of. Getting in that meeting room by myself in front of a room full of men was such a nerve-wracking experience. Did they listen to me? Not really, not in the beginning at least. Did I run away? I really wanted to hide. But it took me a while, almost 20 minutes, to get their attention and respect. It was on that trip that I really wanted to do something different to break the glass ceilings. 

Don’t be shy about asking for help or advice. No one will think less of you. We always tend to want to prove ourselves. But looking for help and support systems, you need that to be successful, whatever your role is.

Find that go-to person in your career. It could be inside your organization or outside your organization, to create that support system and help you in seeking guidance.

Build your confidence. My confidence grew significantly as I grew in my career, meeting my goals and my expectations for myself. When imposter syndrome starts creeping into my mind, I always try to take a step back and take a toll of what’s going on, what’s going well, and what I have achieved. Build my own confidence block by block. 

3. Pooja Farkade - Senior Director, Business Applications

Women in Leadership: Pooja Farkade

Pooja joined the Meltwater team in 2013 with past experience at Oracle and as a Fellow for the Clinton Foundation. Today, she is part of the global Research and Development Leadership Team, as Head of Global Enterprise Applications, and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lead with empathy. People are at the front and center whenever I think about leadership. You need to lead with empathy, whether you’re solving a customer issue or you’re meeting with an employee. It’s always the empathy and the compassion that you have that can open the doors to finding creative solutions.

Have integrity. By that, I mean having ownership and accountability. You need to lead the way for your teams by walking the talk so that they see that you are reliable and you are dependable.

Be adaptable. Being able to have that critical thinking is the most important thing.

Have the curiosity to learn. Learn as much as you can. Have an open mind. And build that business acumen. 

Learn to work with people. Be resourceful, be collaborative, and build those relationships, because ultimately the world’s a team sport. 

Be kind to yourself and the people around you. Through it all. 

Have a happy, mindful, and empowering International Women’s Day! We hope you take some time today to celebrate the women in your life and reflect on what you can do to #BreakTheBias.

Meltwater celebrates International Women's Day 2022 with insights from three of our leaders.

Celebrating International Women's Day, 2022

Happy International Women’s Day, 2022!

Looking for an all-in-one customer experience solution that can deliver better results than Birdeye? We've researched the best alternatives so you don't have to. 

Birdeye is a marketing platform that businesses use to enhance their customer service experiences. It lets users automate customer review responses, add web chats to their websites, and manage their listings on third-party review sites. Together, these tools help large and small businesses alike learn more about their customer journeys.

Whether you're currently using the platform or in the process of scouting options, you may be wondering about what other customer feedback and CRM options are out there. Read on to learn more about the best reputation management software that leading companies use today.

Here are the main companies to consider when looking for alternatives to Birdeye:

Birdeye lets users conduct review monitoring and surveys to determine customer satisfaction, but it only sheds light on a small sliver of a company's online presence, customer experience, and audience behavior. The best alternative to Birdeye is:

As a media intelligence and social listening suite, we have to put ourselves in a class of our own. Pulling and integrating data from social media, online reviews, blogs, and other channels, Meltwater offers the depth of information companies and brands need to make data-driven business decisions. Plus crisis management features like spike alerts let brands proactively manage their online reputations so they can get ahead of any potential PR emergencies.

Meltwater is the far more robust, comprehensive, and integrated software option. While Birdeye helps businesses oversee their online reputations with tools geared to managing review and listing sites, our solutions give businesses insight on a wide range of channels for a more comprehensive overview. Plus, we eliminate the need for labor- and time-intensive surveys with real-time, AI-powered insights on conversations about companies, brands, industries, and competitors.

Meltwater Explore

When it comes to audience engagement, Birdeye offers web chats and a social media messaging platform. However, our social media engagement platform Engage lets businesses manage all social media functions from one place — messaging and posting and built-in performance analytics.

2021 Engage Product Video

Meltwater is the number one alternative to Birdeye, but you have no shortage of other options to compare us to. Here is a closer look at some other reputation management, customer experience, and reviews software platforms. 

As its name implies, NiceJob is a cloud-based reputation management platform that helps businesses rake collect positive reviews. It lets users automate review invites and reminder emails. Plus, its integration with branded websites gives you a constant stream of SEO-boosting content.

