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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

Many of us PR professionals feel that securing editorial coverage is getting harder. We’re working in an extremely noisy industry and the volume seems to be cranked up a notch each day. In this blog, we’ll be looking at the biggest PR challenges right now. 

JBH (UK based content agency) recently interviewed key PR influencers to address some of the biggest challenges faced by those in the PR industry in 2017. During this blog, we’ll be looking at JBH’s research and discussing ways to overcome the difficulties uncovered. (Check out the infographic they created here) 

PR Challenge 1: Rapid technological growth

The first of the PR challenges we’ll be looking at is the constantly changing digital landscape. This can be particularly challenging for those working in more corporate industries. Being a digital company goes beyond creating a digitally optimised strategy. The implementation here is key. Digital disruption is something that must be embraced by all members of staff if our strategy is going to work, meaning that comms teams lose a little control – something they typically obsess over!

Beyond complete digital disruption, it can even be difficult for the most technologically savvy professionals and businesses to stay on top of updates constantly being rolled out across social media networks. By the time we’re aware of something ‘new’, it’s already old news.

Whilst knowing about the latest technology may not be in your job description, it’s good to be ahead of the curve as this macro trend can, and probably is, seriously affecting your goals. We don’t have to spend hours understanding the science behind new technologies, but it’s worth scrolling through a technology news outlet or following a handful of technology journalists on Twitter. We’d recommend taking a look at Wired or following Rory Cellan-Jones or Mashable tech on Twitter.

As Andy Barr, owner of 10 Yetis (PR, digital and social media agency) explains, one huge technological advancement to benefit the PR industry is the availability of software to track PR efforts. Media intelligence tools such as Meltwater allow PR pros to both track their existing coverage (to help justify their existence) and find new avenues to land stories. We can use Meltwater to track whether our press releases are being picked up, where they have been shown and the impact of our editorial footprint on social media. In addition, such tools also allow users to understand whether an article has led to an increase in positive brand mentions. Those working in PR can quickly and easily use the data to prove they’re meeting their KPI’s and benefiting the business’s bottom line.

Andy mentions ‘dark social’ in his section of the article. Dark social is creating fear amongst many PR & marketing professionals. Even the term is creepy! Dark social refers to private messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook Messenger and direct messages, often used be people to share articles. The trouble is, since they’re private forms of messaging there’s no way of understanding the true reach of our stories. According to The Drum, dark social has resulted in the inability to track 87% of content shares. 


Dark social isn’t all bad news though! Whilst difficult to track, the clickback rates of these kinds of shares are high because they’re coming from a trusted source. We anticipate that they’ll be a lot more discussion on the PR challenges of dark social in 2018 and beyond. Create shareable, engaging content such as videos to increase your chances of having content shared. Furthermore, keeping track of Google Analytics can help us understand if our content is resonating (even if we can’t see exactly how many times it’s been shared on dark social) Check out this article for more info.

With so much content being posted every single minute on the internet, competition for a moment in the spotlight is fiercer than ever. So how can we rise above the rest and get our message heard?

JBH recommends that we embrace creativity, weirdness and trends. Oh, and create lots of video content! New social media algorithms have filtered out a lot of content from appearing on the newsfeed of the typical social media user. Whilst this can improve user experience through relevance, it’s a nightmare for comms professionals. Up to 70% of content is now banished from our Facebook feeds are filtered out. This has caused an uproar in the industry, with many companies feeling they have been forced to “pay to play” on social media networks.

As Mike Love, PR adviser at Burson-Marsteller states “The challenge is to find out how our stories are best received. It’s not (just) about quantity, it’s about quality”. We should be regularly monitoring the result of our content, and adapting our strategy based on these insights. Check out our blog: Boosting Engagement on Social Media for more top tips on how to create content that is likely to resonate with your audience and not be filtered out by the dreaded algorithm.

PR Challenge 3: Harder to impress journalists

Another of our greatest PR challenges is trying to impress journalists who are bombarded by hundreds of pitches a day. This is making it near enough impossible for our stories to get noticed in the sea of emails flooding their inbox. As much as we’re frustrated by this, we should also be feeling sympathetic to the journalists who are increasingly frustrated at being spammed by irrelevant pitches.


