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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

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

Now that thought leaders are publishing long-form content to third-party platforms like LinkedIn and Medium; we wondered what LinkedIn influence looks like. We found that opportunities abounded for PR pros looking to build their network, their professional profile, or nurture thought leadership opportunities for the C-Suite. Read on for more information about how LinkedIn's features can help build influence.

LinkedIn has a reputation as a digital Rolodex, a.k.a. the place where you connect with coworkers or industry colleagues. If you were on the platform a decade ago, you might have faced the embarrassment of inadvertently spamming all your email contacts. But those days are over.

In 2014, LinkedIn opened its publisher platform to encourage members, thought leaders, and innovators to share opinions on work in a centralized location.

Over the past 4 years (with help from Microsoft’s 2016 purchase of the platform) LinkedIn has transformed itself into a social network for those looking to further establish their professional identity as they change careers or increase their business prospects.

So has a fresh coat of paint and a few tweaks made LinkedIn a platform for building influence?

In 2015, LinkedIn sat idle at 364 million users. In October 2017, that number swelled to 467 million. This jump in users can be attributed to feature updates that have attracted business leaders to the platform. And where business leaders gather, other business leaders will follow, as will those looking to do business with or work with them (i.e. most working professionals).

Beyond better user experience, what else is new?

Instant Conversations, a Facebook Messenger clone

LinkedIn Learning to improve your skills or learn new ones via online training

Easy long-form publishing via the LinkedIn Publishing Platform

Invite-only LinkedIn Influencer designation (badge)

Stats of shared posts and article views/comments/likes

Different functionality for Premium Subscriptions (i.e. for job seekers, sales, and talent professionals), including a LinkedIn stats dashboard

If you spend time on LinkedIn, you may have noticed the LinkedIn Influencer program badges on certain profiles. It’s an invite-only program and is “… a global collective of 500+ of the world’s foremost thinkers, leaders, and innovators.”

Users will immediately see your badge (see Oprah’s below) when looking at your profile and your content is recommended to the wider LinkedIn community.

Even if you can’t score an invite for an official Influencer badge, you can still build your influence (and visibility) on the platform.

To establish Linkedin influence, you’ll want to make sure you have a complete profile. This includes having an up-to-date and professional looking photograph and at least one, though you really should have many more, professional connection. Next, create a custom URL, so that people can easily get to your profile.

After you’ve finished with your profile, consider writing a few recommendations for colleagues. And, if you’ve had positive working relationships, ask those connections for professional recommendations. If you don’t have time to write recommendations, make sure to give props to connections on their skill sets.

From there, it’s time to use the LinkedIn publishing platform to publish long-form content. Hopefully, your content will spur others to engage via comments, liking, or sharing your post on their stream. Since the LinkedIn community is geared towards a business community, remember to publish content that has an informed opinion relevant to strategy or business goals.

LinkedIn has one major advantage over other platforms – quality. Throughout the platform, you can find thought-provoking content from Influencers on how he transformed his company’s culture, Richard Branson, on his many ventures, and Caterina Fake, on why she is now starting a venture capital fund.

They know that publishing on LinkedIn can help influence by:

Positioning you as a thought leader on specific topics, in a particular industry

Growing your network as others engage with your content and increase your reach

Expanding the visibility of other content you or your organization has previously produced through cross-linking posts

Showcasing your ability to write thoughtfully about your industry, your work, or other relevant topics

PR Takeaways: The Right Business Platform Right Now

LinkedIn is now the place where thought leaders have intelligent conversations with other thought leaders, and since it’s public, the rest of LinkedIn can listen in and engage in the exchange. This capability makes it an effective PR tool for building C-Suite thought leadership, as well as a channel to increase your professional network and industry influence.

Since commenting or liking a post is shared on your stream, as well as the original poster’s, comments and likes you post are seen beyond your connections with a larger LinkedIn community.

Your participation in LinkedIn Groups, via posting blog or other brand content, as well as commenting and liking posts can also increase visibility for both you and your brand.

The ultimate takeaway is that LinkedIn can help you build industry influence with influential people in your field or industry. Jim Rohn once said, “we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.”

Spend time on LinkedIn and you’re in good company.

The Ins-And-Outs of LinkedIn Influence

What does an influencer look like—and act like? You might be surprised. While you've got to keep an eye out for fake influencers, you also have to be creative in finding the right influencers for your brand. For a comprehensive guide to influencer marketing, download our ebook on influencer marketing, full of recent examples from brands who are doing it right.

