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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.

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See all blogs written by Ann-Derrick Gaillot, Meltwater's content writer. Social media management ★ digital marketing ★ ...

Author: Ann-Derrick Gaillot

Looking for an alternative to Cision for your social media and media monitoring needs? 

Many highly-rated options are 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.

Our PR, comms, and social solutions are integrated with each other, but 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. 

To our credit, Meltwater solutions are customizable 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

Some Cision clients complain that its journalist database includes some 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 excel in 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 custom 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, setting our users up for success.

From PR to communications to marketing to social media and every combination in between, Meltwater is the comprehensive, all-in-one Cision alternative that thousands of marketing professionals worldwide prefer. 

Meltwater is the top Cision alternative, but there are many other options to compare it with. 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, 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 competitive 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 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. For straight-ahead review generation and management, NiceJob is the more specialized tool. 

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 many users find Prowly to be easier to use than SaaS like Cision, but for some that simplicity may come at the cost of versatility. Prowly offers a free trial, which 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

The Best Cision Alternatives 2023

2021 Engage Product Video

Looking for an all-in-one customer experience solution that can compete with 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 a 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. Our platforms also 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. By contrast, our social media engagement platform Engage lets businesses manage all social media functions from one place — messaging and posting and built-in performance analytics.

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  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 may be 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.

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. 

Birdeye's 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.

Looking for geo-targeting features and scalability? If so, Zendesk wins this head-to-head 


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 2023

Ever since sourdough starters united the world during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, viral social media food trends have become a pop culture staple. Creative recipes and novelty coffee shop orders come and go, but each year a small number of trends dominate the rest. Wondering what the biggest food trend of 2022 was? The answer isn’t as definite as you might think. We took a look at the biggest viral food trends of 2022 to learn more about how they performed across the world.

Want to connect with food-loving audiences? Make them want a seat at your table with data-driven insights from Birdseye Report: #Foodies on Twitter.

To learn more about viral food trends, we used our social listening platform to analyze mentions of more than a dozen recent viral food trends. We then narrowed our analysis down to the top five, as determined by the share of voice of mentions of related keywords and hashtags. This gave us the following trends:

Read on to learn a bit more about each one.

Fairy bread is a slice of buttered bread covered in sprinkles. Though it’s long been popular in Australia and New Zealand, this whimsical kids’ snack had a viral moment in 2022.

The dirty soda or “Dirty Diet Coke” trend is another regional favorite that hit the big time on social media this year. Popularized in Utah, dirty soda is a mix of diet cola, heavy cream, lime juice, and coconut syrup served over ice. The phrase also refers to other similar mixes of iced soda, creams, and syrups.  

Cupcake brand Made by Melissa had a surprise hit when a salad recipe it posted on its blog in January became an internet sensation. Part salad, part dip, this vegan recipe inspired legions of home chefs to try making it themselves and create their own versions.

Despite its name, this viral food is another vegan treat. Cowboy caviar is a dip that combines corn with chopped avocado, tomato, bell pepper, red onion, cilantro, and jalapeño. 

Butter boards are basically charcuterie boards but with butter. A lot of this trend’s appeal lies in the presentation. 

Learn more about the foodies behind the trends in Birdseye Report: #Foodies on Twitter, our audience deep-dive report for the Twitter Official Partner Program.

Well, it depends. The trend that took over your feed most is related to where on the internet, and in the world, you are. 

There is one giant exception. In the English-speaking world, the biggest food trend of each year is seasonal, predates TikTok, and originated with Starbucks.

That’s right: Pumpkin spice lattes, and every possible edible spinoff, are bigger than any other food trend when it comes to share of voice and mentions of related keywords and terms. While not new, comparing viral food trends to the seasonal appearance of #PSL helps us understand just how ubiquitous a food trend can get.

From January 1 through mid-October 2022, no food trend generated more mentions or had a greater share of voice than pumpkin spice lattes.