As JBH suggests, personalise your pitch and target content so it’s relevant to the journalist and demographics we’re targeting. We should aim to provide value to the journalists target readers and not approach the relationship with only ourselves in mind.

We can use Meltwater’s influencer database, to discover journalists mentioning specific topics related to our brand. This allows us to ensure we’re sending our pitches to the right people. We should then send our list of journalists personalised emails, trying to make the pitch relevant to the themes they write about and the audience they write for.

As content online becomes more varied, authentic and bizarre, it’s difficult to show our audiences something new. Some demographics, particularly the more tech-savvy, are especially hard to impress. This is because by the time we catch onto the idea the buzz is over!

Quentin Langley, author of Brand Jack, suggests targeting particular demographics and segmenting our audiences. To surprise an audience and make them pay attention, we need to select an audience that will react to the content.

With help from a media monitoring tool, we can stay abreast of trends and ahead of the competition. This is sure to create a unique angle for messages and offer those more advanced members of our audience content that’ll interest them. But be aware, as Langley rightfully points out, segmentation is key. Our message shouldn’t be one size fits all. Some members of our target market may be reluctant to move with the times and blasting them with the same message as more advanced members may confuse them!

Social listening is a great way to get inside the minds of our audience. Marketing and PR teams should also have high alignment with the sales team to understand which clients fit in which category.

Many of us are familiar with the dreaded word ‘budget cuts’ or perhaps we’re a small company, non-profit or start-up with a limited budget. Either way, marketing, comms and PR professionals tend to do multiple job roles in our daily work. Jane Hunt, marketing director of JBH notes that: Marketing, PR, social media and comms are so linked these days, we can often combine strategy and activity. For example, SEO and PR are closely aligned.

Overcoming PR challenges around time could be solved by partnering up with other departments and utilising tools that take out the manual element of our work. Depending on the size of our departments, we may be able to partner up with those in other roles or with other skillsets to take off some of the pressure. We should also utilise technology to make our day to day roles easier. For example, rather than manually scouring the web for mentions of our press release, spending hours analysing the engagement around our brand on social media, or trying to prove the impact we’ve made on our KPI’s, we can use media intelligence solutions. Meltwater is an all-in-one solution that assists us marketing/comms/pr professionals in daily work life. With help from such tools, users can:


Understand whether their key messages resonating

Identify how PR has fueled social media engagement

Learn how the conversation around your brand is developing.

Track how many website views you’ve had off the back of an article

Another way to ease the workload is by creating evergreen content. Instead of constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, create content that is long lasting. Lists, top tips, how to guides and videos are great examples of evergreen content. Evergreen content can be shared again and again which also helps improve SEO! Winning!

JBH also identifies one of the PR challenges that we commonly hear at Meltwater – we’re drowning in data, but don’t know what tools to use to pull the PR value out of the data. Afterall, data is useless if we don’t know what to do with it! PR and marketing is becoming more scientific and data-driven, which is a good thing, but it can be hard to break down the data down into bite-sized insights that we actually understand and can utilise. The days of having a book of press clippings is over!

Many of us are already using data in our day to day role, however are we looking at the right data? According to OutsideInsight, 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 2 years alone. Many of us only look at internal data to inform strategy, however we need to start looking outside of our company at external data to create forward-looking decisions. Internal data is what has been, it’s like looking in the rear view mirror in our car, whereas external data allows us to look ahead and know what’s happening right now.

Have you ever said, “I’m not good with numbers”? Many of us are scared of data. Traditionally data-driven decisions involved a lot of excel spreadsheets and confusing numbers. However, the means of pulling the data and how it’s presented have advanced. Media monitoring platforms such as Meltwater allow us to break data down in an easy to understand, visual and interactive way.

Here’s an example of an interactive Meltwater dashboard showcasing PR and social media impact.

If you’d like to know more about how Meltwater can help optimise your PR strategy and overcome some of the PR challenges mentioned in this blog? send us an email on hello@meltwater.com

What are your biggest PR Challenges? Let us know on Twitter or by email 🙂 

The biggest challenges for PR pro’s right now

In the last few months, a number of Asia news publications have announced that they will cease their Asia print editions, in the face of diminishing advertising revenues and readers preferring to get their news online.

