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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Did you know that 90% of the world’s internet data was generated in the last two years alone? This data brings about access to more business-critical insights than ever before, but it has also made the landscape increasingly difficult for professionals to navigate. We particularly see this in the case of marketing professionals who rely heavily on digital tools/ channels and the data they produce.

According to a study by Hubspot, the marketing function alone use on average 12 different tools. Collecting disparate data from each tool can be a time consuming and confusing task. In light of this, it brings little surprise that the same study found that 61% of marketers also want both better integration and improved processes for sharing data amongst tools. Many companies are addressing this challenge by building dedicated Brand Command Centres.

Brand Command Centres are real-time visual dashboards that capture data from different sources (internal and third-party) and present insights in one cohesive format. APIs are often used to feed scattered data from multiple tools into one centralised place, giving businesses a complete 360 view of their company.

The aim of a Brand Command Centre is to aid employees with visually monitoring their performance and customer engagement activity. Brand Command Centres offer marketing departments a central place to see progress on metrics important to them and serve as the beating heart of a brand.

Since Brand Command Centres are fully customizable, you can change the focus of the dashboards depending on the different needs of the stakeholders who are viewing it. You can even have a dashboard per KPI if you wish. For example, if your goal is increasing brand awareness, you can present data from website traffic, social media, third-party referral links, PR, CRM and more for a more holistic view.

When a brand is present and responsive, it has enhanced opportunities to build customer relationships and brand loyalty through smarter decision making. However, in today’s always-on environment, brands need to be there with their audiences 24/7, listening and identifying opportunities to engage. Marketing teams are finding it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff due to the sheer amount of data being captured. This is when the role of Brand Command Centres become crucial.

Let’s walk through a few challenges that Brand Command Centres help combat.

Data should empower us, not paralyse us, yet we’re seeing an epidemic of “data fatigue” sweeping through many marketing departments. Teams are overwhelmed by the volume and pace of insights streaming in from numerous platforms that capture different customer touchpoints.

Brand Command Centres combine the variety of data platforms used in marketing with those of customer experience, sales, finance, and the c-suite. This gives teams the ability to view the full brand picture in an easy to understand format.

While Brand Command Centres are primarily used by the marketing function, insights can, and should, be used across all business units. After all, measuring and responding to the customer journey is vital for overall business success.

Brand Command Centres facilitate cross-department visibility, as a result, they break down siloed working and prevent each business unit from marching to their own tune. This supports all departments when it comes to aligning, collaborating and working towards a common goal since they’re all using the same insights to guide them to the prize.

If you talk to people outside of marketing, some still believe that this is a ‘fluffy’ function. Yes, marketing teams hold the keys to the merchandise cupboard, but they do a lot more than order give-aways.

Since Brand Command Centres make business-critical marketing insights available to all departments, marketing becomes ingrained into the day to day running of an organisation. This helps marketing become an invaluable asset across the company and the perception of the department becomes more favourable as a result.

Brand Command Centres act as a single source of truth for organisations, meaning they’re the go-to source of anything and everything to do with the customer. However, this can only be the case when a single version of the truth is apparent. By single version of the truth, I’m referring to the view that everyone in the organisation agrees that data from one singular tool provider is the real and trusted figure. For example, having one global media intelligence provider, rather than many, in order to obtain a holistic view.

Comparing apples with apples is impossible when companies use multiple tools that do the same thing. Each tool provider tracks things differently due to where, when and how data is collected. One common example of this is marketing metrics. Different tools may say they collect KPI data on the same metrics, but in reality, only the name of the metric is similar. This makes regional benchmarking extremely difficult for CMOs.

Since Brand Command Centres run off data provided by one tool (for example one CRM system, one marketing automation platform, one media intelligence tool), teams can guarantee that the data they measure performance on is aligned across the organisation and comparing apples with apples becomes a lot easier.

Following on from my point above, when there’s no single source of truth in place, teams across the organisations can’t fully trust the numbers they’re presenting. Inconsistent and contradictory data is a sure way to erode trust. Brand Command Centres facilitate trust in data as they offer one unified source of information across the whole organisation.

How leading companies are using Brand Command Centres?