Ease of use and the ability to automate social media posts using the positive reviews you collected makes NiceJob a competitive option against Birdeye. Ultimately, larger businesses may prefer Birdeye, but NiceJob is a solid choice for any that want to consolidate social media management tasks.

Operating in a parallel vein of customer feedback software, Olark's customizable chatbots and chat analytics set it apart from Birdeye.

Choosing between these two boils down to one question: Do you want reviews or live chats? You may very well want both, but those separate martech tools add up. In that case, consider switching to an all-in-one reputation monitoring platform instead.

ReviewInc lets users find and respond to customer reviews from across the web via a single platform.

G2 reviewers love ReviewInc's customer support. Otherwise, Birdeye offers a much wider range of features for businesses that want added marketing capabilities, like SMS and web chat.

Also a review and reputation management software, ReviewTrackers shines when it comes to its easy-to-read analytics dashboards.

ReviewTrackers' biggest downside is its lack of customer messaging options. If you're looking for a tool that can help you engage with customers as well as monitor your feedback, Birdeye is a better bet.


Swell is a "headless" e-commerce and customer service platform that makes it simple for users to develop their backend. Its main features include integrated payment and appointment scheduling tools, webchats, and automated customer review requests.

According to software review site G2, Swell doesn't rate as high as Birdeye when it comes to media monitoring and online reputation management. Still, many users like that it is easy to set up and use.

Vendasta is an end-to-end e-commerce platform with tools like a built-in CRM, basic task manager, and third-party listings manager.

Unlike Birdeye, Vendasta is a platform that individuals can use as well as businesses and large enterprises. It also has a freemium model that offers access to features like one snapshot report and 50 free email sends a month at no cost. This is a reasonable option for small businesses willing to sacrifice the more thorough media monitoring and reputation management capabilities of software like Meltwater.

Yext is a search-as-a-service software that helps businesses manage their customer support services, as well as listings and reviews on third-party websites. 

One of Birdeye's biggest limitations is that it only operates in English. Like Meltwater, Yext supports a range of languages including German, French, Swedish, and Simplified Chinese. 

Yotpo is an e-commerce platform geared toward customer feedback and user-generated content (UGC). It helps businesses and brands in four main realms: reviews and ratings, loyalty programs and referrals, SMS marketing, and visual UGC. 

Yotpo lacks Birdeye's keyword tracking and mobile-deployment capabilities. Luckily, it has a free version that you can try.

With Zendesk, a cloud-based CRM, users can manage sales, customize sales dashboards, offer mobile user support, and automate emails.

Zendesk wins this head-to-head thanks to its geo-targeting feature and scalability. Still, it can't offer the level of customer insight robust social listening and media monitoring solutions can.


Still unsure which Birdeye alternative to turn to? Learn how Meltwater can save you the hassle of scouring endless review and listing sites by giving you audience insights in real time. Try a demo today!

Alternatives to Birdeye • The best reputation management software • Birdeye vs. Meltwater, NiceJob, Olark, ReviewInc, ReviewTrackers, Swell, Vendasta, ...

The Best Birdeye Alternatives 2022

Cision not meeting your expectations? You're not alone. Many businesses across industries have social listening and media monitoring needs that the platform can't meet. 

The good news is that there are plenty of better options out there. Read on for a quick and easy guide to the top Cision competitors.

Before we look at competitors, let's take a closer look at what Cision is and does. 

Cision is a multi-platform software that offers users four main capabilities: targeting media figures and influencers, PR distribution services, social listening, and media monitoring. 

It is perhaps best known for PRWeb, its digital media PR distribution platform, and PR Newswire, its digital and traditional media press release distribution platform.

The following companies offer solutions that are good alternatives to what Cision is offering.

Scroll down to read more about their pros and cons.

Cision has been a player in communications for more than 150 years, but its platforms leave many users wanting something better. It has many competitors in the crowded marketing technology space, but there's only one that ticks more boxes than the rest.

Our platform is a best-in-class, all-in-one social and media intelligence solution for PR, marketing, communications, and social professionals. From social media analytics and engagement solutions to an all-encompassing influencer marketing platform, Meltwater is designed to solve all the problems and obstacles (and take advantage of all the opportunities!) that come along with modern marketing.