With major announcements of publications stopping their Singapore and Hong Kong print editions, Mediacorp’s Today Online discontinuing their print title, and market rumours that Singapore’s main newspaper company, Singapore Press Holdings will also embark on a company reorganisation (and potential job cuts) in the face of the shift to digital, we speak to Meltwater’s Regional Director for Media Solutions, Mimrah Mahmood about Singapore’s changing media landscape.

1) Looking back, have you seen any missed opportunities that Mediacorp and SPH failed to take to transform digitally?

Both SPH and Mediacorp were quick to recognise changing media consumption habits and provide a digital offering. Where I see gaps is in the integration of the print and digital teams, primarily because they didn’t have complementary targets such as driving print advertising revenue or traffic to the news sites.

Unified KPIs are key to enabling teams to operate as a single unit that is more efficient in monetising advertising across traditional and digital platforms. This also enables staff to be more nimble and pivot towards advertisers and consumers needs.

2) What have traditional media companies in Asia Pacific or around the world done to cope with digital transformation? What can Mediacorp and SPH learn from them?

There are two distinct approaches that media publishers take: freemium and pay-wall. Both have its advantages and we are yet to see which one is more profitable in the long run.

While markets like Australia and Japan prefer the pay-wall model, they are struggling to compete with new channels and competitors. The freemium model has one distinct advantage – the ability to leverage every avenue to get more eyeballs on the content. This has allowed them to better integrate with the new sheriffs of media (platforms such as Google, Facebook, Baidu, Tencent, etc). Mediacorp and SPH would have benefitted from negotiating with these new media owners to get better rates earlier on, as well as longer term commitments. Now, they are competing with, and are sometimes at the mercy of these new technology companies.

3) What are the ways Mediacorp and SPH can provide value to advertisers from here on out?

Keeping up with changing consumer habits is crucial if you want to fully monetise an advertising channel. For example, consumers today are showing a preference for mobile news and bite-sized or rich digital media, and publishers that don’t keep up will lose out. For both SPH and Mediacorp, it’s important to focus on the younger generation because that’s where the changing habits are most evident.

With new competitors like Singtel entering the space (their CEO recently positioned them as a multi-media company rather than a telco), I see the balance of power changing dramatically in the ecosystem.

4) Mediacorp and SPH recently set up a joint programmatic trading desk. What are some other ways they can monetise digitally?

With 5G internet speeds on the horizon, it’s all about owning consumer traffic. The speeds we’re talking about will revolutionise the way we consume media content and the experiences that are possible over the internet. 5G will allow IoT to be fully integrated with the consumer behaviour. SPH and Mediacorp need to invest heavily in this area to determine their positioning and footprint in this new ecosystem.

Extracts from this blog post were published in The Drum. 

Mimrah Mahmood on Singapore’s Changing Media Landscape

As a hiring manager, you’re not only looking to fill your PR job requisition. You’re also trying to identify PR job candidates who will fit your company’s culture and the role’s demands.

Even when you’ve designed a solid recruitment process, including writing a job description that brings candidates an insider’s view of the job, you can still end up with a new hire that doesn’t work out. Like the PR director who lacks strategic planning and budget management skills. Or the entry-level PR person who can’t write a strong press release or backgrounder. Sometimes, a candidate talks a great game, but doesn’t have the practical skills to deliver.

If candidates who ace interview checkpoints lack what it takes to make the day-to-day job work, how do you filter them out before making an offer? Here are three ways to get a better feel for a candidate’s skills and capabilities before committing to bringing them on.

Conduct Skills Testing During the Interview

A PR professional needs to be able to communicate well at the moment, and on-the-spot. Unfortunately, when you evaluate a portfolio and writing samples, you can’t be sure how much third-party editing and strategy went into it. This makes having on-site skills testing an important part of the interview process. 

A few easy ways to test writing, editing, and business judgment skills include getting a candidate to:

Edit a messy first draft of a press release. Insert grammar and spelling errors that a PR pro should be able to zero-in on, such as deviations from AP Style.

Draft a media relations pitch. Provide a piece of industry thought leadership authored by an executive, and ask the candidate to compose a pitch, including who they’d target and why.

