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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

Where do you go for quick, initial healthcare advice? For many consumers, the internet is the first stop for learning more about illness symptoms and how to treat them. So when cold and flu season comes around, it’s no wonder that internet users look to one another for advice on relieving common symptoms like runny nose, congestion, and coughing. But which cold and flu remedy has been recommended most?

We used our social listening and analytics platform to learn more about what remedies consumers are sharing online. The following insights were drawn from English-language queries looking at relevant keyword mentions across blogs, forums, and 12 different social media networks from September 1, 2022, through August 31, 2023.

Read our healthcare industry consumer intelligence report for a data-rich analysis of current consumer trends and preferences.

The overall common cold/flu remedy conversation

During the period we analyzed, there were 45,600 mentions of cold and flu remedies, an increase of about 440% compared to the previous 12 months.

As this chart of mentions over time shows, the cold and flu remedy conversation rose slightly from mid-September through January, corresponding with the Northern Hemisphere’s cold and flu season. The conversation saw its highest spike on April 13, 2023, the day a Reddit user shared a video clip from a 1959 BBC report on home flu remedies. That post in the r/OldSchoolCool subreddit, went on to reach 17.7 million people. 

People giving home remedies for the flu, 1959.

The second-highest spike occurred on October 3, 2022, when another Reddit post titled “Just a little suggestion before flu season really takes off” reached 4.73 million people. (That post has since been deleted.)

A word cloud of the overall common cold and flu remedy conversation revealed three of the most talked about home remedies: 

We used the platform’s compare search function to measure mentions of those remedies against two other common ones, cough syrup and hot drinks.

Is a cup of hot water or tea your go-to cold and flu remedy? They are for many people! Hot drinks had the highest share of voice of the five remedies analyzed.

Some of the top hot drinks mentioned were ginger tea, black tea, green tea, hot water, and general herbal tea.

Taking medical advice from social media isn’t always advised, but in this case, the science backs up the popular recommendation. In 2008, a study from the Common Cold Center at Cardiff University confirmed that hot drinks do indeed help relieve common cold symptoms.

Our share of voice by sentiment chart reveals that garlic had the highest proportion of positive sentiment of all of the remedy conversations. 

And though garlic does have some health benefits, the scientific consensus on its use to prevent cold and flu symptoms is still mixed.  

On the flip side, the cough syrup conversation had the highest proportion of negative sentiment, which included mentions of supply shortages, questions about safety, and concerns about side effects.

In the end, there is no cure for the common cold; instead, experts recommend rest and staying hydrated to treat colds and mild cases of the flu. While the internet can be a great resource for initial research, trusted healthcare institutions and professionals — especially ones you know offline, like your primary care physician — are the best resources for healthcare advice. 

For healthcare industry marketers, the key to reaching consumers is understanding their information-seeking habits, preferences, and needs. Read our 2023 Industry Snapshot: Healthcare report for a deep dive into the sector’s biggest trends, challenges, and new opportunities. Then, learn more about how Meltwater consumer intelligence insights can boost your marketing strategies with a free demo today.

Consumers' Most Recommended Cold and Flu Remedies

Now that it’s over, we can safely say that summer 2023 was the season of blockbuster pop culture events. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, two of the biggest stars in the world, embarked on their respective world tours. Meanwhile, the highly-anticipated Barbie movie hit theaters worldwide. No matter your interests, you couldn’t go anywhere this summer without seeing or hearing talk about these three influential women (yes, even the fictional one) and their events. 

Using our social listening suite and media intelligence suite, we set out to understand which one had the biggest impact on global, digital conversations. To do so, we looked at relevant keyword, hashtag, and social media handle mentions of each event worldwide from June 1 through August 31 across blogs, broadcast media, comments, forums, news, podcasts, and 12 different social media platforms. 

But before we get to the results, let’s get on the same page. In case you somehow escaped the Barbie, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift crazes, here’s a quick rundown:

The Barbie movie — starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, directed by Greta Gerwig — premiered in theaters on July 21, making $162 million its opening weekend. Ticket sales were driven not only by the film’s star power but also by an impressive, much-talked-about marketing campaign. Relatedly, Barbie premiered the same weekend as Oppenheimer, another highly anticipated summer movie. 

Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour — supporting her hit album Renaissance — kicked off in Stockholm on May 10. Between June 1 and August 31, it traveled through major cities across Europe and the U.S., including stops in London, Toronto, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — a show highlighting all of her 10 original and three re-recorded albums — began in Glendale, AZ on March 17. Its summer tour included dates in major U.S. cities as well as four nights in Mexico City.

