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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

Media monitoring helps organizations stay informed about what’s being said across online news, print, broadcast, podcasts, and other media channels. Whether you're tracking brand mentions, measuring PR performance, monitoring competitors, or identifying emerging trends, our expert guides, best practices, and industry insights will help you build a smarter media monitoring strategy and make more informed communications decisions.

Discover expert media monitoring guides, best practices, and industry insights to track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and stay ahead of the news.

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

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

Every minute of every day, millions of pieces of content are uploaded online. In fact, YouTube reports that a staggering 500 hours of video is uploaded onto their platform every 60 seconds, which is only the tip of the social and editorial iceberg. This information overload can make it time-consuming and challenging to sift through content and find what is relevant to your brand. 

Of course, this bombardment of news, entertainment and information means brands are competing heavily for attention, and it can feel nearly impossible to stand out among the crowd. Over and above this, brands don’t typically have the time or resources to actively engage on social, and tend to use these platforms for shouting rather than listening. This is where an important opportunity exists to start gaining the competitive edge.  

Of course, each region varies in terms of activity and behaviour. And, consumer engagement with brands is heavily influenced by culture, capacity, access, legislation and relevance. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Dubai is a particularly exciting environment to explore when it comes to understanding social listening in the context of brand promotion, given the widespread adoption of social technology, in a landscape of censorship and regulation. 

“Given the high internet penetration in the market, it doesn't come as a surprise that social media plays a stellar role in reaching the end-user, be it through targeted social media ads or through geo and demographically targeted programmatic ads. Over the years, social media channels in the UAE have become niche to specific audiences, like Snapchat for teens, Facebook and IG towards earning population for entertainment-focused audience”, says Saleem Sharma, Head of Social Media for Zoom Property in Dubai.

And, when it comes to our current UAE media landscape and the kinds of challenges marketers face every day, Sharma summarises it well: “Targeted brand-specific content aimed at different sections of the population according to various niches (nationality, gender, age, area of living, etc.) remains the biggest challenge”. 

So, with this in mind, how do we expand our consumer research, break through the noise and ultimately identify new opportunities for brand growth and lead conversion? The short answer: Through social listening.

Did you know? Meltwater's interface is now available in Arabic!

Social Listening: The smart marketer’s way to break the mould

Social media listening tools allow companies to track, manage and analyse billions of ever-changing data points, to learn from and, ultimately, form better strategic decision-making processes. Let’s tuck into the basics of social media listening and how you can use it to benefit your business and brand.

What is Social Media Listening and how does it benefit you?

Social media listening generally refers to a deep analysis of your brand on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. With Meltwater's social listening tool, there are over 15 primary social platforms to track, over and above podcasts, broadcasts, and even print media (but that is a post for another day). 

The point of “listening” is to make sure you never miss a mention, you’re able to see where people are speaking about your brand online and you can join the conversation. But there is a range of ways to creatively and logically use this practice to entirely elevate your marketing efforts.

With AI-driven social media listening tools, businesses can:

Track, manage, and analyse evolving data that impact strategic decision making

Collate the summarised data needed to draw relevant insights

Analyse trends and take part in relevant hashtags and movements

Benchmark performance in relation to their competitors

Identify opportunities to start conversations

Gain a high-level and detailed understanding of how people perceive your brand online

With the incorporation of AI and machine learning into social media monitoring tools, data is automated and analysis is presented in a user-friendly way in real-time; making it simpler to draw insights from massive amounts of data.

Why social listening is particularly relevant in the United Arab Emirates

With social media platforms constantly increasing in usage, there is an ever-growing trail of digital breadcrumbs, which companies can use to best analyse their audience and understand their needs. With their own, specific audience, content and purpose, companies can tweak and hone marketing strategies that fulfil consumer needs and showcase their brand.

But beyond that, we know that our market is heavily influenced by, well, influencers and this is one of the key functions of a social media listening tool. You can identify and partner with loyal brand followers or influential figures.