Vet social media content. Compile a collection of good, bad, and ugly social media posts from your company and competitors. Ask the candidate if they would post them or not and why.

Respond to social media complaints. Provide the candidate with a handful of actual social media complaints your company has received in the past and ask them how they’d respond or react to them.

It’s important to make sure the candidate knows this test is simply a way for you to get a read on their in-the-moment communications skills. It’s not an attempt to get free work out of them. 

Which brings us to the next testing tactic…

Give the Candidate a Paid Freelance Assignment

Once the candidate has passed your in-person interview and skills test with flying colors, it’s time for a freelance project. If your candidate is currently employed full-time, you’ll want to keep it small. Asking for an evaluation of a specific social media channel would fit the bill. Or, writing a piece of contributed content for a specific publication, with the abstract provided.

If the candidate is a consultant or currently between jobs, you can consider a more significant freelance project, such as putting together a PR plan for a survey or in support of an industry conference sponsorship. However, since your objective is to get the job req. closed, you won’t want it to take place over too long of a timeline.

I’m sure some of you reading this post just said: “No way would anyone agree to that!” But I can tell you from personal experience many people will—and have—done just that.

Before I took the full-time head of content role at Highwire PR, I worked as a contractor for them over three months to make sure it was a good fit. And I agreed to do that despite having been employed full-time. In fact, if they hadn’t asked if that was a possibility, I would have asked THEM for the trial run. You see, despite having worked as an independent consultant, I had never worked as an agency employee. I wanted to make sure it was the right fit for me before signing on permanently as a full-time employee.

While this may not be possible in all situations, it is a good way to give both the job candidate and the company to see if the fit is there. Often, companies are reluctant to give an unconventional job candidate a chance because the risk is too great. But by having a 90-day contract, either party can walk away at the end of the contract if the fit isn’t there.

There’s still no silver bullet to ensuring you don’t end up with a fly-by-night new hire who can’t meet their job requirements, but building in a series of skills testing into your hiring process decreases the chances of that happening. At the same time, it also helps you narrow your candidate pool. Giving you time to focus on those candidates who are interested in working for your company specifically, versus someone looking to make a quick career change.

3 Essential Ways to Evaluate Your PR Job Candidates

A few weeks ago I met with a young attorney who wanted to raise her profile and become famous. After 90 minutes of coffee where she produced her dream scenario of TV interviews and profiles, along with a strategy to promote her as a young leader in entertainment law and celebrity representation, she said, “You’ve given me some great ideas! Now I can get some media on my own.”

For PR agencies and consultants, this happens a lot more than we like, potential clients wasting our time, pumping us for ideas, taking copious notes, then attempting to act as their own publicist. With all due respect, they can’t represent themselves. If they try, they will probably fail.

PR professionals, smart entrepreneurs, and readers of this column for the past eight years know that public relations isn’t only difficult, in some cases, it’s nearly impossible. Reporters and other influencers aren’t going to spread your message, or promote you or your business just for fun. There’s got to be something in it for them—a great story, insight into a trend, or fascinating information that will entice their readers and make them look good in front of their editors.

You are not buying an ad. Remember—advertising is what you pay for, PR is what you pray for.

Think of it this way—you can probably represent yourself in traffic court for a minor violation. Small claims court? Possibly. But should you act as your own attorney for a civil lawsuit or big trial? No freaking way. (A lawyer should know better.)

So the next time you are tempted to represent yourself, or a client dismisses your expertise because they were smart enough to “pick your brain” and now they are cruising behind the wheel with Google Maps leading the way, please enlighten them. 

Tip: Learn how to hire a PR agency and how to hire a marketing firm to get the help you need.

Here are Five Reasons Why You Can’t Do Your Own PR:

Imagine hosting a party and sending out 300 invitations. 296 are ignored, three people respond “Not interested, ” and one says “I’ll let you know.” How does that feel? Welcome to PR.  With fewer reporters employed and more publicists pitching them, the odds are against you. I don’t tell most clients how often their stories get rejected. It’s too personal and too painful. An outside PR consultant doesn’t take these personally, he or she finds what’s not working, makes it better and finds an outlet to place the story.