To discover which blockbuster captured audiences' attention the most on social media, check out our blogs on the conversation around #barbenheimer, Beyoncé and the Impact of Cowboy Carter, and The Oscars 2024: A Social Listening Analysis.

Which event generated more positive conversations?

By share of voice, the Barbie movie was the most-talked-about event worldwide, especially around its July 21 release. If you felt surrounded by Barbie chatter during that time, it’s easy to understand why by looking at how the movie’s share of voice evolved over time. 

Overall, Barbie generated more than 6 million mentions over those three months compared to Taylor Swift/Eras Tour’s 3.86 million and Beyoncé/Renaissance Tour’s 1.4 million.

Between the two biggest concert tours of the year, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour had a higher global share of voice than Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour this summer. But when you break down their shares of voice by location, a slightly different picture emerges.

The Renaissance Tour had the highest share of voice in Brazil. There, it generated a significantly higher volume of mentions than Barbie and slightly more than the Eras Tour did. 

Neither tour has visited Brazil — Eras will arrive there in November, while Renaissance is rumored to be hitting Brazil sometime in 2024 — but they are both hot topics of conversation in a country well-known for fans demanding their favorite artists tour there. Though the anti-scalping “Taylor Swift Law” was proposed in the country in June, the buzz around Beyoncé, and whether or not she will bring her tour there, won out.

Speaking of scalping, ticket sales and resales were a major topic of discussion in the global Eras Tour conversation, as shown by our platform’s Trending Themes widget.

“Tickets” was the largest trending theme, while “sale” was also significant. 

By comparison, the Renaissance tour’s biggest trending themes related to the show experience itself with keywords like “show”, “stage”, and “singer”.

Finally, Barbie’s trending themes included the opening weekend and “kids”, related to whether or not the movie appealed to children.

The Renaissance Tour may have had the lowest share of voice, but it generated the highest proportion of positive mentions. 

Meanwhile, of the three events, the Barbie movie conversation had the most mixed sentiment. Much of the negative sentiment regarded the film’s content, including conservative backlash to the movie’s feminist and LGBTQ+-inclusive themes and perspectives about gender and sexuality. Notably, the movie was banned for those reasons in Algeria, Kuwait, and Oman, and was pulled from theaters in Algeria.

There was also negative sentiment regarding feminist critiques of the movie’s portrayal of women’s lives. Finally, some of that negative sentiment was in regards to “Barbenheimer” memes that made light of the United States’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, provoking backlash in Japan.

To round up our analysis, let’s take a look at the top emojis for each event’s conversations on Twitter.

Barbie’s top emojis were, predictably, mostly pink. 

The most popular emoji, a sobbing face used to convey being overwhelmed with joy or emotion, was joined by pink hearts and the nail painting emoji, as well as two emojis not often used elsewhere, the pink bow and pink flower.

The most popular emoji for the Eras Tour was also the sobbing emoji. However, it was also joined by the Mexican flag emoji, related to her highly-anticipated Mexico City dates. 

The Renaissance Tour’s top emojis stand apart with the bee, a reference to Beyoncé’s nickname, being the most popular. Though, the sobbing emoji was also well-represented. 

Overall, the winner of summer 2023 depends on which metrics you value most. Barbie generated the most mentions, but the Eras Tour was the most-mentioned concert. Finally, the Renaissance Tour was best received. 

In the end, the biggest winners of the summer were the consumers. Each of these giant events provided opportunities for the public to participate in global pop culture conversations on a scale rarely seen in our new era of infinite choice. With the help of our social listening and analytics and media intelligence platforms, we’re able to get a clearer picture of what matters most to these overlapping audiences.

Interested in getting a better understanding of your organization’s presence and audience? Learn how Meltwater can help with a tailored product demo.

Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift

In the jumble of Twitter marketing metrics, words like Impressions and Reach can seem to overlap. These two terms appear often in social media marketing, so surely they mean something important. But what, exactly?

Here’s what you need to know about Twitter Impressions vs Twitter Reach and why these metrics matter to your social media marketing.

How to Increase Your Twitter Reach & Impressions

Improving Your Twitter Organic Reach with Meltwater

We define an impression as an appearance on a user’s screen. It’s the number of times someone put eyeballs on your content.

Impressions count the number of appearances, not the number of individual people who see your content. For example, if one person sees your content one time, that’s one impression. But if that same person sees your content five times, that’s five impressions.

Note: Impressions do not measure the number of times your Tweet may have been screenshotted and embedded in other content. It also doesn’t count if someone views a text preview of your Tweet or if they see your Tweet on a third-party platform.