“Influencer marketing is a critical weapon in a marketer's arsenal, especially in the UAE. You have a limited audience to target, and you want to do it in the best manner possible. Influencers bring with themselves content which has a watermark of their own personality and which has a loyal dedicated following. With the advent of tools which can help you engage with influencers, it has become quintessential for social media marketers to explore these avenues even more” says Sharma.

Through social listening, you can search for top posts about specific topics, which will lead you to the influential figures taking part.

Above: Influencer Zahra Abdallah (@cookingwithZahra) has over 187,000 followers on Instagram. 

Although the word “Insight” has an ambiguous meaning, marketing and communications professionals understand it to mean consumer-focused interpretations of data. The range of benefits that can be extracted from interpreting data to gain meaningful insights is almost immeasurable, but seeing as we’re in the business of measurement: 

Extract the most relevant data from millions of touchpoints, from any location

Avoid response bias as online conversations welcome a multitude of opinions that are not necessarily brand or product specific, so you’re minimising the subjectivity from your research

Data is automated so monitoring and analysis is quickly processed, in real-time 

You’re spending resources wisely with a social listening tool that far outperforms the process of manually collating data

Social media monitoring tools combined with market studies workwell in unison, with marketing studies providing quantitative data on emerging trends from social insights, and social media listening tools providing more qualitative analyses of target audience sentiment. Essentially, this means a well-rounded research and implementation strategy that factors in everything your numbers’ people and high-level strategists need. 

What Types of Data Can Be Measured on Social Media Networks?

Quantitative data offers numbers to prove general research, while qualitative data provides the details and depth to understand their implications. To fully comprehend the data and offer the most useful road maps, both of these complementary components play a role.

1. Quantitative Data tells us what is going on

Mentions: the amount of times specific products, brands, hashtags or expressions are used on social media

The scope of the mentions: this is calculated according to the audience of people and others they have shared content with and the number of Internet users potentially exposed to a message

The number of engagements: the number of interactions between users and content

Quantitative data can be divided into two categories:

Descriptive data, which gives you key figures, such as the number of new subscribers, engagements, trends, impressions or clicks.


Actionable data deepens the analysis by contextualising this information and by deepening the analysis. It answers questions such as when is the best time to post? What content is popular? and where are new subscribers coming from?

2. Qualitative Data helps us understand why this is happening

Qualitative data is gathered by listening to online consumer exchanges and conversations, which helps companies better understand the numbers. 

In a marketing context, the most useful types of qualitative data are arguably sentiment and trend analysis.

Sentiment analysis: Here, we’re referring to the development of semantic analysis and perception. How do consumers feel about your brand? What do they think about it? It might seem strange to think we can measure these abstract things but the data has shown us that you can draw a neutral positive or negative sentiment from the types of words and phrases that people use in conjunction with each other, blurring the lines between the abstract and the facts.  Technology allows us to open a door to this world of understanding when it comes to analysing our place in the market. 

Trend analysis: Is ideal for companies that want to tap into relevance. Automated analysis has the ability to extract conversation tendencies and exchanges to find correlations between the two but beyond that, you can view trending topics in relation to your mentions, top posts associated with important social or cultural movements and even predict upcoming trends by analysing the data and finding inclinations.

Recovering data on social media: Become an expert in consumer behaviour

On networks: Most social media networks have their own statistics and analysis tool, which users can access through their business profile. This data is a good way to gauge the performance of your profile and posts for a high-level overview but of course, more in-depth analysis will give you the competitive edge and new use cases you didn’t even know existed, with basic listening. 

With engagement management tools: These tools provide an automated, more advanced analysis for a deeper understanding of the data, which can be implemented - usually from one platform - and posts can be scheduled for targeted audiences. The data can also be used to measure the impact of media strategies and as a benchmark against competitors.

With listening tools: These give insight into your current community but also competitors and wider industry audiences. They allow you comprehensive functionality to actively seek out content that’s relevant to your brand and to understand how, why, when and where it is consumed and the effects of this consumption.

Tip: Take a look at UAE social media statistics.

“The brands which are breaking new grounds on social media aren't doing it just by promoting their products or services in a unique manner, but by listening to what's happening in the online space as well in the real world and creating content which resonates sentiments around these occurrences. When customers realize this, they want to engage, they want to discuss among themselves a lasting impact that such a content has. THIS is what brands should aim for” says Sharma.

