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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?
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

We’ve all heard the hype around ChatGPT, it’s been impossible to avoid over recent months, but is that all it really is, just hype? Definitely not. 

ChatGPT, along with similar generative AI tools, appears to be that most rare of creatures, a much talked about new technology that is genuinely transformative, with an immediate and significant impact on a wide range of industries. 

In this blog, we’ll explore how ChatGPT can be used in the PR and marketing communications world, with practical examples that you can start using today to work smarter and faster. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on using ChatGPT, and we recommend you subscribe to ChatGPT+ to gain access to some of the more advanced features, although it’s not essential and the free version will work too.

Keep reading to discover some powerful ChatGPT marketing tips. 

The Potential of ChatGPT for Marketing and PR

Using ChatGPT for PR and Marketing Campaign Planning

In short, ChatGPT is an AI that can understand questions written in natural language, and provide detailed answers also in natural language.

Developed by the US artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot based on the company’s GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) Large Language Model (LLM). There’s a lot of deeply technical background to this which doesn’t need to be covered in this article, but the Chat-GPT Wikipedia page has plenty of detail if you really want to know.

In broad, simple terms, ChatGPT is a kind of AI known as a neural network that is inspired by the way the neurons and synapses in our brains work. Like our brains, neural networks are capable of learning to perform tasks through being trained by example, as opposed to the conventional way of building an application by painstakingly coding it to carry out each step of a task in excruciatingly fine detail.

This means they can do highly complex things that would be practically impossible to achieve through conventional software development methods.

In the case of ChatGPT, the AI was trained on a huge volume of human-created information from the internet, including Wikipedia and other websites, books, discussion forms, and more. It’s important to note that the model didn’t build an understanding of the world based on that data, rather it got uncannily good at putting together sequences of words which make sense to the reader.

Think of it as a much more sophisticated and powerful version of your phone’s autocomplete feature. It predicts the correct order of words based on statistical probability, and it does that incredibly well, but it doesn’t really understand the concepts it's talking about. So it can make factual mistakes, but its mistakes often seem highly plausible at first glance, because that’s what it’s learned how to do.

With that caveat out of the way, anybody who spends time playing around with ChatGPT cannot fail to be impressed by its apparent intelligence. Even when you know how the trick is done, it still seems much smarter than it should be. It’s shown the ability to explain and deconstruct abstract jokes about niche topics, and some researchers have claimed that it displays some traits of Artificial General Intelligence - an AI that’s capable of understanding things and solving problems.

ChatGPT also understands most programming languages, and you can ask it to create code for you simply by explaining what you want the code to do. More recently the platform introduced “plugins” which adapt it to be able to perform specific tasks by connecting it to third-party apps, and giving it access to data it doesn’t already have. For example, the Expedia plugin allows you to plan and book a trip using natural language queries.

As you can see, ChatGPT is a powerful tool, so long as you understand its capabilities and limitations. There’s been a lot of talk about AI replacing human workers, leading to job-losses, but that’s the wrong way to look at this technology. It’s not like you could fire your marketing team and expect ChatGPT to replace them.

This is a tool which can help PR and marketing professionals work faster and more effectively, but it’s nowhere close to replacing them. Whether you work in-house or agency side, at any level, you can use ChatGPT to make your life easier.

The simplest ChatGPT marketing use case is using it for copywriting. Whether you’re trying to create social media posts, email marketing campaigns, blogs, or even entire eBooks, this tool can really help you to speed up that process. 

Let’s be clear though, ChatGPT is no replacement for a professional copywriter. Its output is often dry and formulaic, it can contain factual inaccuracies, so we wouldn’t advise using it to produce your marketing copy without significant human oversight. More importantly, an AI doesn’t have all of the insight into your company, products, and tone of voice that is needed to do a good job.

You still need a talented writer to write engaging, action-provoking copy that achieves your objectives. So where does ChatGPT come in?

For short-form copy like social media posts and email subject lines, the tool is great for providing a lot of alternative options.