Similarly to how Brand Centres unite tools, they also unite different focus areas within the marketing function. Whether you’re in charge of managing brand reputation, generating leads, content creation or digital advertising, Brand Command Centres allow you to have different screens presenting insights on each focus area.

Here are a few ways companies are using Brand Command Centres to achieve their goals.

Protecting a brand’s reputation is a major task owned by the marketing department and Brand Command Centres act as their right hand in doing so. By analysing peaks and troughs in brand mention sentiment, as well as shifts in brand-related trends, teams can quickly get to grips with issues and prevent them from turning into a crisis.

Twitter is the modern world’s favourite channel for complaints, so it is important brands stay on top of the conversations. Marketing departments often have specialised customer service dashboards set up to monitor social media activity and make their customer services move from reactive to proactive. This Brand Command Centre dashboard aims to improve personalised communications. And it’s not all bad, you can also identify influential customers and brand advocates messaging you positive things too. You can even spot sales opportunities by tracking and analysing intent to purchase keywords such as phrases like “I’m looking for xxx” or “I need to find an alternative to xxx”.

A competitor’s crisis can easily take your brand down with it. To prevent this from happening, it’s best practice to analyse editorial and social media conversations sounding your competitive landscape as much as you do your own brand mentions. You may also uncover opportunities (as well as threats) by doing so, for example, if you spot a surge in your competitor’s customers positively discussing a particular technology, your R&D team can use insights when developing their roadmaps.

Marketing functions are using Brand Command Centres to make staff, investors, partners and other stakeholders aware of the brand’s digital influence. One of the ways they do this is by leveraging data from media intelligence tools and then presenting interesting discussions they’re generating in editorial news and social media. 

This type of Brand Command Centre screen is usually placed in the company’s foyer so employees and visitors can quickly grasp a high-level overview of the brand’s digital influence as soon as they enter the building. Due to the audience, the format of this dashboard is low in complexity, since the aim is to wow guests with exciting media coverage rather than use the dashboards for granular insights to optimise strategies.

Making engagement visual and interactive helps the marketing function to easily drill down into what their audience like and dislike. Such insights are found using the ‘trending themes’ widget that most quality media intelligence providers supply. Teams can then weak their messaging and optimise their strategies based on trend insights. Those who are quick to jump on trends are naturally seen as leaders in their fields, so this form of content creation has a really positive impact on brand reputation.

In order to improve and optimise, marketing teams must first understand where they currently are, how they’ve moved the needle, and the ROI of their output. Brand Command Centres allow marketing teams to understand KPI progress in real-time, using a variety of tools to track relevant brand metrics.

If your company doesn’t currently have a command centre, Meltwater Active Display is a solution for big data integration and visualisation to consider. Professionals around the world use Meltwater Active Display as a single source of truth, making sense of internal and external data. Meltwater Active Display integrates content and data from Meltwater, Sysomos, Salesforce, Zendesk, and a variety of web analytics sources to provide a complete view of your brand and business.

Alternatively, if you currently have a Brand Command Centre but haven’t connected your media intelligence data to it, we also provide an API that allows you to blend Meltwater insights with your other data sets.

Interested in learning more about bringing together and visualising your marketing data? Contact us in the form below!

The What, Why & How of Brand Command Centres

My colleague Marc recently wrote a blog post on brand advocacy likening his mom to the ideal advocate. He hit it spot on: moms always support your “brand,” they defend you in public and are never afraid to tell others how amazing you are. While moms are built-in advocates, finding brand advocates for your business requires more time, effort and organization. Social marketing tools like Meltwater's help brands identify, segment and organize potential advocates across social communities. Meltwater lets you spend more time engaging with advocates and less time looking for them.

Keep reading for 3 ways to find brand advocates using Meltwater.

1. Social Listening to Find Brand Advocates

Meltwater uses keyword-driven search campaigns to find social media mentions about your brand, competitors and industry. The most straightforward way to find potential brand advocates is by simply looking through and sorting the list of your incoming brand mentions.