So, with this in mind - how do we effectively put social media into practice and what are the various ways in which brands can get ahead in the UAE through listening?

e-Reputation: Keep track of all mentions of your brand and products so that you know how your company is being perceived and the topics it’s commonly associated with.

Crisis Watch and prevention: When sentiment and any potentially negative keywords are monitored, crises can be anticipated and limited from going full scale, allowing companies to react as quickly as possible if something comes up.

Crisis damage: The scale of crisis damage and the impact of recovery by a business can be ascertained by monitoring brand sentiment in the months before and after a crisis.

Competitive intelligence: Communication, news and competitor reputation can be easily analysed, enabling you to stay current, predict trends and industry innovations and ahead of your competitors.

Trend reporting: Key topics that drive conversations in your market can be identified when you understand the relevant topics your target audience is deeply engaged with. In the UAE these are often social topics but consumers can also feel a level of fatigue around repetitive conversations. 

Lead Generation: By monitoring different aspects of your product or business, chances are you will discover alternate opportunities with previously untapped consumers and their communities. By engaging with potential, you’re opening up that sales funnel. 

“There's no other way [social media tools] to ensure return on ad investment, quality of users for our apps, customer health and journey and content effectiveness. I shudder to think of a marketing world that simply functioned on big billboards and estimated eyeballs” says Brett Magill, Global Social Media Manager. 

How to Start Your UAE-specific Social Listening Project

Ready to get your social listening campaign off the ground? Follow our step-by-step process.

Define your goals: What do you want to achieve – do you want to understand your consumer better? Tap into new areas of your industry? Stay ahead of the competition? How vast is your understanding of the different consumers in various UAE regions?

Determine which channels to monitor: Are your goals achievable on the social media channels where your audiences are active? A good media monitoring tool will let you know which channels are most popular with specific audiences. If, for example, your goal is to drive people to your website, a good question to ask is “Which social media platform will help us best achieve this?

Choose the right tools: Manually researching and trying to stay on top of current alerts and trends is not an efficient way to hear your consumers. Meltwater’s social listening tool gives you the capability to automate these processes and create highly specific searches in real-time. Also, we know that influence is key here, so you can opt-in to use complimentary software, such as an influencer database, to support your efforts. 

Consider the search mode: It is imperative that you filter searches and keep them very specific. For example, Boolean searches will help you narrow down what is relevant and get to the results faster. 

Set up alerts: Never miss a brand or phrase or mention by setting up alerts on your phone. You also have the option of choosing when you want to be alerted by selecting specific brand, competitor or industry terms or as soon as a crisis or major trend emerges in relation to your searches.

Analyse and compare your data: In a few simple steps, you can create and view a dashboard with your chosen metrics. Dashboards are custom-made to suit you specifically and include the statistics and insights you select in order to make sense of the conversation. The dashboard can analyse a range of metrics, making it invaluable to various departments within your company - not just marketing, PR and comms.

Share your results: It makes sense to share the information, insights and results with colleagues, inter-organisational departments or clients and to use the data to your advantage. Plus, this allows you to get buy-in from higher ups for more investment in your department. 

Create an action plan: When all is said and done, you need to be able to use the information you have gained from social media listening exercises. The most effective way to do this is by creating an action plan, which is easily achieved with the right tools. In this fast-paced digital world, where accurate decision-making is crucial, these tools will enable you to put a plan in place, by deadline.

Elevate your campaigns and enjoy competitive reach and engagement: “Social engagement is paramount, and building our infrastructure and customer service support before the campaign or brand activation is essential to maintain a strong and positive brand identity” [Magill].

At the end of the day, you can’t put a price on going above and beyond to support your social strategy in Dubai or the broader United Arab Emirates. The resources are here, the demand for quality content is here. The opportunity to observe and learn not only exists but is created by the pressing need to analyse our intricate market. A world of exciting opportunities undeniably exists for brands willing to go the extra mile. 