One of Cision's weaknesses is its clunkiness. Unlike our all-in-one, PR, comms, and social solutions, Cision's varied tools require users to log into multiple platforms and seek support from multiple account representatives. Brandwatch and Falcon.io, which have been under the Cision umbrella since 2021 and 2019 respectively, remain completely separate platforms. 

By comparison, Meltwater solutions are customizable, integrated, and easy to use. Plus, clients enjoy having one dedicated customer success team per account. Usability and integration are especially key when it comes to campaign management and long-term marketing strategies. Insights extracted from media monitoring and social media analytics can be put to good use seamlessly via our social engagement and influencer marketing platforms. 

Integrated Platform Social - Homepage

Another frequent complaint of Cision clients is that the software's large journalist database is riddled with out-of-date information. Our database, on the other hand, offers keyword searches for journalists and a "living" media list that uses data cleansing to eliminate double counting. 

We also come out ahead when it comes to reputation and brand management use cases. With a broad social listening capability across numerous channels worldwide, it offers users a comprehensive look at online conversations about their companies and brands. And highly customizable reporting on traditional and bespoke metrics makes analytics and insights easy to communicate across teams and departments. 

For brands and companies looking to get into the exploding world of influencer marketing, our solutions facilitate identifying and vetting influencers, managing influencer campaigns, capturing and analyzing results, as well as payment. 

Finally, live Meltwater customer support reps are available to clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can't say the same about Cision.

From PR to communications to marketing to social media and every combination in between, Meltwater is the comprehensive, all-in-one platform that out-performs Cision solutions across the board.

Meltwater is the top Cision alternative, but there are many other options to compare it to. Here's how other competitors match up.

Critical Mention is a media monitoring platform that helps businesses and brands keep tabs on their earned media mentions and coverage. 

Critical Mention vs. Cision Communications Cloud

While Critical Mention helps users collect and monitor media coverage, it doesn't help with crucial aspects of drumming up engagement. Cision offers capabilities like communication management and email distribution that Critical Mention is missing.

GlobeNewswire is a global press release agency and newswire distribution network. It delivers unique press releases, multimedia content, and financial disclosures to databases and news outlets, including NASDAQ and Reuters.

G2 reviewers applaud GlobeNewswire for being easy to use, but when it comes to reach, the platform falls flat. Despite its name, it distributes across 92 countries compared to PR Newswire's 170+.

Newswire lets users distribute press releases, track news and industry trends, and analyze campaign performance.

Newswire and PRWeb are mostly comparable tools, except when it comes to multimedia. Newswire charges extra for including more than one image or video in its releases. By comparison, PRWeb offers users a much wider range of embedded, attached, and hyperlinked multimedia.

This reputation management software's main features are automated email and SMS review invites along with a branded website where customer feedback can be displayed.

Notably, both Cision and NiceJob lack keyword and brand tracking. When it comes to straight-ahead review generation and management, NiceJob is the more specialized tool. However, all-in-one platforms that enable online reputation management via social media monitoring and audience engagement are a better solution for in-depth PR and marketing strategies.

Prezly helps public relations professionals get their websites, email engagement, media relations, and customer support in order. Some of its go-to features are its media contacts database and press release creator.

Prezly's main advantage over Cision Communications Cloud is its CRM platform strictly for PR contacts, which lets users track the conversations and interactions with key individuals. At the same time, Prezly is a very specialized tool that may not be the best choice for businesses and brands with more robust marketing and PR needs.

Businesses use Prowly to manage their media relations using the platform's journalist database, press release creator, and other tools.

G2 reviews show that users generally find Prowly to be easier to use than SaaS like Cision, but many may find that simplicity comes at the cost of versatility. Unlike Cision, Prowly offers a free trial, which at least lets you check out the accuracy (and relevance to you) of its media contacts database. 

Cision boasts tons of offerings, but it isn't right for everyone. Want to learn more about how the #1 Cision alternative can boost your business? Get in touch for a Meltwater demo today!

7 Alternatives to Cision • The Top Cision Alternative • Cision vs. Meltwater, Critical Mention,
GlobeNewswire, Newswire, NiceJob, Prezly, and Prowly

Ann-Derrick Gaillot

6 Points for Brands to Remember during Pride Month

Devopsicon 12, Meltwater's Beloved Unconference

Meltwater Celebrates G2 Best Software Awards Wins

Happy International Women’s Day, 2022!

The Best Birdeye Alternatives 2022

The Best Cision Alternatives 2022