Bad Writing is the twin brother of Rejection. Most emails aren’t even read. They are poorly focused or irrelevant, the subject headlines don’t get to the point, the main points are too self-serving, and they are often sent to the wrong journalist. Prominent journalists get 1,000 emails per day. Even bloggers for obscure publications receive dozens daily. Many professional publicists used to work in the media. They respect the journalist by sending them short, well-written and relevant pitches.

If you think emails get ignored, good luck going viral on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or SnapChat. There’s an excellent new book called Hit Makers by Derek Thompson that destroys “The Viral Myth.” Thompson notes: “Advertisers and producers have developed a theory of ‘viral’ marketing, which assumes that simple word of mouth can easily take a small idea and turn it into a phenomenon.” Thompson, a senior editor of The Atlantic, asks if ideas really do go viral. “The answer appears to be a simple no. In 2012, several researchers from Yahoo studied the spread of millions of online messages on Twitter. More than 90 percent of the message didn’t diffuse at all. A tiny percentage, about 1 percent, was shared more than seven times. But nothing really went fully viral – not even the most popular share messages.” Facebook noted in 2013 that 4.75 billion pieces of content were shared each day, in 2017, it’s probably much higher. Five hundred million Tweets are sent daily. That’s a lot of competition.

Sometimes who you know is just as important as what you know. Contacts with journalists, newspapers, bloggers, producers and other influencers are worth their weight in gold, wrapped in platinum, and sprinkled with diamonds. That’s why PR firms are hired, retained, and renewed. Our firm recently placed a big article for an academic client in one of the Big Three newspapers (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times). It was a great story that illustrated a trend, but it took three months of interviews, statistics, stops, and starts. Because I personally knew the reporter, the article eventually appeared, and it ran with a photo. No doubt there are countless other examples from PR agencies around the world where personal connections make the difference. For my latest book, I hired a publicist who works with authors. (If lawyers going to court can hire other lawyers, PR pros can hire each other too.)

How many meetings at corporations, universities, law firms, restaurants or auto companies start this way: “We’ve got the best sedan/pricing model/entrepreneur program/fudge-filled donut on the market. Our distribution strategy is second-to-none. Our customers and suppliers love the new product. Why doesn’t the media give a damn?!” Maybe the product isn’t so novel. Maybe the service hasn’t been explained properly. Maybe it hasn’t been inserted into a trend so the journalist can write something meaningful, instead of repurposing a press release. Maybe the fascinating anecdotes about users, the way it was invented or other novel factoids weren’t promoted. This is why PR professionals working internally for big firm usually bring in consultants and agencies. They can see the outside world. They know how the company, product or service fits into the media conversation, and they know who might be interested.

For more information about hiring a PR agency or discovering what they actually do, please see this previous Forbes column with more than 350,000 views.

In the meantime, don’t try this at home.

This article was written by Robert Wynne from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

Why You Can’t Do Public Relations Yourself

Following the kudos Wendy’s received by throwing shade on Twitter about McDonald’s current use of frozen beef, will more brands get bolder in calling out their competition?

Received wisdom is that it’s better to let the press and public opinion do the dirty work of negative PR. But, since Wendy’s was punching up in their rap-style Twitter-beef (pun fully intended), they may have been thinking they’ve got more to gain than to lose. Specifically, gains in Twitter cred, visibility, and followers. Given that’s exactly what happened, other brands are surely taking note. Let’s take a closer look at what’s worked.

Though McD’s 2016 revenue was close to 17 times that of Wendy’s and their worldwide locations outpace the redhead 6 to 1, on Twitter at least, the margins are slimmer, with Wendy’s at 1.65 million followers to 3.41 million for the golden arches. It’s important to note that Wendy’s didn’t use subterfuge, insults, or underhanded tactics. Instead, they seized on McDonald’s marketing language promising fresh beef by 2018 and with humor, pointed out the cracks in Mickey D’s business positioning. After all, bragging about the introduction of fresh beef means you haven’t been using it up until now. Wendy’s ran with it.

