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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

As more millennials enter the workforce, e-commerce sites gain traction, and the share economy expands, Chinese social media networks like WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu have never been more important – especially to PR professionals, marketing executives and social media buyers working to promote brands, products and people online.

And with more than 770 million active Chinese internet users engaging in conversations, sharing stories and creating content every day – and the average Chinese adult spending 6 hours a day digesting news media – there has never been a better time to explore the power of social, big data and consumer insights.

To kickstart your thinking, here’s a list of the top four social media trends I see reshaping greater China over the next 12 months:

Tip: Learn how to find social media trends yourself.

Thanks to video and photo sharing platforms like Douyin, the desire to know more about the lives of our friends, the brands we buy from and the Key Opinion Leaders we follow has increased dramatically. However, today, keeping consumers up-to-date with what you’re doing – and therefore satisfied with your level of B2C engagement – can be a challenge. That’s why short media clips and live streaming videos on platforms like Douyin and Tudou have become so popular over the last year. These types of videos enable brands to share real-life, real-time content with consumers, who can then comment, like and share the video with their friends in real-time.

China has the largest e-commerce market in the world – and it’s only set to grow over the next few years. So as the gap between social media networks like WeChat and e-Commerce platforms like Alibaba shrinks – thanks to social media payment platforms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay – converting social media users (or consumers) to paying customers is only going to get easier in China. In fact, Alipay and WeChat Pay are now the most popular forms of online payments in China – with WeChat Pay attracting more than 600 million users every month. In addition to this, the increasing number of e-commerce shopping festivals like 11/11 are having a major impact on new brands entering the market, or existing brands looking to test new products. 

Search engines like Baidu aren’t the only platforms consumers use to find products and services anymore. Today, they also use social media platforms – and the recommendations of KOLs – to find relevant information and items they might like to purchase. So instead of visiting a website, or searching the brand name on Baidu, they will simply search for the brand’s online social media profile to read fellow consumers’ comments and recommendations. Employees and employers are also using social media to network and find out more about individuals and organisations.

Since the advent of the smartphone, Chinese consumers have become increasingly reliant on digital platforms and applications to live their lives. Today, consumers no longer rely on traditional news platforms like print, radio, TV and even news websites to find out what’s going on around them. Instead, they digest their news media via mobile applications and on social media. In fact, the average mobile internet user in China spends 12 minutes a day reading the news on an application, 30 minutes watching video content, and 2.5 hours on social media. As mobile and social become deeply ingrained in our lives, these figures are likely to increase significantly.

Are You Aware of the Social Media Trends Shaping Greater China?

In this blog we’ll be running down 1) What a boolean search is 2) How boolean can improve your media monitoring searches 3) How you can use Boolean to find potential leads

Boolean searches may look intimidating, but they’re actually super easy to use! And will make a huge difference to your search results.

Without getting overly technical, a Boolean search allows users to search more specifically. Rather than search for “Meltwater”, which would bring up information about meltwater the geographical term and meltwater the media intelligence provider, you can search using “AND”, “NOT”, “OR”. So for example “Meltwater” NOT “Iceberg”.

Boolean searches are essential to surfacing the coverage you’re looking for about your brand, your competitors, and your industry as a whole.

Create more relevant searches, meaning your reporting will be more accurate.

Search for all possible mentions of your brand including potential misspellings of words

Find articles where your brand is the focus

So, when you type a search into your media monitoring provider, you may find that you’re getting lots of irrelevant content. However, don’t worry we can change this!

If you’re not a Meltwater client, but interested in how we can help you to find relevant mentions of your brand & key insights. Get in touch today hello@meltwater.com 

First of all, type in your keyword. In this case “subway”, and glance over the results. Here, we can see that Subway the brand, and subway the train system are being shown. Write down any irrelevant terms.

As you review the results from your keyword searches, you’ll start noticing that the more information you have to go through, the more junk you come across. For example, it might not be enough to say “Find me mentions of Subway but no mentions of stations,” because there might happen to be a Subway at College Station and that article might be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s these cases that demand the precision of booleans, so you can zero in on relevant results and exclude the ones you don’t need.

These are the three most common Boolean operators

NOT = Exclude words. For example, “Subway” NOT “Station”, this will exclude any articles mentioning station.

AND= Include two words. For example, “Subway” and “Sandwich”, this will show results where both subway and sandwich have been mentioned.