Browsing through brand-related searches is an easy way to identify potential brand advocates. Try sorting by “Views” or “Rank” to bring farther-reaching posts to the top. See definitions of view and rank below:

Rank analyzes the author of the post based on all discoverable social information. Rank takes into account the size of the author’s community, the frequency at which they participate in social environments, the channels on which they have a presence and their level of engagement with you. Rank is on a scale of 0 to 10. Views represents the total possible unique views for a specific post if everyone to whom the post was directed was able to observe the post in their stream. This is the number of impressions the post made in the world!

2. Social Media Sentiment to Find Brand Advocates

Social media sentiment can save you time when looking for brand advocates. Sentiment in Meltwater is driven by natural language processing (NLP), grouping together the most positive and negative posts for you to browse through. 

While on the Listen tab, put your mouse over “Analysis” in the menu and select “Sentiment.” The resulting page displays posts for your brand search broken down by sentiment by day in a bar graph and overall sentiment in a pie chart. Click on the green parts of the bar, or the green slice of the pie to browse through the list of posts that displays below the graphs.

3. Social Media Engagement to Find Brand Advocates

We’ve looked at how to find potential advocates through social listening and sentiment analysis, but what about community members who engage with your brand? Meltwater centralizes your brand’s engagement on Facebook and Twitter, offering up metrics that can identify users who interact with you frequently.

On the Engage tab, select either “Most Engaged Contacts” or “Top Retweeters” to see the users who interact most with your brand. The time period on each graph can be changed to focus on a specific campaign or spike in engagement.

The first two ways of identifying potential brand advocates looks only at single interactions, so the mentions may not necessarily equal advocacy. These users could become advocates later on, and the ones who mention you more frequently have more potential. The third method uncovers community members who are potentially advocating for your content, but not maybe not for your brand or products. No matter which method you use, after you identify potential brand advocates, use Meltwater to dig deeper into their social profiles. You can create lists here of users who have positively mentioned your product once and another for those who have mentioned you several times. You can also organize user lists by geography or campaign as needed.

While a brand advocate on social media will never quite live up to a mom-vocate, they can have a significant positive influence on your brand. Meltwater reduces the time and effort that it takes to identify potential brand advocates and gives you tools to research, segment and organize them as well. Log in and get started now!

For more great content like this, click here to subscribe to the Success Blog.

3 Ways to Find Brand Advocates

Communicators today have a tall order. It’s tough enough to develop messaging for brands in a constantly changing market. But when we have to not only craft the message but ensure that all the branches of the organization are consistently delivering the same version, it can be downright impossible. The larger the company, the more challenging it can become.

However, there are ways to ease the pain of this situation and get everyone on the same page.

Mixed messages confuse customers. Employees also suffer when internal and external messaging differ. For example, if you give employees a directive of increasing the value of stock options while promoting to customers that their wellbeing is the top priority, this creates confusion for everyone. Better to align the messaging so that all teams understand and are working toward a common goal.

What are some of the most effective ways to help ensure that every branch of the company is sharing the same consistent messages?

1) Allow the communications team to lead the way

When the communications team leads the charge, it may be easier to sync up the efforts and communicate in ways that will hit home with all audiences. Communicators have experience disseminating consistent messages in ways that will be compelling for various audiences. Allow them to leverage that expertise across all departments.

As lines blur among PR, marketing, and advertising teams, it may be time for brands who strive for consistent messaging to consider reorganizing. As Diane Schwartz has written at PR News, as more professionals realize “that digital and social media have made it easier for stakeholders to just bypass them,” and, “as the tools at our disposal work across multiple disciplines, it’s become more critical for brands to promote an omnichannel message that will resonate.”

So how can your organization promote better alignment and information sharing among PR, marketing, and advertising? Whatever solution works for you, it’s more important than ever that everyone shares their campaign calendars and considers centralizing their messaging strategy and execution.

3) Consider varying the wording to resonate across the organization

“The essence of a message across the organization needs to be the same, but the wording must differ,” says Ella Minty, an issues, crisis, and reputation management consultant. “For instance, to ensure it sticks and yields the desired result, the operational department needs to be differentiated in terms of action drivers from the sales department. Consistency of purpose or essence are paramount, but anything else must be tailored, even more so when dealing with international businesses which have many offices across the world.”