The world of influencer marketing can be a lucrative one for both the influencer and the brand.

Kylie Jenner, for example, earns a reported $1.2 million per post on Instagram with her 141 million followers. While Cristiano Ronaldo, on the other hand, earns roughly $975K per post with more than 176 million followers.

But brands don’t need to land a top-tier celebrity and dish out nearly $1 million per post to find top paid influencers that will move the needle.

That’s why we’ve put together a list of 4 top paid influencers that you’ve never heard of on social media. Hopefully this will provide some inspiration to go out and find your own!

4 Top Paid Influencers You’ve Probably Never Heard of on Social Media

Chelsea Yamase (Influencer and Ambassador, Chelsea Kauai)

Travel influencer and model Chelsea Yamase has a vast network of people who love to travel and stay in amazing places around the world. That’s why it’s no surprise her picture-perfect posts leads to thousands of engagements and the attention of top brands such as Canon. 

What’s your favorite color? For this month’s #sponsored by @canonusa challenge, they asked me to share a photo honoring the vibrancy of life as seen through their mirrorless #EOSM50. Certain colors, especially pastel and earthy tones, spark so much joy for me and I think these two iconic spots in Jaipur attest to that universal wonder :) India could be a lifetime study in paying attention to proportion, culture, color and details, and there’s never a replacement for standing in front of the real thing - but this little camera does such a great job of capturing them all!

#TeamCanon
-
Shot on Canon EOS M50
EF-M 11-22mm, ISO 200, F/4.0 at 1/320 sec
#India #Jaipur

Brands such as Canon are sparing no expense to get the perfect Instagram shot through the lens of influencers like Chelsea. And why wouldn’t they? The content is delivered in a down-to-earth, authentic way.

This is just one example in a larger trend. Much like press tours, brands are putting together Instagram influencer getaways, sending influencers like Chelsea Yamase on vacations across the globe—inviting them to relax, hang out with their friends, and, of course, post all about it.

Dream come true above our glass igloo✨ anyone else see the face in the Northern Lights?! I didn’t notice it until I started editing and then I couldn’t un-see it.
Photo collab with @samkolder -
This past February I got to join @foursigmatic on an incredible trip in the through their home country of Finland learning about the Sami culture, harvesting chaga mushrooms, and enjoying the most beautiful light (both during the day and at night!). Giveaway is now closed and thank you to everyone who entered!! #foursigmatic #adaptogens #Finland #northernlights #arcticcircle #auroraborealis

Yamase has more than 750K followers and earns up to $10,000 per post on Instagram. Her attention to detail and uncanny ability to capture the perfect moment are exactly why brands continue to work with her.

Although influencer marketing isn’t as popular of a topic as it was just a few short years ago, it remains a key strategy for B2B brands promoting their business and products on social media.

Here we see that the topic of influencer marketing has dipped in the past 12 months compared to the previous 12 months in traditional media. Data supplied by Meltwater media monitoring. 

Ann Handley (Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs)

Ann Handley has been named by Forbes as the Most Influential Woman in Social Media and one of the Top 20 Women Bloggers. She is the chief content officer of MarketingProfs, and her book Everybody Writes is a bestseller.

Most importantly, she has a community of more than 50K loyal followers on social media that know and trust her.

It’s unclear just how much Handley makes from being an influencer in the B2B space, but she’s doing quite well for herself.

She is a prime example of how authentic and engaging individual influencers can be for your brand.

Ann Handley on Twitter: "Here we goooooooooo #CMWorld… "

“I value three things: quality over quantity, great writing, building an audience over stuffing a pipeline until it bursts at its seams with so-called leads. I value other things, too. But those three things are top of mind.” – Ann Handley

In B2B marketing, it’s not only about finding influencers with the most followers. It’s about finding influencers that are thought leaders in their space. In other words, influencers that truly influence the minds, hearts, and actions of your target customers.

To find influencers that fit your business, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your own brand and how you want to be perceived. Perhaps this statement is no more true than in the fashion industry where image and perception is everything.

Alexa Chung (Founder, Alexa Chung Clothing Line)

With a net worth of more than $12 million, a following up nearly 4 million people, and earnings of up to $15K per post, Alexa Chung is a superstar that you may never have heard of on Instagram.