Unless you’re in the southern hemisphere that is. Notably, it had the smallest share of voice in Australia, where PSL season arrives during spring rather than autumn, and fairy bread originates.

When we look at 2022 food trends without mentions of pumpkin spice lattes, the results reveal how much each one’s popularity varies from audience to audience. By share of voice, butter boards were the biggest food trend of 2022 with cowboy caviar following closely behind, but that metric alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

Looking at mentions of each trend over time shows us how intensely “viral” each one was. 

Cowboy caviar racked up a high share of mentions, partly by simmering in popularity over several months — primarily from May through July. However, the latest food trend of the year, butter boards, had much more dramatic spikes in mentions over fewer weeks. If you thought that the butter boards trend suddenly popped up out of nowhere, the above chart shows that you were right.

While butter boards are this year’s most viral trend overall, they weren’t nearly as viral on some platforms as they were on others. They have dominated YouTube and broadcast, but if your online diet consists mainly of reviews, Wechat, Pinterest, and/or message boards, they may not seem like much of a prominent trend at all.

Green goddess salad took over reviews, while cowboy caviar had high shares of voice on Pinterest, blogs, and TikTok. Meanwhile, Redditors, Twitch users, Wechat users, and frequenters of message boards mostly participated in the fairy bread trend. 

No one is indulging in the fairy bread trend like Australians, where the treat is said to have been invented back in 1929. 

Butter boards were the most viral food trend in the United Kingdom and Canada but only slightly beat cowboy caviar in the United States.

Meanwhile, dirty soda was predictably more popular in the United States than elsewhere. Finally, green goddess salad had its highest share of voice in Canada.

Download Birdseye Report: #Foodies on Twitter for a deeper look at the consumers behind online foodie communities.

What does it all mean? Marketers need to keep these three points in mind when tapping into viral food trends.

1. Jump on food trends as they're taking off

Using social listening to monitor food trends early lets you see when one starts to skyrocket and, alternatively, when it has already passed. Comparing the rise of emerging trends to those of previous ones can help you predict which will have a “moment” and which have a longer, but less dramatic, lifespan.

2. Pay attention to how trends vary across locations and channels

The channels and geographic locations you prioritize in your marketing strategy dictate how relevant each one is to your goals. When you run a food trends query in Meltwater Explore, our social listening platform, you can even break the geographic distribution of mentions down by state/province and city.

Most of all, marketers need to understand who their audiences are. This, above all, reveals which food trends are worth your investment of resources and time.

We used Explore and its audience insight tool, Communities, to take a closer look at the audience behind food lovers on Twitter. Download Birdseye Report: #Foodies on Twitter, created as part of the Twitter Official Partner Program, to see how to use our social intelligence suite for audience and market research.

Want to take our social intelligence platform for a spin? Request a demo through the form below.

The top viral food trends of 2022 • What was the most viral food trend of the year? • 3 food trend takeaways for marketers

The Biggest Food Trends of 2022

What Was the Biggest Food Trend of 2022? It Depends on How You Look at It.

Agorapulse is a well-known social media management platform, but it's not right for everyone. If you're reading this, you're probably searching for other options. 

We looked into the top Agorapulse alternatives to learn more about how it matches up against other platforms. Read on to learn more about the social media listening, engagement, and management options available today.

The Best Alternative to Agorapulse: Meltwater

<div style="background-color: #c4f4f4; padding: 20px;">Agorapulse is a social media management software that lets users manage and publish content across five different channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. It also includes some social media monitoring and analytics features like brand and conversion tracking.</div>

The following companies offer competitive services to Agorapulse:

Read on to learn more about their pros, cons, and key features.

When it comes to social media management, social media monitoring, and CRM, our social media monitoring platform is the best alternative to Agorapulse.