Tracking Twitter impressions gives you an idea as to how often users see you on X, formerly known as Twitter. It’s a great way to measure your brand’s presence (Share of Voice and brand awareness). The more impressions you have, the more people are seeing your content.

Impressions can also offer clues into your content’s effectiveness. For example, if you have a high number of impressions but no clicks, it could mean that you’re not reaching the right people on X, formerly known as Twitter. Or your content might not be compelling enough.

If you have a low number of impressions, you might want to rethink your Twitter hashtags, increase your ad spend, or get new followers.

Tip: Take a look at our guides on how to create a Twitter marketing strategy and on how to do Twitter management for beginners to help your brand become more relevant on X, formerly known as Twitter.

It’s important to track more than impressions. 

Your Twitter analytics dashboard does this for you, but you need to pay attention to other social media metrics and social analytics, as well, to make sense of your impressions. Combining impressions with other metrics, such as click-throughs, can help you gauge whether your content is working.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Reach refers to the number of unique individuals who have seen your Tweet. In other words, Reach indicates how far your Tweet has traveled.

You might only have 100 followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, but if your Tweet has been Retweeted by an account with 1,000 followers, you’ve significantly improved your Reach.

Similar to impressions, Reach does not measure how many people may have seen your Tweet screenshotted or embedded in other content. It also doesn’t take into account whether your Tweet is shown as a text preview or on other social channels, such as LinkedIn. What’s more, it doesn’t measure how many people engaged with your Tweet.

The combination of Twitter reach and impressions gives you insight into whether your content is being seen. 

You spend time and effort creating the perfect Tweet — maybe you're even creating and posting videos to Twitter. Naturally, you want people to see it! Twitter reach gives you an idea of how many people will potentially see your content so you can make informed decisions on how to promote it.

Your Twitter reach can also help you figure out if something is wrong with your ad. Similar to impressions, if you have a high reach but zero click-throughs or conversions, you might want to take a second look at your ad creative.

Combined with impressions, you can see how many times people are viewing your ad before you start seeing conversions. 

Studies tell us it takes an average of seven impressions before a person will recall a brand or make a purchase. If your reach and impressions are nearly the same, it makes sense that you wouldn’t see many conversions. This indicates that most of your audience has only seen your ad one time.

On the other hand, if you have 500 impressions and have reached 100 people, each person has seen your content an average of five times. This increases the likelihood of generating clicks and conversions. You can compare data on reach and impressions to see how many times you should plan to show future ads before getting results from your campaign.

Lastly, Twitter reach can indicate whether you have a quality audience on X, formerly known as Twitter. Having a lot of followers but low impressions and reach could mean that many of your followers aren’t active. If this is the case, you may want to focus on increasing your followers so your Tweets will get more exposure.

Your Twitter analytics dashboard automatically measures impressions for you. To access your impressions, you can log into your X / Twitter account, click the graph icon on each Tweet, and view the data for that Tweet.

You can also see your impressions via the Twitter analytics dashboard for a bird’s eye view of all of your Tweets. Track performance over time to determine benchmarks for your campaigns.

Important Update: As of late 2023, X now requires a Premium Subscription to access analytics 

Fun fact: Reach isn’t an official Twitter metric. You won’t find it in your Twitter analytics. So, do you really need to measure it?

There’s plenty of value in measuring Twitter reach, and you can do so pretty easily without the help of Twitter analytics.

One way to do this is to divide the number of impressions by the number of followers, then multiply by 100. For example, if you have 5,000 followers and have earned 500 impressions of your post, then your reach percentage is 10%.

500 impressions / 5,000 followers = 0.1 x 100 = 10%

This is just an estimation because one person could have seen your content more than once.

Now let’s say that someone Retweeted your post to their audience of 500 followers. You can add the number of your own followers and their followers to get a potential reach of 5,500 people. Your analytics will continue tracking impressions for you so you can plug in those numbers into the calculation above.

One other way to measure reach is to review your hashtag analytics. Hashtags are shareable. If you attach the right hashtag to your content, it has the potential to reach lots of people beyond your own follower count.

X (Twitter) monitoring is important for brands. There are different Twitter monitoring tools available on the market. Tracking hashtags using a social media monitoring tool like Meltwater's before you launch a Twitter campaign is important. Because you're limited on space in each Tweet, you want to choose the best hashtag or hashtags to accompany each post. If you want to increase reach, you can choose the hashtag that has the greatest potential to travel.

Your Twitter impressions and reach are no substitutes for engagement. Just because someone sees your content doesn’t mean they will care about it. But at the same time, you also need people to see it before they can decide whether to engage. That’s why many marketers want their impressions and reach to be as high as possible.