Getting buy-in from various parts of your organization on the messaging will go a long way toward their willingness to enact it. Asking for input upfront helps create trust. If people feel their opinions are heard and valued—and the final product reflects that—they’ll be more likely to want to share the message.

If your top-level executives aren’t incorporating the talking points, chances are others may feel it’s not essential to do so. Leaders can set the example for others, especially with new messaging that you’re trying to get both your internal and external audiences to buy into. If teams see the messaging in use by executives, they’re more likely to come on board, as well. Having trouble convincing your data-driven executives to participate? Read this tip sheet on measuring the tangible impact of your branding-building activities.

When teams are spread around the globe, it can be a challenge to work collaboratively. Meetings may not always be possible. Leveraging a tool like Slack can help you stay aligned.

“Tools like Slack are great for keeping all the key stakeholders in the loop in real-time,” says Amanda Burke, Director of Integrated Marketing and Communications at Welly. “So much of what we do is based on trends we read about or what a celebrity posts on Instagram that we don’t have time to wait even for a weekly team call or email recap to act. Slack gives us the opportunity to collaborate across disciplines in real-time and stay aligned in terms of messaging and brand voice.”

The Struggle is Real—But Don’t Let That Stop You

While organizations continue to struggle to keep all the moving parts aligned, communicators can help bridge the gap by leading the way to promote consistent messaging. It may not happen overnight, but if we make strides in the direction of complementary, coordinated messaging, companies will reap the benefits.

For a breakdown on all the steps involved in building strong customer relationships—and the role that consistent messaging plays in promoting brand awareness and loyalty—check out our consumer intelligence suite and read our ebook on Demystifying the B2B Online Customer Journey.

6 Tips for Enforcing Consistent Messaging Across Your Organization

Let’s face it… Social media platforms are crowded and building brand equity on these platforms is becoming more challenging by the day. For forward-thinking brand marketers, it’s time to look outward to an emerging branding opportunity: gaming.

There is a goldmine of creative and marketing opportunities in gaming, but few are paying attention to this exciting trend. 

The good news is it’s not too late. In fact, we’re just getting started. Here are 5 reasons why gaming is the next big brand opportunity (and how to capitalize).

Believe it or not, mobile games account for about 23% of all active apps in the iTunes App Store.

And according to a recent study from the Washington Post, a staggering 73% of 14- to 21-year-olds in the US identify as a competitive gamer. This same group isn’t just male-dominated—56% of 14- to 21-year-old US females identify as competitive gamers in 2019 as well.

Plus, there are now more than 2.5 billion gamers across the world. Combined, they will spend $152.1 billion on games in 2019, representing an increase of +9.6% year on year (according to research from Newzoo).

Everyone is always on the lookout for the next big marketing channel to emerge – and everyone should be looking at gaming.

Brands looking to find success with gaming platforms should think of games less as creative executions and more as populated virtual spaces that can act as media outlets for branded content.

In other words, games aren’t just a one-off advertising channel, they’re an entirely new social platform. And utilizing gaming platforms can benefit brands looking to target younger audiences.

And that’s not to mention the ever-growing world of esports as a whole. Activate estimates that there were 270 million global fans of esports in 2016, and projects that number to grow to 495 million in 2020. 

With a projected $1.5 billion market next year and a global audience of 385 million people, esports are arguably just as big of an opportunity as the games themselves. As more and more people flock to these entertainment outlets, opportunities will continue to arise for brands to get involved.

Multi-billion-dollar trends only come around so often.

3. Brands Are Finding Success with Gaming

When compared to hugely popular topics on social media, Fortnite more than holds its own. According to data analyzed in Meltwater, Fortnite received nearly as much social media exposure as Brexit and even more than Game of Thrones and Avengers in the first seven months of 2019.

Not many social media platforms or world topics can say the same!

In collaboration with R/GA, the mobile campaign consisted of partnerships with some of the world’s most well-known gamers and influencers that received real-life “Supply Boxes” – a play on Fortnite gameplay terminology—that contained the Galaxy Note9 smartphone with the exclusive Fortnite “skin.”

Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins was the first to unveil the Galaxy Skin during a Twitch livestream in front of his millions of fans:

IRL Supply Drop!! - NEW GALAXY SKIN UNVEIL Samsung x Fortnite Unboxing

Nike on the other hand took Air Jordan I trainers to the platform in May, giving players the chance to play in a pair of Jordans and embark on challenges to unlock exclusive skins and skateboard sprays.

Fortnite X Jumpman

This is the first specific clothing brand partnership that Fortnite has had, but points towards a very exciting future between brands and games. There is virtually unlimited creative paths that brands can pursue to get their products in front of a highly-engaged audience.

One of my favorite collaborations of the last several years is when Rocket League teamed up with Hot Wheels to create branded vehicles inside the game.

It’s a perfect example of native, non-intrusive branding and advertising that doesn’t bombard the user. 

What stands out most about this brand-game collaboration is that Rocket League and Hot Wheels are perfect partners. It’s only natural that Hot Wheels would advertise on a gaming platform dedicated to hot rods. 

This is exactly how brands should be approaching gaming marketing and advertising.

Start by identifying a game that aligns with your brand and then brainstorm creative ways to bring your brand to the game in a natural way. 

The key is to not wait for the opportunity to come to you. Seek out games (and game creators) that might make sense for a potential collaboration. Bring the creative ideas to them and you’ll have first shot at advertising and content on their platform.

5. Games Are On The Forefront Of Advertising

Gamers spend, on average, 7 hours and 7 minutes per week gaming, which represents a valuable window of opportunity for brands to share clear and engaging content with a captive audience. Interacting with gamers when they are fully immersed in play has a number of branding benefits.

The main advertising benefit being that the target audience isn’t distracted like on other social platforms. They aren’t split screening or scrolling through news feeds at high speeds – they are focused and engaged on the activity at hand.

Our consumer insights tool and Meltwater consumer intelligence solution help you get more information about the interests and demographics of your target audiences.

Tip: Take a look at what consumer insights are and check out the best consumer insights tools on the market.

One interesting concept is known as in-game advertising. In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games.

For example, ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Coca-Cola released its first-ever in-game advertising spot.

Uplifted Alex – EA Sports FIFA18

The advertisement, which features EA SPORTS FIFA 18 virtual athlete Alex Hunter is a nod to the brand’s classic 1979 “Mean Joe,” television spot, in which an American Football star is given a bottle of Coca-Cola from a fan after a tough game.

Traditional sporting events such as the Super Bowl (98 million viewers) are beginning to be outdone by events such as the League of Legends World Championship, which attracted an audience of more than 100 million viewers.

If this isn’t a strong signal in the direction of where the digital media and entertainment industries are headed, then I don’t know what is!

Gaming platforms open the door for brands, publishers, and advertisers to tap into a previously “unreachable audience” in numbers that have never been seen before in history.

To get yourself inspired to create engaging brand content on social, read our social content ebook full of great examples from top brands and strategy for getting it right.

5 Reasons Why Gaming Is the Next Big Brand Opportunity

It’s happened. The company or client you work is shutting down, shuttering one of its services, or discontinuing a product.

As part of the PR team, management brings you in to seek your help in communicating the message. But what is the best way to handle internal and external communications in such a scenario? 

Tips to Help Your Audience and Your Brand Say Goodbye

1. Maintain control of the communication flow.

“Rumors are bound to swirl around a business closure, so put these to bed as soon as possible. Release a statement to both press and customers providing as much factual information as you can,” says Hayley Smith, director and owner of Boxed Out PR, who went through this with a former employer.

Make sure the news come from you, not from another source. “Use trusted journalists, or set up an exclusive interview with an industry magazine,” Smith says.

Much like a crisis communications situation, a business closing requires assembling the right team and collaborating with the right colleagues.

“Bringing in the correct members of your team including PR, legal, finance and HR and being open and honest from the very beginning, you will be able to effectively manage the closure with fewer problems,” Smith says. 

3. Take special care in how you notify employees.

Be sure to notify employees yourself before they hear or read about the news somewhere else. Give them ample notice, if you can. Make sure those communicating with employees have been trained in how to convey the information with empathy and clarity.