What makes Chung’s content so effective as an influencer is her ability to “talk” like her audience and customers would on social media (even if there is an entire team behind it).

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When life gives you an unexpectedly large number of apricots, pop them in a decorative ceramic bowl and head to the beach in your Jujus. That, our friends, is what we call #living.

Jujus are now back in stock. Link in bio. Apricots not included. 📸: @hannastefansson

The most important thing to remember with influencer marketing is that it’s not about you or your brand, it’s about the consumer. And more importantly, about building trust with the consumer so that they buy from you more than just once. 

Identifying an influencer like Alexa Chung that can build trust with her words is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Studies show that 70% of millennial consumers are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in buying decisions over brands. Micro-influencers such as Sweat&Tell with between 10,000-50,000 followers are behind much of that influence online.

Sweat and Tell is an Instagram blog run by best friends Jo and Jacqs. They’ve formed a community of over 30k health-focused women online. Each of their posts reviews a new workout class or routine, centered around health tips and trendy wellness locales in Southern California.

There are really 3 places to find influencers for your brand. Search engines, databases, and networks.

Search engines: A manual process of typing keywords, scanning webpages for contact info, and then keeping track of the info in spreadsheets. I would also lump social media into here – manually searching social channels and hashtags for relevant influencers for a given topic.

Databases: Do website scraping for you, pulling publicly available data. This is one of the best places to start as you’ll immediately gain access to a variety of qualified influencers.

Networks: In the middle of Google/social and databases. A network is like an agency that has relationships with the influencers, but will require that you go through them to reach out.

Learn more about how to find the right influencers to partner with.

So, what does an influencer look like? That just depends on the audience you are trying to reach. It could be someone with huge follower numbers, it could be someone with much smaller numbers. Either way, their audience is exactly who you want to get at. For a comprehensive guide to influencer marketing, download our ebook on influencer marketing, full of recent examples from brands who are doing it right.

4 Top Paid Influencers You Probably Never Heard Of—But Can Learn From

Ask anybody and they would have likely bought a product or visited a restaurant because an influencer endorsed it. This concept of influencer marketing is no longer a novel one as scores of influencers have found a comfortable place on social media platforms.

Previously, celebrity or mega influencers tend to take the spotlight. Now, you’ll find more tiers of influencers, namely, macro, micro and nano influencers.

In today’s digital age, with multiple social platforms taking consumer attention away from traditional media, it’s even more crucial to engage with your target audience on these platforms. The best way to do so? By working with specific social influencers to directly promote your brand, product or event to their legion of loyal followers.

The now infamous Fyre Festival is a prime example of utilizing iconic influencers to drive awareness and desire on a grand scale. While the event itself did not deliver on its luxurious promises thanks to extreme mismanagement, there are some pertinent pointers to learn from their influencer marketing strategy.

Below you will find insights into Fyre festival’s influencer campaign and learning points to design your own influencer campaign. Here’s a quick look at what we’ll cover:

Key considerations before diving into an influencer campaign

Managing your influencer campaign from start to end

Tip: Take a look at the top Instagram influencers for Coachella.

Marketed as the social event to be seen at in 2017, Fyre Festival was advertised as a highly luxurious, super exclusive music festival on an idyllic island in the Bahamas. However, with a lack of proper management and operational guidelines, the event quickly turned into a 24-hour catastrophe.

Nonetheless, while the founders were evidently at fault for failing to deliver what was communicated in marketing materials, their influencer marketing campaign was regarded as a success.  

The founders kickstarted the influencer campaign by working with 10 supermodels to create the vision of an uber-luxury experience of a lifetime. In totality, the supermodels boasted millions of fans and by engaging them, the team was able to spread the festival’s message in the widest scope possible.

To jump-start the campaign, Fyre Festival’s founders flew a band of high profile supermodels to the Bahamas for a glamourous photo and video shoot. What followed were visually stunning behind-the-scenes Instagram posts by models like Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski to announce the upcoming event.

This worked in the founders’ favour to build curiosity and trigger conversations online. So much so that media outlets and the supermodels’ fans were all pining to know what the supermodels were working on while in the Bahamas. As highlighted in the word cloud below generated by Meltwater’s Media Monitoring tool, topics covered in digital publications in the early stages largely hovered around the private island, potential music acts, VIP access and mentions of the supermodels promoting the event.