McDonald's on Twitter: "Today we've announced that by mid-2018, all Quarter Pounder burgers at the majority of our restaurants will be cooked with fresh beef.… https://t.co/W12JXwCpj6"

And with that reply tweet, a strategic trendjack—within three hours of a campaign that took significantly longer to produce — @Wendys sailed into a social media win with over 75k RTs and over 180k hearts. It’s not so surprising that social media is receptive to snarkiness.

Taking Off the (Social Media Gloves) During a Crisis: The Case of United Airlines

It would’ve been hard to miss the two scandals that recently rocked United Airlines, considering the volume of above-the-fold headlines. Both center around United policies that seem to leave the service out of “customer service.” The first might be called “Leggings-gate” concerning enforcement of their dress code. While gender discrimination may have come into play, as dress codes aren’t uniformly enforced, the issue might have blown over (as minor brand crises do), except for the United Express Flight 3411 passenger dragging incident.

Subsequent non-apology, leak of an insensitive internal memo, as well as the launch of a smear campaign around the dragged passenger compounded the crisis surrounding United, with PR pros taking note.

Royal Jordanian on Twitter: "We are here to keep you #united Dragging is strictly prohibited 🚫… "

Again, not surprisingly, the funnier the jabs got, the more successful they were. The Southwest Airlines crew included colorful commentary on some flights and were the beneficiary of a spoof ad that has gone viral.

Doug Haller on Twitter: "Attendant on my Southwest flight tells passengers: "We're going to need four passengers ... just kidding.""

Delta, on the other hand, took the opportunity to highlight brand values; striking a more straightforward note.

Rachel F. Elson on Twitter: "Trying to be the anti-United >> Delta just dramatically increased the $$ it can give to bumped passengers https://t.co/Jz2tQKVmrK"

United hasn’t come up for air yet as they try to stop the crisis spiraling, while ignoring the pile-on they’re receiving from competitors and consumers on social media.

Right now, while the United scandal is still fresh and public perception continues to tank, we won’t yet see the full benefits for the airlines employing this kicking-them-while-they’re-down tactic. But we do know that, so far this year, using similar practices have netted Twitter wins for both Wendy’s and Lyft.

Since January, Lyft has been subtly boxing Uber. As crisis after crisis befell the leader in hailing apps (including, but not limited to: employee gender discrimination, treatment of drivers, a seat on the advisory board of the current Presidential administration, and breaking a taxi strike in NYC), Lyft put out a statement that reinforced their principles, without ever mentioning their competitor by name.

Logan Green, Lyft’s co-founder and CEO, tweeted late January that, “Trump’s immigration ban is antithetical to both Lyft’s and our nation’s core values.”

Logan Green on Twitter: "3/ We are donating $1,000,000 over the next four years to the ACLU to defend our constitution. https://t.co/0umGOlkhSx"

To further emphasize differences, Lyft made a public donation of one million to the ACLU, an organization responsible for bringing immigration ban lawsuits against the current administration (an issue that the NYC taxi strike addressed). Though they never mention Uber, Lyft used the increased visibility brought on by these crises to position themselves as their rival’s antithesis. With the positive affirmations from their ACLU donation, Lyft continues on this path, donating 20% of rides to the @LeanInOrg on Equal Pay Day.

Lyft on Twitter: "This #EqualPayDay, we're partnering w/ @LeanInOrg to donate 20% of ride proceeds to orgs for women: https://t.co/y9cEYD0yaf #20PercentCounts… https://t.co/hWE9UDwVnt"

Lyft’s agile comms team and leadership have crafted a PR strategy that shows, by example, that they share the #deleteUber crowd’s principles.

While loyal presidential administration consumers attempted a #deleteLyft campaign, it didn’t catch fire like #deleteUber has. Even with a backlash, the media coverage and Twitter praise are likely worth the strategic play of throwing shade on social.

2017 has ushered in a social media strategy that uses a competitor’s crisis or newsjacking to broadcast your brand values and elevate visibility. PR is no longer only about protecting your brand and broadcasting messages; it’s also about going for the jugular in pointing out how much better you are than a competitor. This is especially true if they’re facing scrutiny because of a crisis or a well-financed marketing campaign. Being nimble and doing this well is the key to success. That’s why you’ll need a media intelligence platform that is always listening for industry keywords, so when something happens to a competitor, you can work on the perfect snarky @ reply.

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