Be very clear about what you’ll provide to help them as they transition to a new job. Will you offer career coaching or resume writing services, for example? Tell them what you can do to assist them.

Make sure company leaders stay involved. This is news that should come from the top of the organization, so keep everyone in the loop. All announcements should come from the CEO, division manager or head of the business unit.

“A closure or a downsizing is not an excuse for leaders to go into hiding. To the contrary, it’s an occasion when people need to see their leaders,” says Kenneth Freeman, dean of the Boston University Questrom School of Business.  

As you announce the news, provide reassurance that a plan is in place to make sure your customers are taken care of.

Publicize that the business will remain open until a certain date to allow customers to complete any transactions that may be underway or in the case of retail, to let patrons use any gift cards, loyalty points, and so on. If you’re liquidating inventory, publicize that.

And be sure to thank your customers for their patronage over the years.

Have compassion. It’s okay to express that you’re truly sorry (and sad).

While showing emotion may not a good way to run a business on a daily basis, in times of crisis like this, you can reveal your human side. It may be hard for them to hear this news—but it’s hard for you to deliver it, too.

“When my tears revealed my true feelings for my employees, they understood I was crying not because I couldn’t handle the situation but because I understood the human consequences of my decision: it wasn’t just a business that was closing; people’s lives were involved,” says Susan T. Spencer, entrepreneur and author. 

“Because I communicated openly and honestly with all the employees, every worker stayed on and saw the company through until closing day, saving me from even greater losses,” Spencer said.

Proper Planning and Communication Can Allow You to Exit with Grace

Adopting an approach that considers all your audiences and allows for planning and transparency is best when a business shutters. 

“Overall, business closures are very rarely unforeseen,” says Smith. “There is usually a chain of events that lead up to them. With a clear communications plan, the announcement will not seem as shocking.”

Brand Goodbyes: How to Communicate a Closure

Why inflict an avoidable crisis on yourself? Here we look at five headline-grabbing, reputation-destroying situations that brands should be able to avoid. For a complete guide on how to handle crisis—or better yet, avert it altogether—read our ebook on spotting early warning signs and taking a data-driven approach to crisis planning.

In California, earthquakes are a fact of life. We don’t know when the next one will happen, or where it will be centered. But we know we can count on there being more of them, which is why many people have earthquake preparedness kits in their homes. It makes sense to have a plan and resources in place for a problem you know is eventually going to come up. So, why don’t more people take this same approach when it comes to crisis communications?

Almost a third of all businesses do not have a documented business continuity plan. When you consider that fewer than 10% of businesses survive a major disaster without a business continuity plan, it’s surprising to consider how few organizations have robust business continuity plans—including crisis communications plans—for their businesses.

In addition to California and our earthquakes, there are states prone to blizzards, flooding, tornadoes and other extreme weather scenarios? No to mention other urgent business issues such as executive misconduct, senior leadership resignations, and other common workplace issues. If you’re not proactively planning for how to handle these and other predictable urgent issues, you may be creating a future crisis for your organization.

Proactively Plan for Common Urgent Issues

While there’s no way to anticipate every potential crisis that can come your way, there are a number of known crisis scenarios that it is likely your company will have to respond to at some point. Here are a few urgent issues your crisis communications plan should address:

Brand Management

The What, Why & How of Brand Command Centres

3 Ways to Find Brand Advocates

6 Tips for Enforcing Consistent Messaging Across Your Organization

5 Reasons Why Gaming Is the Next Big Brand Opportunity

Brand Goodbyes: How to Communicate a Closure

5 Common Urgent Issues That Don’t Need to Become a Brand Crisis

Brands in Motion: How PR Can Lead the Way

5 Ways to Maintain Brand Consistency As You Grow Your Business

Brand Management

The What, Why & How of Brand Command Centres

3 Ways to Find Brand Advocates

6 Tips for Enforcing Consistent Messaging Across Your Organization

5 Reasons Why Gaming Is the Next Big Brand Opportunity

Brand Goodbyes: How to Communicate a Closure

5 Common Urgent Issues That Don’t Need to Become a Brand Crisis

Brands in Motion: How PR Can Lead the Way

5 Ways to Maintain Brand Consistency As You Grow Your Business

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