Let’s say you’ve written a tweet to encourage people to visit a new product page on your website, and you want to keep pushing it for a month or so but without sounding repetitive. You can simply prompt ChatGPT to write 10 alternative versions of the tweet, and while they may still need a little rewriting to make them sparkle, this will still be a lot faster than writing them all from scratch. 

In fact, Meltwater recently integrated ChatGPT into our Engage social media management platform, providing exactly this functionality, making it easier for social media managers to produce the content they need to fuel their channels. We have also launched Meltwater's AI-Powered PR Assistant.

For longer items of copy, which could include anything from emails and blog posts all the way up to weighty eBooks, ChatGPT can help you to overcome what writers call The Tyranny of the Blank Page. For many writers, even with a good, detailed brief, getting started is the hardest part.

So if you find yourself staring at a blank page for way too long, waiting for the right words to come, simply explain the brief to ChatGPT and it will give you some copy to get started with. More often than not you will probably find that the whole thing needs to be completely rewritten and the end result will bear little resemblance to the AI’s output, but it can at least get you started more quickly. 

Getting ChatGPT to write a very long piece of copy like an eBook takes just a little more work than writing a single prompt, because even if you tell it to write 5,000 words, it will still only produce a kind of condensed draft of less than 1,000 words as its first response.

To make it write a more in-depth copy, use the following method:

First prompt it to provide an outline. For example, you could enter something like: “Write the 8 most important points that people should consider when booking a wedding venue. The style should be fun and informal. Include some interesting facts about weddings.”

Once it’s produced a response, you can then ask it to expand on each point, giving it a little guidance to cover the most relevant areas: “Provide more detail for point 1, and specifically focus on X. Also explain an alternative option for somebody on a lower budget.”

Repeat this for each section, and don’t be afraid to ask it to rewrite or give it more direction as required.

Then you can ask it to write an intro: “Write a 300 word introduction that briefly explains why it’s so important to book the right wedding venue.”

Finally, do the same with a conclusion: “Write a 300 word conclusion that summarizes everything covered in these 8 sections.”

This works because in each discussion thread you use with ChatGPT it retains memory of everything that’s already been talked about earlier in the thread, so it understands the context of what you’re asking for. It also saves your separate discussion threads, so you can go back to them at a later time and continue working on the same project. 

When you think about the potential uses of ChatGPT for marketing and PR, it’s easy to focus only on content generation, but the tool can be used for a lot more. For example, let’s imagine you’re doing Public Relations for a new app which protects user’s data privacy on the internet, an important issue but not terribly exciting. How could you come up with some angles that would convince a national newspaper to write about the app?

Simply frame the question to ChatGPT and it will provide you with a list of ideas:

Again, the output from ChatGPT might not give you exactly what you need, but just like a real brainstorming session, the first round of ideas can provide a helpful springboard into something better. If you’re struggling to get started, it’s a great way to get the ball rolling.

Everybody who works in a PR or marketing agency knows the pain of throwing your heart and soul into a new business pitch, only to lose out to a competitor. But if you don’t win that client, there’s no reason all your hard work should be wasted, with a little tweaking those same ideas could be repurposed for other, similar businesses. 

In this example of a ChatGPT marketing prompt, we asked it to give us some ideas for alternative types of business we could take our ideas to:

The sky really is the limit when using ChatGPT for marketing brainstorms, as it can help with almost any creative challenge you face. This is particularly useful if you work with a small team or have limited time, and just need to get some ideas flowing as quickly as possible.

If you’re a marketing professional you probably already know how to build a marketing campaign plan, but in a world where we all need to be multitaskers, taking on tasks that lie outside of our areas of expertise, it doesn’t hurt to have a little extra help. 

And even if you are completely comfortable with planning a broad, multichannel marketing and PR campaign, why do everything from scratch when ChatGPT can at least give you a framework to build upon?

Again, all you need to do is write a clear prompt explaining the background (i.e. what exactly the campaign is for), and any additional detail that is important, then ChatGPT will build the outline of a marketing plan tailored to your specific needs. You can then flesh it out with your own ideas, or even ask it to expand upon any particular sections that you need help with. 