We were the world's first online media monitoring company when were founded in Oslo in 2001. Today, our suite of social listening, media monitoring, consumer insights, and influencer marketing solutions give companies the resources to do everything from social media management to competitive analysis, market research, campaign tracking, and other capabilities.

Choosing between Agorapulse and our easy-to-use social and media intelligence solutions is a matter of looking at which capabilities are right for your business. Software review and comparison site GetApp breaks that comparison down to the numbers: Meltwater has 67 of the top features users look for while Agorapulse only has 56. 

Those critical features Meltwater has that Agorapulse is missing include:

Let's take a closer look at how the two compare, starting with social listening. Our platform pulls in vast amounts of data — allowing for unlimited ad-hoc searches, unlimited mentions, and instant analytics across 15 months of social historical data and 10 years of historical news data.

Agorapulse has social listening and monitoring tools that help team members identify audiences and influencers. Meanwhile, our robust solutions have in-built, real-time analytics tools that integrate with our social media engagement and influencer marketing platforms. That way, all of your social media marketing efforts are centralized, efficient, and data-driven — a big win for any social media manager.

Here's another detail to consider: global presence. Meltwater has 57 global offices in 27 locations — making us well-positioned to help businesses scale up, no matter where they are — compared to Agorapulse's 12 offices.

We also have different customer support capabilities. Unlike Agorapulse, we offer unlimited training and phone support, as well as account management for all clients — not just enterprise accounts. Both of us can serve small businesses, but with better support and no costly competitive tracking add-ons, Meltwater is well-equipped to support businesses of any size looking to grow the ROI of their marketing, PR, and social strategies.

Ready to get a Meltwater demo? Fill out the form below to get a tour today!

CoSchedule Marketing Suite is an Agorapulse alternative that combines project management tools, like project status tracking, with social media management tools, like auto-posting. 

Like Agorapulse, CoSchedule is geared toward small marketing businesses looking to save time. Its software helps teams collaborate with shared publishing calendars and content approval workflows. Still, G2 reviews show that users find Agorapulse easier to set up, use, and get support for across the board. When comparing these two, one factor to consider is which social channels are most important to you. Agorapulse supports YouTube but not Pinterest, while CoSchedule supports Pinterest but not YouTube. 

eClincher is a social media management software for teams as well as individual freelancers. It is best known for its social network content publishing and scheduling features.

Truth be told, eClincher and Agorapulse have many of the same offerings. Sometimes, though, online reviews speak louder than checklists. According to software review site G2, more users give Agorapulse four- and five-star reviews than eClincher.

Hootsuite is a social media management software that currently supports dozens of social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. But don't worry - there are also some Hootsuite alternatives on the market.

According to reviewers on Capterra, Hootsuite users aren't able to easily automate or tag certain posts on the platform. With Instagram being a crucial part of many small and mid-size business social media marketing strategies, this detail could be a big one for many businesses. Another consideration is personal preference of user interface. Agorapulse has a combined social inbox, while Hootsuite separates social networks into their own columns.

Loomly helps users manage content for their social media accounts. This Agorapulse alternative also includes some workflow and project management tools, like publishing calendars, to keep marketing team members on the same page. 

Loomly and Agorapulse are comparable when it comes to the social media management basics, like post scheduling and calendar management. However, according to Capterra reviews, one frequent complaint about Loomly is that it doesn't let users post directly to Instagram. That reason alone makes Agorapulse a more practical choice for many marketing professionals. 

NapoleonCat is an all-in-one social media management platform and Agorapulse alternative with an emphasis on customer support. 

NapoleonCat reviewers have few complaints, but the platform also has fewer features. Agorapulse offers conversion tracking and customer segmentation tools, but NapoleonCat does not. In the end, Agorapulse is the more robust software.

Oktopost is a social media management platform specifically geared for B2B marketing.