Social Listening in Dubai and the UAE: A Wealth of Opportunity for Marketing, PR & Comms

Quarantined. Stuck. Isolated. It’s very likely that you are at home reading this right now – perhaps working from home or adapting to new ways of living. Your only outlet to communicate and be a part of society? Social media, Zoom, Slack… the list goes on. The audience of thousands of small businesses and large brands are all in one place — online.

It may seem strange that in times of a crisis, brands genuinely think that the consumers want to hear from them, that consumers are actively interested to know what the CEO wanted to say. Perhaps there may be nothing wrong with informing your customers on what comes next in these times, but the PR template you should be using needs to be personalised instead of something generic with the same tone, same rhetoric and basic action plan.

It is times like this where the point of view for consumers has shifted. They are now looking at the world with a far more sensitive lens, and the world is moving from a want-and-needs mentality to only needs. What does your consumer need for themselves or their family so they can be OK? Not “should I buy a new mattress, it’s an excellent price.” If only brands could act like everything is business as usual. If only campaign launches your agencies and staff had been working on for months could go on. But, this is not the case.

At a time when the world is living day to day, trying to stay up-to-date on an ever-evolving situation while also trying to remain hopeful, this is also the time that you could choose to talk, or you could choose to listen. You need to listen.

Reading Tip: Does Working From Home Work for PR and Marketing Agencies?

Brands and businesses have the opportunity to use this time to gain better audience insights and see what their consumer genuinely needs. How are they feeling? What are their pain points now? Are they using your brand or service in a new way due to their current situation?

You need to start social listening. This is why your brand needs media monitoring. You need to see what people are saying about you on your social channels. What is the overall sentiment (positive, neutral, negative)? What do they love or hate about you? What do they wish was different? This is an opportunity to gain priceless information about the people you want to love and engage with you in their customer journey. It’s audience research.

Brands should be adjusting their content strategy, making sure that any messaging is empathetic, and acknowledges what things are like right now. If you are unsure of what steps to take regarding your marketing, here is a marketing primer for the Coronavirus crisis.

In addition to adapting, you also need to see how you can best take care of your audience and determine their needs at this time. No doubt that their needs have shifted. Their financial situation has changed. Their access to transportation has changed. You need to learn what their day-to-day is like now. So listen.

To get started with social listening, you need to ask yourself specific questions:

What does my brand offer? (product, service, industry)

What social media channels do I have? (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.)

What hashtags and keywords are associated with or could be related to my brand?

What budget do you have available to use for this? (This will help you determine the best tools for your needs)

Who is in charge of doing this work? Do you have an escalation process in place should you find something highly defamatory?

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to determine the next steps and choose a tool that is right for you. Meltwater offers a range media monitoring and social listening tools that provides solutions for every department. Get in touch with the Meltwater Team to request a free demo today.

Using Social Listening to Regain Attention and Revenue

With consumers’ needs now shifting, find opportunities to showcase empathy and understanding. Now is not the time to sell. Now is the time to listen and embrace your audience.

Is there a way your brand can help? Is there a way you can shift your products and services to an online option? With many people self-isolating at home, consumers are relying on the internet more than ever to be their connection to the outside world. It is now how they communicate, shop, work, and more. They live online now.

Restaurants: If you are forced to close, can you donate the food in your kitchens to food pantries, schools, or other groups that are in need? If you are still open, can you offer delivery options with minimal human contact?

Tech: Zoom is setting the perfect example of how technology can make this easier. How can your program help during this time, and is it possible to offer it for free or at a discounted rate during this time?

Google has made it possible to visit museums and National Parks through virtual tour options.

Retail: Can you offer products online? Set hours just for elderly customers, so there’s a safe time for them to come when others aren’t there?

At this time, you don’t want businesses to simply stop everything. It isn’t about businesses stopping; it’s about them adapting. In this situation, it is both businesses and consumers that are forming new habits. Companies that never offered remote opportunities before will discover that there are ways their staff can work from home and provide the same value. Movie studios will find that streaming and online opportunities may be the best way to maintain profits instead of adhering to an antiquated theater first mentality.

We are all adapting as we take it day by day. When this is over, and we get to venture back into the world, it will be changed. Businesses need to use this time to prepare, learn, adapt, and work to do what it takes to be ready for a post-COVID-19 world.