In this example, we’ve asked ChatGPT to create a marketing plan for a new kind of inflatable kayak: 

Next, we asked it to provide more detail for the PR component of this plan: 

The possibilities for how you can use ChatGPT for marketing and PR are endless, but to use a well-worn technology maxim: garbage in, garbage out. The tool’s usefulness is closely related to the quality of the prompts you write for it. 

Since ChatGPT launched we’ve seen a boom in “prompt engineers” who claim to offer specialist skills in getting the AI to provide the best quality output. But the truth is that ChatGPT was always intended to respond to natural language requests, not to be some complex tool that requires special know-how, so the real trick is just to understand that you need to give it clear, well thought out instructions. You don’t need to be an engineer! 

Here are our tips for writing ChatGPT prompts that get great results: 

Be Specific: The more precise and specific your prompt, the more accurate the response you'll receive. If your question is too broad, you may not receive the information you're looking for. For example, instead of asking "Can you tell me about digital marketing?" you could ask "What are the key differences between SEO and SEM in digital marketing?"

Specify the Format: If you're looking for a response in a particular format, include this in your prompt. If you want a step-by-step guide, ask for it. If you want a case study, request a case study. For example, "Can you provide a case study of a successful social media marketing campaign?" will produce a very different result than "Tell me about social media marketing."

Watch Your Tone: Whether you're looking for a serious business-oriented answer or a more creative, brainstorming-style response, make sure to ask for that. For example "Provide a formal analysis of the importance of influencer marketing in today's business landscape" versus "Can you give me a creative brainstorm on influencer marketing strategies for a startup fashion brand?"

Manage the Length: If you need a concise answer for a presentation, mention that in your prompt. For longer, more detailed strategies or analyses, make sure you say so. For example, you might say "Give me a brief summary of the benefits of PR in crisis management" for a shorter response or "Could you provide a detailed strategy for PR during a brand crisis?" for a longer one. You can always ask it to expand upon any point in an earlier response. 

Use Open-ended Questions: To encourage more comprehensive and insightful answers, formulate open-ended questions rather than yes/no queries. Instead of "Does social media marketing boost brand visibility?" you could ask "How does social media marketing enhance brand visibility?"

Think of ChatGPT as a helpful coworker. If you give it clear instructions with as much detail as possible, it will be able to help you far more effectively than if you write vague prompts.

Tip: Learn how to use ChatGPT for social media marketing.

Beyond the Buzz: A Practical Guide to ChatGPT for Marketing and PR

Note: This blog is about the world’s largest grassroots movement, Earth Hour and how the Biggest Hour for Earth was tracked – produced in partnership with Meltwater and WWF Earth Hour. Find out more about Earth Hour’s Biggest Hour for Earth movement.

The impact of the digital revolution is no secret. Within the last 20 years, the use of digital technology has grown exponentially, from less than 7% of the world's population being online to more than 8 billion handphones across the globe. (That’s more handphones than people!)

And in the face of such rapidly changing digital climates, Earth Hour, the world’s largest grassroots movement, had to adapt as well. Gone are the days when it was simply about capturing the symbolic lights-out stunt. Today, WWF needs a more concrete way of demonstrating impact, and that comes through the digital movement. 

With the seven-year goal crucial to determining whether we can halt and reverse nature loss and stay under the 1.5°C climate threshold, WWF uses Meltwater to understand and monitor the Earth Hour global campaign in an effort to make it bigger and more accessible every year. 

Here’s how Meltwater helped bring the Biggest Hour for Earth to life: 

1. Tracking a global grassroots movement with Meltwater

(Earth Hour 2023, Biggest Hour for Earth statistics)

Through Meltwater's media monitoring platform, WWF was able to track the popularity of its campaign, including the events and activities taking place all around the world. This year alone, Earth Hour has so far achieved more than 22,300 online/print media articles across 130 countries and territories, totaling a reach of more than 92 billion. The highest rates of coverage were in China, the United States, Germany, and Vietnam. 