OR= “Subway” OR “Sandwich”. Results mentioning either subway or sandwich.

So, now you understand the context of each Boolean operator, we can combine them to create a more relevant search result. Remember, you can use each operator multiple times. For example

Subway NOT
(“subway station” OR
“subway route” OR
“subway ride” OR
“subway stop” OR
“subway platform” OR
“subway train” OR
“subway line*” OR
“subway track” OR
“underground subway” OR
“subway construction” OR
“subway operator” OR
“Subway series”)

Notice that the exclusion list begins with NOT and comes after the main boolean search (keyword: Subway). This is where you’d use the irrelevant keywords that you listed earlier!

Don’t Forget Typos and Alternate Spellings

So now you have excluded irrelevant results, consider alternate spellings of your keyword. This is particularly important if you’re doing a social media search.

Think about where people are when they make a quick post on social media: on-the-go, standing in line, in between meetings, on the phone, etc. Most people don’t bother to correct typos and autocorrect is notorious for misreading proper nouns, especially uncommon names. For example, John Smith might be referred to as “Jon Smith” or “Jonathan Smith”

“Jon Smith” or “Jonathan Smith” or “john smith” or “johnathan smith”

Notice we have the proper, formal spelling and then the nickname or misspelling. If there are other common variations, add them with more OR operators. It’s also worth adding the persons Twitter handle to ensure you’re picking up all the coverage around a person.

Brands whose names happen to also be nouns—Subway, Square, Uber, Apple—can bring up thousands of unwanted results. Instead of researching a long list of phrases to exclude (and you can see we had so many for Subway), you can make your search case-sensitive.

Use this feature to find references to the Subway restaurant chain in the body of articles or posts.

Turn on “Only match capital letters” … [Refer to above image as caption]

…to pull up Subway as a proper noun. [Refer to above image as caption]

Often brands are mentioned in passing or to create context on a topic. For example, in our most recent industry report: luxury fashion, we discovered hundreds of thousands of articles on Burberry. However, when we dug deep, we discovered that often former models were written about, and Burberry was mentioned in context.

Brooklyn Beckham was mentioned over 1,000 times alongside Burberry. However, the articles were focused on Brooklyn and not the fashion brand and, rather, reference him as a Burberry model.

These kinds of press mentions are good for brand awareness and highlighting a brand ambassador, whereas a brand that’s mentioned as the sole focus of the article can indicate a PR crisis, threats, opportunities, competitive capabilities or whether our PR efforts are hitting the mark. Therefore, using a ‘title’ search, we can look for articles where we’re at the centre. And don’t worry you can still exclude irrelevant results.

You can use the exact headline and the title: parameter to see what media outlets picked up your press release. This is a great way to benchmark the performance of your PR.

Look up your press release title… [Refer to above image]

…and use the title: parameter to measure syndication. [Refer to above image]

Another way to discover if you’re potentially at the focus of an article, is by searching by ingress. This means your brand has been mentioned within the first paragraph of the article.

Use ingress: to find articles about a keyword most likely mentioned in the lede. A keyword is typically lower priority—and thus less likely the subject of the article—if mentioned toward the end of the piece.

ingress: “subway” NOT (“Train” or “station” or “metro”)

Another feature you can utilise to ensure you’re not missing out on your mentions, is the asterisk.

This will bring up results including Nottingham university, universities, university’s etc.

Another really great use of a boolean search, is finding possible leads. You could set up a search for PR opportunities or people who might be interested in your product. For example

(“Window cleaner” AND (“Reccomendations” or “looking for”)

This will bring up anyone who is looking for a window cleaner. You could even include an area, for example (“Window cleaner” AND “London”) AND (“recommendations” OR “looking for”)

Boolean queries can hugely improve your search results. Use this table below as a quick guide to creating searches. Remember, you can always ask your account manager on how to optimise your Meltwater account. Email hello@meltwater.com today.

Want to talk Boolean to us? Contact us via the form below and we’ll get back to you!

Media Monitoring Boolean Query Guide

The footballer’s global popularity on social media mirrors his success on the pitch as many social media users predict a Ballon d’Or.

Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah has had an exciting string of achievements in the last 2 weeks, mirrored by the buzz surrounding him on social. His social media mentions increased by 102% between the first and second half of April.