NOTE: This article was originally written by Christina Garnett. To view the original post, click here

Why Now Is the Time to Practice Social Listening

The ‘social age’ has allowed us to tap into the valuable opinions of the general public, meaning that marketing professionals no longer have to rely on customer surveys to learn from their target market.

The ability to analyse data from social channels and tap into exactly what people say and think has undeniably changed the marketing and branding process – after all, a staggering 6,000 tweets are produced every second – that’s a lot of data. However, this is not being tapped into by all organisations. Most companies are monitoring their social mentions, either through the channel or by using a platform, but brands of all sizes can benefit from social listening: analysing relevant social data from your audience, your target market, or your competitors to create a proactive strategy and achieve social success.

A common misconception is that social listening is for ‘big brands’, but we disagree. The focus of any marketing/branding/social/communications department is essentially the same – no matter the size or industry. All organisations want to perform well in the following 5 areas:

Whether you’re B2C, B2B, a nonprofit or a government department, what people think and feel about your organisation is important to you. So rather than hearing about an annoyed customer, an unpopular decision or poor service in a news story or formal complaint the following morning, why not be an active part of the conversation? After all, Twitter found that 60% of consumers expect a response from brands within an hour and 68% of customers will leave a company because of its poor customer service. A colossal 80% of social customer care inquiries start on Twitter, therefore it pays to be on top of all of your mentions.

But, Twitter tells me when I’ve been mentioned for free? While you do receive notifications for your tagged tweets, there are no alerts for untagged mentions of your brand, specific products or an employee. Take Yorkshire Tea as a recent example. They received huge backlash after the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, posted an image on Twitter featuring himself and a very large bag of Yorkshire brew. Many users tweeted insults at the brand, such as ‘I’m out. Tory by association.’ Yorkshire Tea’s loyal following was under threat after the untagged tweet, which the brand confirms they ‘weren’t asked or involved’ in. Alerted in the first instance by the backlash from their customers, social listening would have alerted the social team to the original untagged mention, and they would be able to contain and report on this crisis. Sentiment analysis is also useful in flagging negative tweets around the brand, both tagged and untagged, in real-time. This helps you prioritise your replies and get back to users with issues swiftly and efficiently.

Social listening also proves useful if your brand or hashtag is spelt wrong, as without it you’re missing out on relevant mentions that you should be aware of. Communications departments in the police force or the air ambulance are able to find users tweeting about accidents, and give them relevant information, while train companies can respond to questions around delays and timetabling issues.

Social listening allows you to be proactive in your media presence, rather than have a limited reactive strategy, and will help to grow your brand as “85% of customers are likely to recommend …[ you] to others after having a satisfactory interaction online”.

Everyone wants a successful social channel. No matter the industry or the customer-focus, all marketers aim for engaging content, regular interactions and growth. Social listening helps you to attentively build and curate a community around your brand, by replying to untagged mentions and using the insights and analysis to guide your strategy, analysing what worked and what didn’t. For instance, if a charity has lots of mentions from donors and fundraisers, social listening enables you to reply to users who are directly helping the cause. A personal response also makes a donation the following year much more likely.

By performing the same analysis on your competitors, you can analyse how a successful engagement rate is achieved in your industry and create informed marketing campaigns in the future. For instance, simply benchmarking a company hashtag against a competitor’s, or one campaign against another, you can work out how successful your social content is. You can use the data to tweak your strategy accordingly, improving the success of your channels and you can then easily report on the improvement of your online reputation while driving traffic to your organisation. By keeping track of this growth, you will also effectively prove the value of social. This can be especially helpful when planning next year’s budget, making sure that social has the funding it needs to continue to be successful.

Development in social analysis is the ability to better understand your audience. By analysing the Twitter data from your mentions (both tagged and untagged), you can learn more about your current and prospective customers, by finding out what they think about your brand, as well as their other likes and dislikes. By piecing together all of the common interests of your audience, you’re able to understand your market context and cost-effectively test brand assumptions. This informed approach helps you to justify future campaigns in knowing exactly who you’re talking to, and what makes them tick.