There were articles about new initiatives in support of Earth Hour, like “Cyrusher Supports Earth Hour Campaign By Encouraging Cycling'' in the United States. Some pieces centered on famous landmarks, like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, switching off. Others weaved Earth Hour into local news, discussing lowered carbon emissions and a new cycling trend in Shenzhen, China. News outlets in Vietnam also reported how Earth Hour was the starting point for realizing the country’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Just by skimming through and understanding the articles of each country/region, WWF was able to identify what was of central importance to the media outlets in each place. Those insights will help in planning future events and will provide even more specially catered and relevant information for WWF’s global teams and partners.

Using Meltwater, WWF was also able to better understand the campaign’s visibility and reach on various social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram. The team tracked key metrics and used alerts to monitor spikes in mentions in real-time. 

2. Translations at the click of a finger and worldwide reach

(Meltwater tracking - top countries media reach)

The Boolean search feature was extremely useful in tracking global mentions. It allowed WWF to easily search for keywords, like “Earth Hour”, translated into many different languages — including  “Hora del planeta” in Spanish  or “地球一小时” in Mandarin — to get a true global pitch of all relevant media coverage. 

Likewise, the “translate” button on Google enabled WWF to easily read through the articles once they were picked up in different languages. The team was able to then compare reach in each country, find out how mainstream Earth Hour is, and improve its understanding of how the campaign lands in different cultures and contexts, particularly in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. 

(A screenshot of Boolean searches from Meltwater's social listening platform.)

But, the best thing about Meltwater has got to be its high level of customer service. Its chatbot provides easy access to…wait for it…real people, providing answers to questions quickly, typically within a few minutes.

For WWF’s global team, working across several time zones, this meant getting help anytime, anywhere while also having the ability to see what the rest of the team was concerned about.

Using these functions, on the 25th of March 2023, at 8:30 pm, when WWF rallied millions of people around the world to take 60 minutes out of their day to do something positive for the planet, the organization was able to track the #BiggestHourForEarth. Everyone gathered under one unifying moment to switch off from daily habits and distractions to give an hour for Earth. This was replicated by individuals around the world and turned a singular hour into thousands and millions of hours of action. 

Earth Hour aims to be a beacon of hope, building on the great work of past generations and inspiring a brighter future for us all. Meltwater insights help WWF  to understand the reach of each message so that it can continue to grow this global campaign year-on-year. 

Can an hour really make a difference? It might only be one hour in our day, but it symbolizes the actions of millions, and the commitment of millions more to restore our planet.

It’s a start. And it’s up to all of us. With Meltwater, WWF has the data it needs to make Earth Hour a continued success.

How Meltwater Helped Track Earth Hour, the World’s Largest Grassroots Movement

According to the World Federation of Advertisers, South African businesses need to reach the right audience on the right platform with just the right amount of creativity and clever advertising at exactly the right time to achieve marketing success.

Sound like an impossible feat? It’s not, really. 

To ensure great marketing results, you need to understand the current media landscape in South Africa. The digital world is constantly evolving, which in turn influences consumer trends, and your marketing practices need to keep up with the ever-changing landscape. 

Using reputable data, insights and marketing trends, Meltwater brings you the most up to date research on the current media landscape in South Africa to help keep your business in the loop.

The biggest South African media companies in 2023

Most prominent media trends in SA at the moment

Current challenges facing the South African media landscape

How to market effectively in the current South African media landscape

When we look at some of the biggest South African media companies, and their growth in annual revenue, we get a great overview of social media trends in Africa. The top three SA companies according to Owler’s competitive data are the following (in order):

Multichoice, South Africa’s largest media business, has over 7000 employees and a most recent annual revenue of $3.8B.

While YouTube, Netflix and other subscription-based streaming services are gaining popularity, DStv is still South Africa’s most popular service.

In fact, this particular tv company has over 9-million subscribers, while Netflix is sitting on approximately 3-million.

Media 24 (part of Naspers) is South Africa’s leading media company specialising in newspapers, magazines, ecommerce, book publishing and more.

The company owns more than 50 of South Africa’s most-loved newspapers, magazines and news sites (including News24).

Primedia is a media company with a large portfolio of broadcasting assets including radio stations like 702 and 94.7.

The other biggest media content delivery companies in South Africa include Showmax, OneCentre, SABC, Primedia Broadcasting and Kagiso Media.

Did you know? With the Meltwater Media Intelligence Suite, you can also monitor TV & radio broadcasts.