After winning the prestigious PFA Player of the year award on April 22nd and leading Liverpool to victory in the Champions League semi-final against his former club AS Roma in the same week, Salah’s social media mentions peaked dramatically.

In the GCC, Saudi social media users dominated the discussions around Mo Salah. According to research conducted by Meltwater between 16-29 April, Saudi football fans have posted over 4,700 times about Salah across platforms, compared with 2,300 posts from the UAE, and 2,000 posts split amongst the remaining 4 GCC countries.

In his home country, Egypt, Salah generated over 18,000 social media mentions. The mentions in Egypt are more than all GCC countries combined, but still fewer than mentions from the UK (25,000). The keywords of these mentions were similar globally, with “Champions League”, “Roma” and “Congratulations” trending worldwide.

According to Zubair Timol, Director of Strategy EMEA at Meltwater “Mohamed Salah has moved from the front page during the last few weeks. He has transcended sport and entered the mainstream, based on his impact on and off the field. If we continue this trajectory, Salah has every opportunity to increase his social footprint with Liverpool entering the late stages of the UEFA Champions League and Egypt competing in the FIFA World Cup during the summer.”

The data-driven insights from Meltwater reflect what football fans have been noticing: Salah really is the next big thing.

Check out the infographic below for more insights >>>

Infographic: Mo Salah Scores on Social

Media Monitoring companies in India, like Meltwater, help organizations understand the conversations taking place around their brands, their competitors and their industry. Today, media monitoring has come a long way since the basic news clipping services of the past. Meltwater’s own proprietary software for example, relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning to mine and make sense of billions of online data sources, so executives and communications teams can make more informed corporate decisions. So, what are some of the use cases for media monitoring in India? you may ask. Let’s take a look.

Showcasing a Return on Investment from Marketing and PR

Marketeers and PR professionals work tirelessly to generate earned media exposure, social media engagement and ultimately, greater business interest from prospective customers. The problem however, is that tying the outcomes of communications campaigns with a company’s bottom line objectives can often be a challenge. Advanced media monitoring tools allow companies in India, and across the world, to not only have a detailed record of the online response to a particular campaign or press release, but the ability to then start connecting the dots between the multitude of branded touchpoints and actual bottom line KPIs.

As a basic example, imagine being able to track the website traffic generated from a particular online press release. With this information, it would be possible for you to explore a potential corresponding rise in website leads over the same period of time. This in turn, would allow you to track actual sales generated from a single PR campaign and thereby report the kind of ROI that directors and C-suite care about. As marketing ROI attribution models become increasingly complex, so the need for accurate PR measurement will continue to grow.

Further to this, your marketing and PR efforts don’t occur in a vacuum. While you may think your quarterly PR strategy was a smash success, the reality is that it’s only when we benchmark our results against competitors do we get an accurate understanding of whose share of voice was dominant (and by extension, who reached the most potential customers).

The world today is not as it was twenty, or even ten years ago. The rapid development of technology alongside the mass proliferation of mobile phone devices has seen a decentralisation of news publishing power. Today, anyone with an internet connection can shape public opinion about your brand, and what’s worse is that the news they share doesn’t even have to be true for it to impact on your share price or client count.

Before we look at the management of a brand, let’s first define what a PR crisis is.

Quite simply, a real PR crisis is a negative story about your brand that has gained momentum and threatens the reputation of your business.

Crises are an inevitable consequence of being in business over the long term, what is optional however, is whether your company chooses to prepare for them or not. Businesses that don’t acknowledge the importance of reputation (and how to preserve it) all too often find themselves scrambling to undo the damage of an unforeseen brand slip-up – and in most cases this is simply a matter of too little too late. Further to this, the commercial ramifications of their lack of preparation tend to linger long past their time spent in the spotlight.

Forward thinking brands are putting in place crisis communications strategies as a proactive step toward safeguarding their most valuable intangible asset. At the cornerstone of these blueprints is almost always a comprehensive offline and online media monitoring tool, and when your reputation is at stake, it’s important you choose wisely.

Statistical analysis of ten corporate crises in South Africa found that the greater the speed and number of positive steps taken in the two weeks after a crisis, the less the company share price fell (Coldwell and Joosub, 2011). With this in mind, be sure to opt for a service or tool that allows for access to data in “real-time”, or as it happens; response time is paramount when mitigating the spread of a crisis.