Oktopost is the only Agorapulse alternative on this list that does not offer a free trial. It also doesn't offer a customer segmentation tool. That said, it has features that Agorapulse doesn't, like customizable reports. Since accurate and precise reporting is a must-have for any business, this feature makes Oktopost a strong Agorapulse competitor. 

Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform that is integrated across earned, owned, and paid channels.

Sprinklr and Agorapulse stand apart in ease of use. Many Sprinklr users and former users complain that the platform's software is hard to implement, overwhelming to use, and difficult to get support for. If a learning curve sounds like too much of an obstacle, Agorapulse may be the better choice for you.

<div style="background-color: #c4f4f4; padding: 20px;">Tip: <a href="https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/best-sprinklr-alternatives">Learn more about other Sprinklr alternatives</a>.</div>

One of Agorapulse's main competitors, Sprout Social is an all-in-one platform for marketers and social media managers. It lets users engage with audiences and measure performance. 

In general, Agorapulse is suited for mid-size businesses while Sprout Social caters to a wider range of users. Plus, Sprout Social pulls in social listening data from more sources, like Tumblr and Reddit. Social listening is a social marketing strategy essential, making Sprout Social an enticing option.

<div style="background-color: #c4f4f4; padding: 20px;"> Tip: <a href="https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/best-sprout-social-alternatives"> Find more Sprout Social alternatives here</a>.</div>

The Top 9 Agorapulse Alternatives • Agorapulse vs. Meltwater, CoSchedule, eClincher, Hootsuite, Loomly, NapoleonCat, Oktopost, Sprinklr & Sprout Social

The Best Agorapulse Alternatives 2023

2021 Explore Product Video

Over the past several years, influencer marketing has grown from a social media novelty into a multi-billion dollar industry. But as influencing and content creation for brands has become more professionalized, some major pain points have emerged. 

The fact is, if brands want to have recurring, successful influencer marketing campaigns, influencers need to want to work with them. And as more influencers and content creators are pulling back the curtain on the industry, brands that drop the ball can easily develop reputations for not being worthwhile to work with.

An Explore query of mentions of #influencerproblems, #contentcreatorproblems, #creatorproblems, and #branddealsbelike shows that, though these conversations are niche, they contain insights that are especially valuable for brands. The most engaged-with piece of content, reaching 1.8 million people, had this lesson to share: There’s no bigger waste of everyone’s time than when brands reach out to content creators without doing their research first. 

When RANDOM brands strike again 😳 #branddeals #creatorlife #creatorproblems #makeupart

When attempting to begin a partnership with an influencer or content creator, make sure that what you’re offering is relevant to them. Most importantly, make sure you’re reaching out to the correct person. The second-most embarrassing email for any influencer marketing manager to receive is one telling you you have your influencers mixed up.

The most embarrassing response to get from an influencer? One reminding you that you have worked together before. So, after your brand has worked with someone, make sure you remember them. Look through your interaction histories before reaching out to ensure this never happens to you.

Rule 2: Let Influencers Take the Creative Lead

Our Explore query found that, over the past year, there have been about 22 social media mentions a day about influencing and creating content for brands. One of the most engaged-with pieces of content is one influencer’s YouTube video about the things brands do that annoy him most. The most relevant section for brands explains how excessive content guidelines and micromanaging stunt his creativity and result in unsuccessful posts or campaigns. It’s a great point. The main reason brands choose influencers in the first place is because they like the creativity of their content. 

Things Brands Do That Annoy Me PT2 😅

If you hire an influencer or content creator but take away their creative license, they can’t deliver the kind of work that they know gets results. On the other hand, when brands trust creatives they can create something beyond what your brand’s marketing team could imagine. Offering examples and light direction is fine, but ultimately you should only work with influencers whose creativity you’re willing to trust.

Another top-performing #influencerproblems video, by the same creator as the above TikTok, makes fun of brands that go silent only to resurface demanding deliverables with an overnight turnaround. Doing this is a surefire way to ruin any potential, long-term partnerships. Avoid this faux pas by staying in regular communication with your marketing partners, even if it’s just a heads up that you’re waiting on more information. Staying in sync this way pays off down the line with top-notch deliverables and positive experiences for all involved.