At the start of 2023, 43.48 million internet users, 25.8 million social media users, and 112.7 million cell phone connections were recorded in South Africa. With a population size of almost 60 million, these stats suggest that almost all South Africans have access to a cell phone, and almost everyone is an internet-user.

According to Statista, South Africa’s largest segment is still Traditional Media with a market volume of US$4.64bn in 2023.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic saw an increase in the demand for digital media and the need for digitalisation on a global level. South Africa is a follower of global trends and the steady increase in internet users, cell phone connections and new ways of consuming media will mean that traditional media channels will start to stagnate and there will be a market shift towards digital media in the future.

Tip: You find more digital media statistics in The 2023 Global Digital Report. You can also take a look at dedicated South African social media statistics.

When comparing media consumption in South Africa to Australia's media landscape, it’s clear that Aussies are spending more time on Netflix and other personalised, subscription-based media spaces (globally, this is the trend) while SA is a little behind.

TV is still dominating our local media space, with digital news and radio following close behind. However, continuous growth for video-on-demand platforms and streaming services is expected, with Showmax and Netflix being key players in the market.

Radio is still a big player in the South African media industry, however, there has been a shift towards audio providers such as Spotify that offer music, podcasts & radio content as an all-in-one package. These one-stop-shop providers will become increasingly popular as audio consumption and audio content continues to increase

Facebook is still an extremely popular media platform in South Africa, with 22.15 million users recorded at the start of 2023.

Twitter, TikTok and Instagram are gaining popularity too, making the social space one to watch out for.

With news and entertainment right at everyone’s fingertips, the role of media in South Africa is changing into a fast-paced, highly competitive information-provider and the migration towards online publications is a prominent trend in the current South African media landscape. This has some pros for companies such as a variety of platforms as well as the ability to personalise content.

This in turn creates options for highly-targeted advertising. However, it also comes with challenges.

An increase in the user-dominated media space has led to word-of-mouth advertising and user-generated review systems. This opens businesses up to fake news, untrustworthy information, and unfair reviews. Misinformation can damage an individual or company's reputation tremendously. Fake news in mainstream media has also led to the waning of consumer trust. This poses a challenge to media outlets as once consumers have lost trust in a publication, they will migrate towards alternative, more personalised sources and this relationship is hard to repair.

Reading Tips: A 101 in Online Reputation Repair Management, Business Reputation Management: Maintain a Good Reputation, Reputation PR: Definition, Strategies & Examples, The Best Online Reputation Management Services & Software

As South Africans start using platforms such as Netflix, Spotify and other user-dominated media spaces, funding for radio and television will begin to decline. This could negatively impact the media industry if organisations do not adapt to the new digital world. 

There’s a lot of information to digest here, but the most important takeaway is that your business can benefit hugely from this evolution into digital, social, and ever-available information. But it’s not an easy task to tackle single handedly.

With a great PR officer, or public relations team, you can create a long-term vision for your business and reach goals you never thought possible. This is because marketing in 2023 doesn't just happen organically, it's a process filled with calculated decisions and a unique marketing strategy.

Using a press release distribution service, media database and relationship management, as well as other important media tools like the Meltwater Media Relations Suite, your business can take its marketing to the next level.

Keeping up to date with trends is often the hard part as the landscape is continually in motion. With PR assistance from Meltwater, you’ll never miss a beat as we offer a media monitoring service that spans all media platforms.

Simply fill in the form below to get a free demo.

Media In South Africa: 2023 And Beyond

The buzzy agency office atmosphere was always part of what made agency life special. Bouncing ideas off each other, working together on campaigns, celebrating successful pitches, commiserating when it didn’t go well. It could be a lot of fun.

But the pandemic changed all that and, just like many businesses around the world, a lot of agencies began to embrace the benefits of allowing staff to work from home. There’s no doubt that giving people that flexibility can be great for the individuals as well as the agencies, but has something been lost in the process? Do agency teams still enjoy that mutual sense of purpose and collaborative creativity that were fostered in a shared working environment?