The more eyes your content attracts, the more opportunities you have of being Retweeted, getting clicks, and reaching your goals. There are a few ways to increase your Twitter impressions and reach:

Engage with accounts with large audiences

Increasing your X / Twitter organic reach can help you get your content in front of more people without having to pay for Twitter ads. One way to do this is to engage with celebrities, influencers, and other accounts that already have large followings.

You can follow them, comment on their posts, and Retweet their content in hopes they’ll return the favor. Or you can proactively form partnerships with influencers and collaborate on content that will benefit both of you.

One place to start is with your own account. See if you have any followers who are super engaged with your brand. These are the people who will be most open to sharing your content with their own audience. You can find these fans via your Twitter analytics or with third-party tools like Meltwater's social listening platform and Meltwater's social influencer database.

Once you find influencers or engaged followers, ask them what type of content they’d like to see from you. They will be more likely to share posts that genuinely interest them.

Need input regarding how to best engage with your Twitter audience? Our Twitter management guide will help.

Another way to get more eyes on your content is to keep producing content. Give people something to engage with.

— or all of the above. The more variety, the better you can learn what your audience likes and responds to.

The more content you produce, the more opportunities others have to get to know your brand. Content can help you build trust and foster good relationships, both of which can help your content travel farther.

Because X, formerly known as Twitter, is a place where you can be “old news” in a matter of hours, consistency is key.

The less often you post, the more likely people are to forget about you. Experiment with posting times and frequencies to find your sweet spot, then stick to a regular posting schedule. Social publishing software can help you skip the trial and error by calculating when your audience is most active and what they’re most likely to engage with.

Tip: Learn more about the best times to post on Twitter to understand when and how often you should tweet.

Our Twitter stats blog states that Tweets with images and videos tend to get more engagement than plain text Tweets. For example, if you are including a blog post link in your Tweet, chances are a visual will be automatically generated. This may or may not be the most compelling picture, so take matters into your own hands by choosing media to accompany your content.

For Twitter images, stick with a 2:1 ratio. Most X / Twitter usage happens via mobile devices, so your images should be optimized for a vertical screen.

Here you find more information on all Twitter image sizes and Twitter video sizes.

Also, make sure your images align with your brand's corporate identity. The brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. If your images are well branded or at least make sense for your brand, your audience will better make the connections between you and your content.

Ready to maximize your Twitter marketing strategy? Meltwater makes it easy to create, schedule, and analyze your Tweets from a single dashboard. AI-driven social listening and consumer intelligence shows you what content your target audience is engaging with, the times they’re most active, and what they’re talking about online so you can meet them where they are.

Meltwater supports your Twitter analytics tools by providing context behind the numbers. Whether you want to increase your follower count, launch your first Twitter campaign, or improve your engagement rate, Meltwater helps you do it with data.

Schedule a demo and see how Meltwater makes you a better Tweeter!

X: What Are Twitter Impressions & Reach?

Around the world, spring and summer are when humankind gets reacquainted with the outdoors. For many of us, that also means sharing space with legions of newly-hatched bugs in all of their fluttering, jumping, and biting glory. Over the past several years, the arrival of warm weather in parts of the United States has also come with the re-emergence of spotted lanternflies — which are an invasive species to North America, South Korea, and Japan — and online chatter about them. 

First spotted (pun intended) in the United States in Pennsylvania in 2014, the pretty but destructive flying bugs have now infested more than a dozen states. Their spread sparks an annual wave of conversation, both online and off, about what these bugs are and why everyday people should join the effort to eradicate them. We used our Meltwater social listening and analytics platform to take a look at spotted lanternfly conversations from April 15 through July 15, 2023. The insights we uncovered show just how much these little creatures are sparking interest in insects and awareness of invasive species.

Top Locations for Lanternfly Keyword Mentions

Naturally, most U.S. spotted lanternfly keyword mentions are coming from New York and Pennsylvania, the states hit hardest, and earliest, by the infestation. New Jersey rounds out the top three followed, interestingly, by Texas, where the species was first found in the fall of 2022.

When we look at top locations by city, New York City and Pittsburgh are the top places for spotted lanternfly mentions. Meanwhile, outside of the United States, Canada has the second-highest volume of spotted lanternfly keyword mentions. Though, at about 450 mentions, those from Canada make up a very small proportion of the overall spotted lanternfly conversation. 

Reddit is one of the top sites for engagement with content about spotted lanternflies. 

Over on Reddit, the most engaged post features a video showing one user’s homemade, non-toxic lanternfly trap. So far, the post has garnered 4,400 upvotes and 150 comments full of people praising the effective DIY contraption. 