Mentions of influencer pay gaps have spiked numerous times since summer 2021. This is thanks to a combination of more influencers speaking out about their experiences, more media coverage of their stories, and more studies confirming that brands pay white content creators more than Black content creators. 

The issue has gained so much attention that, this spring, UK advertisers’ organization ISBA updated its Influencer Marketing Code of Conduct to include added guidelines on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Multiple major brands publicly committed to following the Code, which urges them to “recommit to the principle of equal pay for equal work – and to be allies in addressing the unacceptable pay gaps in influencer marketing.” As more influencers continue to call for pay transparency, this conversation will only grow. Stay ahead of the curve and do right by your marketing partners by making sure you are compensating them fairly.

Influencer marketing is a great way to grow your customer base and tap into new audiences, but it does take some time and intentionality to get right. Follow these four rules and watch as your influencer marketing outputs yield higher ROIs. 

With solutions like our influencer marketing platform Klear you can confidently scout, vet, and collaborate with influencers without overlooking crucial details. Schedule a demo to learn more about how Meltwater solutions can help you become a brand that influencers jump to work with.

Thank you! We will be in touch soon.

Influencer marketing rules for brands • Avoid These Influencer Marketing Faux Pas • 4 rules you should follow to up your influencer marketing game

4 Rules of Engagement for Influencer Marketing

✖ Instagram - @james_s_welsh
✖ Twitter - @james_s_welsh


Today I want to share the things brands do that... annoy the hell out of me! These are mainly petty reasons lol.
But as an influencer and a consumer, there are so many things that annoy me, including weird takes on inclusivity, millennial marketing, and beauty brands jumping on the NFT bandwagon. 
So many things!! 


00:00 Intro
00:38 Cleanser 
01:01 Questionable Inclusivity RANT
04:59 Toner
05:21 NFTs
06:22 Brands Shipping Issues 
07:13 Serum 
07:35 Millenial Marketing 
09:29 False Bottoms On Jars
10:37 Moisturiser 
10:56 Brands Stunting Creator Creativity 
12:31 Bishop cameo 
13:28 Outro 


PRODUCTS IN THIS VIDEO (*= affiliate link)
ICON MEANINGS: 

Present - Gifted Item (Product was sent to me as a gift, no money has been exchanged and there is no obligation to feature product(s) on social platforms)

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Chain Link - Sponsored Affiliate Link (The video has been sponsored and an affiliate link to the sponsored product is a requirement in the video. The link used for the sponsored item is tracked by the brand and I make a small percentage of that sale)

Dollar Bill - Bought with my own money (Product was paid for with my own money and I have no attachment to the brand in the particular video) 

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For more videos about Korean skincare, k-beauty, hair tips and tutorials, skincare routines, product trials, Hauls, reviews, and lifestyle, then be sure to subscribe, and don’t forget to leave your questions down below!
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Remember that skincare is extremely personal to everybody's skin. What works for me, may not work for you. But I hope my videos give you some good ideas for products, techniques, and Ingredients to try.
Also, I'm obviously not a dermatologist or a doctor, so all opinions on products and anything else I'm presenting, are results and findings from my own experience and research. 
And that's why I'm here, to share my research and my findings that go further than what is said on the bottle or google!
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Back-to-school season is all about preparing for the school year ahead. This is just as true for students, teachers, and parents as it is for marketers and brands. The final weeks of summer are when the conversations and trends that will take over the rest of the school year come to the forefront. 

From social media posts to message board comments, consumers flood the internet with their concerns, desires, and preferences for the coming academic year. 