Considering this was a first-time music festival with tickets upwards of US$1,500, this was a great way to generate buzz. Once that hype built up across the supermodels’ legion of following, the founders widened their net by engaging 400 celebrity and macro influencers. Each one of them then uploaded a simple orange tile on Instagram in a coordinated move using the hashtag #FyreFest.

Spreading like ‘wildfyre’, this unified influencer effort on a single day and at a specific time was powerful enough to sell out general admission tickets for the event.

Ultimately, Fyre Festival’s well-constructed influencer campaign proved to be highly effective for a couple of reasons:

1. It drove a significant increase in mass awareness

If executed well with the right influencers, a coordinated move to promote a brand or product could reap tremendous results. In Fyre Festival’s case, according to a pitch deck, the team claimed to have reached 300 million impressions in 24 hours when the orange tile push kicked off. Additionally, Kendall Jenner’s post announcing the first headliner, G.O.O.D Music Family, claimed to have amassed 6 million unique impressions within 5 days.

2. It reached the relevant target audience

Thanks to the team’s clever selection of aspirational influencers, they managed to drive immense desire among their followers, mainly millennials with the capacity to spend. This goes to show it’s not enough to only consider if an influencer is a good fit for your brand. It’s just as important to identify if their followers are the target audience you want to reach.

For any campaign, the biggest indicator of success is often seen through conversion. For Fyre Festival, conversion through the coordinated campaign resulted in 5000 people purchasing tickets worth US$4000 within minutes. For a new and unknown event, selling out tickets in that speed was a mean feat.

Unfortunately for Fyre Festival, the reality did not match the lavish vision marketed. One lesson to learn here: before embarking on any campaign, always ensure there is a true product to promote.

At the end of the day, while influencer marketing can be a hugely effective method to directly reach your target audience and promote a new brand or product, it needs to be done with some thought. There’s no one solution that fits all as each brand will have a different set of objectives and influencers that will resonate with them.

Before launching your influencer campaign, here are some points to take into consideration:

1. Aim to select influencers who are a natural fit with your brand

To create a genuine relationship, it’s important to select influencers who are aligned with your brand’s vision and objectives. Start by asking yourself if the particular influencer will use your product or engage with your brand in their daily life. Taking the time to select the right influencer will make your message a lot more believable.
Do not make the mistake of selecting a general group of influencers because of their large following. In this case, you might risk losing credibility among their followers if posts appear to be a misfit or disingenuous

2. Look out for influencers with followers who align with your target market

Besides screening the influencers, it’s worthwhile having a look at the type of audience that engages with the selected influencer on their posts. If those fans fit your target audience profile then you know by working with the influencer, you’ll have a better chance of reaching the exact target market you want.

With the wide variety of influencers around, finding and selecting the best, most relevant influencers is often said to be the most difficult part of influencer marketing. If you’re going down the in-house route to select influencers and you don’t have some form of platform to help you, the task would quickly become quite challenging.

Common challenges when choosing influencers in a campaign:

Time-consuming to research and screen influencers manually

Inability to determine demographics of influencer’s following

Unsure of past campaigns influencers have worked on

Difficulty in calculating average engagement rate across posts

Influencer tools help you tackle these challenges.

One such tool is Meltwater’s Social Influencer platform, which allows you to discover the right influencers across multiple platforms and categories, manage influencer programs and monitor and measure performance all in one place.

On the platform, you can effectively sift through a sophisticated influencer search engine to find influencers that fit your brand and align with your target market. Beyond that, once a campaign has kicked off, you can track your campaign’s progress by measuring engagement and reach on each influencer’s post. This would be helpful if you notice any need to tweak the campaign to achieve greater success.

Checklist for selecting an influencer campaign management tool

Search for influencers by topics, locations and social handles

Search for influencers in a specific social platform

Provide insights into an influencer’s page, including True Reach, Engagement, Audience demographics, Followers’ interests and brands they’ve worked with

Connect and share campaign briefs with Influencers directly on the platform

Monitor and analyse the impact of activated influencers’ content

As we’ve seen from Fyre Festival, it’s also crucial to monitor sentiment around your influencer campaign. This way you can track when sentiment goes south for some reason and effectively pause all activations to mitigate a potential crisis. It’s always better to stay atop of things rather than getting caught off guard.   