Let’s talk about the upside first of all. The first benefit of remote working is that it gives agencies access to a much wider talent pool, since they are no longer limited to hiring employees who live within commuting distance of an office.

Given the eye-watering cost of living in a major city these days, it stands to reason that a lot of people are choosing to live in more affordable areas, and agencies which are based in those large cities would previously have missed out on all that talent.

And that brings us onto the next advantage: happier, more productive staff. Working from home saves people a significant amount of time every day, not to mention money. It’s also easier for them to take care of all kinds of life admin and personal stuff that is so much trickier when you’re away from home for up to 12 hours a day. Net result, they’ve got more energy, they’re more focused and productive at work, they feel happier and healthier, which means they’re less likely to look for a different job.

It’s not just the agency employees who save money by working from home. Having fewer people working in an office can significantly reduce costs for the agency, especially if it’s able to downsize to a smaller place. Commercial rents aren’t cheap and, if your square footage requirements can be lowered then you can make big savings.

By decoupling headcount from office space, scalability also becomes easier. OK, agency growth isn’t often specifically limited by how many people you can fit into your office, but being able to scale up or down without worrying about whether you’ve got enough space (or you’re paying for too much) can make life easier for agency bosses trying to navigate through ever changing economic cycles. 

We live in a golden age of technology, and it’s easy to forget that being able to instantly jump on a high-definition video call with colleagues all over the world is incredible. But the unique magic that happens in a creative brainstorm is kind of lost on a Zoom call, it’s just not the same as hunkering down in a meeting room full of pizza and Red Bull and throwing ridiculous ideas at each-other until somehow, eventually, something brilliant happens. 

And it’s not just the big brainstorms that lose something through remote work. All those little interactions and casual conversations that used to take place in an office would often spark new ideas, which doesn’t happen in a world where you only talk to colleagues in a planned, deliberate way, when there’s a specific topic to address.

This also makes it hard to build and maintain any kind of company culture. Agency staff no longer go for lunch together, drinks after work, or any of the other social activities that helped forge stronger teams. In some businesses this might not be a problem - you don’t have to be friends with your coworkers - but in agencies there’s usually a strong social aspect to the working environment, and the resulting company culture is often part of what clients buy into.

Although not always the case, some remote workers report difficulties in creating a healthy work/life balance when they work at home, because at the end of the working day it’s harder to mentally switch off from work as they’re still in the same environment. This, of course, can lead to unhappy, less productive staff.

As always, there’s no clear solution to find the perfect balancing act: it really depends on the individual agencies to find a way that works for them. Hybrid-working is currently being touted as the best compromise, with workers being given the flexibility to work from home a few days a week and attend the office for the rest of the time.

The research organization, Gallup, has looked closely at this issue and concluded that remote collaboration is demonstrably less effective than working together in-person, and suggests that the best approach is to standardize two or three working days a week in the office, which it claims boosts team engagement and wellbeing.

Does Working From Home Work for PR and Marketing Agencies?

Doing business beyond borders comes with a range of unique complexities, particularly in learning about the cultural nuances of different markets. For companies interested in attracting Asian audiences, following their local media provides a great starting point. Asian news channels, websites, blogs, and social media can provide insights into current events, economic trends, and other news coverage that can help you tailor your approach.

While it’s widely known that some countries (like China, Russia, and North Korea) keep their media under lock and key from foreign eyes, that’s not the case with all Asian countries. There are many more markets to explore via Asian news media, many of which can also give you inklings into countries that are harder to monitor.

Check out this Asian news channel list and start adapting your PR expansion strategy:

One of the country's free-to-air television channels, TV5 is headquartered in Mandaluyong and covers sports, news, movies, entertainment, children’s programming, and digital content. Its programs can also be found internationally, including Guam, the Middle East, Canada, Europe, and the United States.

Reading Tip: Philippine Media Today: History, Definition, Types & Roles

TV9 is one of the free-to-air television channels based in Malaysia that caters primarily to the Malay demographic.

This network broadcasts a variety of content, including news coverage, home shopping, and more. It has recently become the second-most viewed station in Malaysia, coming in right behind TV3.

Al Jazeera is a global media news organization headquartered in the Arab region.

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