By investing in online reputation management, an organization improves its ability to protect shareholder value, corporate viability and long term potential, often becoming more adaptive and agile as a result. In short, it improves its business resilience.

In the age of social media, market research is less about surveys, and more about listening to actual conversations happening across your field or industry. Media monitoring companies in India allow local brands to gain insight into the readiness of other geographic markets for their product or service. The benefit here is two-fold: 1) You don’t have to coerce people into filling out lengthy surveys, and 2) natural conversations are less likely to be biased.

In the global economy, many products and services need not be limited to the physical location or country of your premises. With the aid of a high-end media monitoring tool you can identify prospective customers in places you’d never thought to look.

Customer experience (CX) has been said to be “the next competitive battleground”. Gone are the days where price point dominated patterns in consumer decision making. Companies are now obliged to deliver a memorable end-to-end customer journey or face being ditched for those who can. A recent Oracle survey predicted a fall of up to 20% in annual revenues for brands that don’t offer a rewarding CX.

From Mumbai, Kolkata to New Delhi, companies in India that harness the power of social media listening tools can glean instant feedback on not only their brand touchpoints, but how those link together to provide an overall experience. Putting in place structures to recycle this feedback can help business become more agile in their response to changes in customer preference, ensuring that systems evolve to maximise overall user satisfaction over time.

In an increasingly connected society, media monitoring services offer companies the chance to make sense of a world drowning in data. If you’re serious about making more informed corporate decisions using external information, then contact the Meltwater India team and learn how Outside Insight can give you a competitive advantage.

Media Monitoring Companies in India: How to Put Public Data to Work

One of the most effective tactics you can implement for public relations (PR), social media and content marketing is real-time monitoring of trending topics online. Trending topics are what people are discussing online right now. For example, Twitter trends identify topics that are currently popular on the platform. What’s popular right now might not have been popular an hour ago or yesterday.

Trending topics are powerful, as they can reveal what people’s interests and intentions are – and also what is happening right now. If there is a surge in people searching online for the term ‘unemployment insurance’ for example, this could suggest that unemployment levels are rising. If you’re an expert on unemployment insurance, or if you’re in the business of providing unemployment insurance, this opens up an opportunity to share any information or advice.

At a basic level, real-time monitoring of trending topics online is a great place to start if you’re looking to brainstorm ideas for new marketing content (such as a blog post or online video) that is relevant and important to your audience.

Best-in-Class Media Outreach Is Informed by Conversation

Tech-savvy PR pros are especially interested in topics that journalists are covering. They will read articles and blog posts, listen to their podcasts, follow them on social media, and use media intelligence tools; all to help them identify the topics a journalist is interested in based on what they are writing about. If you know what interests influencers, journalists, and your intended audience, you can tailor your content to their interests.

Trending topics are effective for capturing the attention of a broader audience. Writing a blog post about a popular trending topic can give your website/blog a huge traffic boost. Every tweet, Facebook status update, comment, and blog entry can cover a whole range of topics. And if there’s a groundswell of interest in a subject online, you can easily monitor it with your media monitoring platform.

Conversely, you may be interested in a topic that you think is worth talking about, but there may not be much information online right now. Media intelligence can help you research the level of interest for that topic over time and help to decide whether you should create any content. It could turn into a trending topic if you create content that resonates with the audience you’re looking to reach.

Use Media Intelligence Outside of PR and Social

Monitoring trends isn’t only for content creation. Trending topics can help influence other marketing efforts and business decisions too. Back to my previous example about ‘unemployment insurance’ – you may decide to implement a sales and marketing campaign to connect with an audience that is interested in unemployment insurance.

Or, if you’re about to launch a new product – you could search for keywords that relate to your industry to better understand your market. You may find that certain consumers oppose certain ingredients, such as palm oil. Knowing this info can help you determine the ingredients you use in your new product.

To monitor what topics are trending (and also not trending) online can make a significant impact on our business and marketing strategy. The valuable and timely insights gained can really help us make better marketing and business decisions.

This article originally appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald, it is printed here with permission.

Social Listening

Are You Aware of the Social Media Trends Shaping Greater China?

Media Monitoring Boolean Query Guide

Infographic: Mo Salah Scores on Social

Media Monitoring Companies in India: How to Put Public Data to Work

Staying on Trend: The Importance of Monitoring Trending Topics Online

Interested in learning how Meltwater can help you? Fill out the form to learn more.