The Meltwater Media Monitoring tool is an easy solution to help marketers monitor sentiment and trends around an ongoing influencer campaign. Start by setting up specific searches and create crisis alerts so you’ll be notified immediately if things go awry. The software will then monitor mentions across millions of online articles, social media posts and print content so you won’t miss anything.

All in all, Fyre Festival highlighted the power of influencer marketing. However, it’s crucial to have all aspects of the activity and objectives aligned before executing any marketing campaign. Otherwise, it could all fizzle up in smoke.

As for influencer marketing, with the right tool to help you select the right influencers, you’ll be one step closer to running an effective campaign. Prop that up with a dose of creativity, proper management, monitoring and measurement, it shouldn’t take long for the campaign to quickly take flight.

The Power of Influencer Marketing: Fyre Festival Case Study

Since you can't always predict what forces might tumble your brand into trouble, knowing what resources you can tap before a crisis hits is essential to a modern PR pro's strategy. That's why putting together a "just in case "roster of spokespeople, and including influencers in your crisis communications can help prevent a catastrophe. Read this post to see how influencer marketing was used in the case of Zika.

During a PR crisis, you need to mobilize every asset available to protect your brand—and today, this includes having an influencer strategy in place.

Include Key Influencers in Your Crisis Plan

Consider the global response to the Zika outbreak. Zika rocketed to awareness in 2016, initially in connection with the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) focused on crafting ongoing communications to educate the public.

Zika affected popular tourist destinations across the Caribbean and Latin America, with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimating economic losses of $18 billion. Individual brands, hotels, cruise ships, and tours serving those areas, were also being affected.

Here’s how players responded in the face of Zika and what role influencers played in crisis communications messaging and response.

Activate Influencers on Social and Beyond

Despite being hardest hit by this crisis, Puerto Rico took a proactive communication stance in educating tourists in a responsible way through its “Facts Not Fear” campaign.

The New York Times noted in October 2016, “Puerto Rico has been hardest hit, with over 21,000 locally acquired cases through Sept. 28, according to the C.D.C. Though the Puerto Rico Tourism Company says nonresident visitor numbers dropped just one percent from February to July, it is fighting back with an information campaign devoted to prevention at puertoriconow.seepuertorico.com.”

The NYT goes on to say, “It has also enlisted stars like the Olympic tennis gold medalist Monica Puig to talk about protection.” The campaign also featured other Puerto Rican stars, from sports to Broadway. The Puerto Rico Tourism Company worked with Puig to profile her trip to the island after her win. Their partnership highlighted Zika prevention while encouraging tourism:

“Puig says that Puerto Rico is a great getaway for everyone and travelers should know the facts when planning a trip to the island, ‘Zika can have serious consequences for pregnant women and those looking to get pregnant. But if you’re not pregnant or planning to have a family in the near future, come visit Puerto Rico, my home sweet home.’ Puig adds that precautionary measures are simple for visitors, ‘Apply insect repellent carefully and liberally and enjoy a worry-free experience.'”

Puig, who has a following of 188,000 on Twitter, shared tweets, videos and pictures of her return to Puerto Rico after her victory—and later continued her pro-Puerto Rico tweets as an activist to help the island rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Scenario Planning: Public Health and Institutional Influencers

Brands were careful to limit original communications around Zika. Instead, many relied on the most current information available from influencers like the CDC and WHO for aligned communications. While most tend to think of influencers like individuals with a social following, that can be a limited view. Working with an authority influence—such as an established health organization—helps brands provide the latest and best information.

The CDC embraced digital resources to make that easy, by launching a podcast and creating an action awareness toolkit. They developed an award-winning social media campaign, reports Healthcarecommunication.com. The CDC created a video series, dubbed “Zap Zika,” and partnered with media and influencers for a campaign that ultimately produced a total of more than 6,800 messages. Videos were viewed nearly 700,000 times across networks as of awards’ campaign analysis. Here’s a sample video, with 1.4 million views alone:

Zap Zika: See Your Doctor

Influencers can also effectively reach younger audiences, to raise Zika awareness and share prevention best practices. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) partnered with Sesame Street to create two 30-second public service announcements in Spanish and Portuguese.

Sesame Street: if the mosquito can't bite you, bye-bye Zika! PSA 2

According to CNN, they were shared on social media and aired on Plaza Sesamo, the Latin America version of Sesame Street. One video on Facebook received more than 24,000 views on that single channel:

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