This year, we used our social listening platform Explore to understand the top trends and topics currently on the back-to-school audience's mind. Our query, looked at mentions of “back to school,” “return to school,” #backtoschool, and #backtoschool2022 from June 1, 2022, to August 30, 2022. As a result of analyzing English-language keyword mentions during the North American summer and back-to-school months, the majority of results came from U.S.-based internet users, followed by those in Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Just as in 2021, #backtoschool was the top hashtag used in this year’s back-to-school online conversations. However, a new hashtag made it into the top three: #clearthelist. Educators have long used this tag to help them get donations to stock their classrooms with necessary supplies. But it and others, like #adoptateacher, are more popular now that others, like #covid19, have slipped out of the top 20 hashtags in this conversation. 

On Twitter, the author with the farthest-reaching, back-to-school content was NASA. Two of their Tweets sharing free lesson plans and other classroom resources reached more than 60 million people each. Aid and support to teachers — material as well as moral — will likely be a continuing talking point throughout the school year. 

In terms of engagement, TikTok was the top platform for back-to-school content this year, especially when it came to advice. Users particularly liked, shared, and commented videos preparing students, teachers, and parents for the 2022-23 school year — including fashion explainers, beauty tutorials, organization hacks, classroom tips, and teaching advice. 

Teacher hack! No more lost pencils and wasting time looking for pencils! ✏️ #teachtok #teachertok #teachersoftiktok #teacherhack #backtoschool

More than anything, the back-to-school audience seeks guidance that’s useful, visually appealing, and easy to understand. Marketers and brands should anticipate opportunities for relatable, “educational” content as the academic year continues. Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest are especially useful for staying on top of emerging trends and conversations among educators, parents, and graduate students. To keep up with high schoolers and college undergrads, have a social listening strategy that focuses on Instagram and TikTok.

Speaking of TikTok, the platform was also a popular venue for the requisite annual back-to-school supplies and clothing hauls (along with videos poking light fun at them). But make no mistake, YouTube, the world’s second-most popular social media platform, is still the platform for haul and shopping videos that quickly rake in millions of views. Haul videos are evergreen, but they take on new significance when consumers prepare for special events or extended periods like the return to the classroom. As the school year goes on, marketers can tap into influencer partnerships linking haul content to other milestones like homecomings, proms, or returns from school breaks. 

#pencilcaseaesthetic #pencilcasetour #mechanicalpencils #fidgetpens #fidgetpencils #gelpens #ministationery #crystaleraser #erasers #setupwithme #deskorganization #backtoschool2022 #backtoschoolhaul

Back-to-school audiences look to standalone images for the same purpose as tutorials and hauls: for inspiration. One case in point is this Tweet by an independent nail artist, featuring a photo of classroom-themed acrylic nails, that was Retweeted more than 32,000 times in the ten days after it was posted. On Pinterest, the home of image-based inspo, pins by retailers showing off back-to-school styles reached the most users.

For parents and educators, safety is always top-of-mind as a new school year begins. In the United States, COVID-19-related issues like mask mandates are still top concerns, but our Explore query shows that social and traditional media mentions of school shootings and gun violence in this year’s back-to-school conversations were up nearly 550% compared to last year. This increase is directly related to the tragic Uvalde school shooting that occurred at the end of the previous school year. Marketers in conversation with U.S.-based audiences need to remain cognizant of — and sensitive to — issues of gun violence and safety in schools.

Every back-to-school season buzzes with the possibilities of what’s to come. That’s what makes it so exciting. Social listening isn’t a crystal ball, but it does offer marketers the data they need to plan for the months ahead. Don’t get stuck in last year’s trends; stay on top of what matters to your customers right now with Explore, our social listening platform. Schedule a quick demo today to see what it can do for you.

What Back-to-School Trends Say about the Year Ahead • 4 Social Media Marketing Trends for the 2022-2023 School Year

2022 Back-to-School Marketing Trends

What 2022 Back-to-School Trends Say about the Year Ahead

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.

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

Ann-Derrick Gaillot

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