Let’s take a moment to take a closer look at Reddit, which is the top social media platform for users asking for more information about mysterious bugs that turn out to be spotted lanternflies. Over the past three months, there has been an average of three mentions each day on Reddit of lanternflies with the phrases "What is this", "What's this", or "know what this is".

Black/white/red all over found in queens New York. What is this beauty?

The post that drew the most engagement is called “Black/white/red all over found in queens New York. What is this beauty?” It generated 1,900 upvotes and more than 500 comments, with the highest-rated response being: “Spotted lanternfly. Invasive. Kill them all.” Unsurprisingly, the top Reddit page in the “What is this” lanternfly conversation is r/whatisthisbug. For lanternfly mentions overall, r/pittsburgh comes out on top.

The content that had the highest Social Echo (meaning it was posted, shared, and interacted with most on social media) was a link from the positive news outlet Upworthy. Its article about Bobbi Wilson winning the Sustainability Award from the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions racked up a Social Echo of nearly 10,000 engagements on Facebook. Wilson originally drew media attention in the fall of 2022 after a neighbor called the police on the Black 9-year-old for spraying DIY, non-toxic insecticide on lanternflies in her neighborhood in an instance of racial profiling.

On Twitter, the top authors of this summer’s lanternfly conversations are all news outlets that have reported on the spread and methods to combat it. The New York Times’ Tweet promoting its article about lanternflies was viewed more than 213,000 times.

Twitter users who want to get in on the conversation should use #spottedlanternfly, the most-used related hashtag on the platform. Though the most retweeted lanternfly Tweet, featuring a custom illustration about killing lanternflies, didn’t include any hashtags at all. 

Once people learn about lanternflies and the harm they cause as an invasive species, the natural next question is, “Well, how do we kill them?” There are generally three options: stomping (also known as squishing, squashing, or stepping on) them, spraying them with insecticide, or capturing and killing them with sticky traps. But which option is most popular? 

Our analysis comparing mentions of lanternfly keywords along with those related to each action revealed that stomping is overwhelmingly the most talked about way of killing lanternflies.

This summer’s spotted lanternfly conversations point to an audience of internet users who are interested in learning more about bugs and earth-friendly ways to fight invasive species. Luckily, there is an entire community of bug enthusiasts across social media who are sharing their love of entomology with others. (Here’s a warning for the squeamish: The following pages feature images and videos of creepy crawlers.) They include:

@wannabe_entomologist on Instagram (Influencer score: 78)

@BartCoppens on YouTube (Influencer score: 78)

@sagaOptics on Twitter (Influencer score: 80)

Despite the efforts of amateur bug stompers and governmental agencies, the spotted lanternfly is still spreading across the United States, as well as South Korea and Japan, with many other countries at high risk of infestation. As this problem grows, we’ll likely see conversations about it growing across even more locations. So, next summer, prepare for even more #spottedlanternfly sightings online and, more critically, in your neighborhood.

Would you like to be able to conduct analyses like these for your business? Simply fill out the form below and get a free consultation.

The Online Buzz about Lanternflies

In a fast-paced eCommerce business, finding time for professional development and store improvement isn’t always easy. But listening to Shopify podcasts offers a simple way to learn a little every day. You can tune in any time it’s convenient and expand your knowledge on how to run a better Shopify store.

Whether you prefer Spotify podcasts or Apple podcasts (or another channel), we’ve got you covered.

Here are our top picks for the best Shopify podcasts that can help you sell more and build your eCommerce business:

Tip: We also have a list of the best eCommerce podcasts in general that could be helpful to you.

Shopify Masters is the official Shopify podcast.

Each episode features a Shopify eCommerce store owner who shares how they’re building and growing their online businesses. Learn how they turned an idea into sales, how they’re marketing themselves in the digital space, and how they’re competing against giants like Amazon and Walmart.

With nearly 500 episodes to date, there’s plenty of food for thought and action items to apply immediately.

Shopify is the biggest name when it comes to eCommerce platforms that aren’t part of bigger marketplaces like Amazon. To make a splash here, sellers need to know the winning secrets behind what makes the platform tick. That’s what the Winning With Shopify podcast aims to reveal.

Each episode features successful store owners and their stories to help inspire your journey. New episodes are released every Friday, covering everything from Google advertising to customer acquisition.

Listen to the Winning With Shopify podcast on

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Social Listening

Consumers' Most Recommended Cold and Flu Remedies

Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift

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5 of the Most-Shared Pro-LGBTQ+ Articles of 2023 So Far

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