The same approach can be used to profile your target audience, or a competitor’s, to see which hashtags and content are most effective. This way you can curate your social channels to generate content which you know will appeal to your audience, driving up engagements and creating a loyal social community. This will also increase client acquisition as you gain presence within the market, and cuts out a huge amount of time and work by showing you exactly what to share.

Similarly, you can drive insights for other areas of the business using social listening. Product development can analyse tweets made about your products, and others in the market, to identify pain points and fill the gap. Or, you could benchmark the social mentions of different ice cream flavours, analyse the sentiment for vegan sausages or even just see the demand for takeaways in a specific area. Using data to reinforce your business decisions is far more powerful and makes sure that your product is relevant to the market.

Sales and business development can use the technique to find new prospects, by either searching for people asking for recommendations in your market or by searching for users who are having issues with their current product or service and reach out to them on that basis.

Research & Development can also use the listening to view how public opinion has changed over time – for instance, the increase in the use of the phrase ‘plant-based diet’ over the last year, or even gain competitor intelligence. By collaborating with other teams, you may be able to tap into their budgets too and bring social listening on as a shared tool.

You can also use this data to drive your marketing campaigns. For instance, if you were Netflix, and you knew that your customer base and target market also like ice cream and Friends, a campaign featuring Jennifer Aniston watching Netflix and eating Ben & Jerry’s is most likely to be a successful one. Similarly, if you were an insurance company you might track reports of break-ins in specific locations and target your print ads in the newspapers and bus stops of that region. You can be creative as you want to be with social listening – it is simply having access to the data and the ability to deduce insights from it.

Reporting is key to producing powerful campaigns. Not only can you look at previous work to continually improve your approach, but it can also be used to forge new relationships. To obtain new partners or sponsorship for a campaign you can report on the publicity that a previous partner received using retrospective social data, and put this forward to them in a pitch. Football clubs often use this to attract sponsors for their kits, in showing the ROI of their investment in their association with them.

Social listening also helps you to keep up to date with changes in emotion and trends in the market. For instance, Gillette’s advert ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’, came at the same time as the rising #MeToo movement, showing that the brand had listened and changed their tact from punchy macho ads to a thought-provoking statement.

Source: BBC News [caption refers to above image]

Good Influencer Partnerships (Journalist or Social)

Finally, you can use social listening to find the most influential journalists and social influencers in your sphere. With the ability to search Twitter bios as well as tweets, you can quickly and easily identify journalists who are influential in the industry and are worth approaching. This targeted approach is an easy way to build relationships with them and find new avenues to get releases out there.

Similarly, you can find social influencers including bloggers, YouTubers, forum commentators and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users who have a good following and are influential within the market. By curating relationships here, you are able to build the beginnings of a social influencer strategy. You’re also able to find influential people who already love your brand and are natural advocates for your organisation. By discovering this, you can reach out to them and offer opportunities to work together.

Monitoring is only the beginning when unlocking the potential of social analysis. The future will focus on developing this further, and crucially rather than simply hearing what users are saying on social media, organisations will start listening and applying their findings.

Why Social Listening is Important at All Levels of Business

Social listening for small businesses is especially powerful, as one good social listening tool can be used to serve multiple purposes in your organization. Social listening tools run the gamut from free to paid, but they follow the same adage as most things in this world: you get what you pay for. 

That being the case, I’ve seen a lot of discussions on LinkedIn Groups and the like wherein people debate whether or not paid social listening tools for small businesses are worth the spend. Having spent a good chunk of my career helping small businesses and nonprofits with their marketing plans, I’ll voice what may be a counterintuitive opinion here:

A lot of the confusion around social listening lies in the misapprehension that, because social listening tools monitor social media sites specifically, these are tools that should be used for social media marketing specifically – and social media marketing is still a murky discipline for a lot of us, often without well-articulated business goals that make finding the social media ROI a bit like a treasure hunt without a map.

Social listening is essentially a social search: good social media monitoring tools are harnessing Big Data to cut through the noise of gazillions of conversations happening simultaneously on social networks and giving not just the marketing teams, but all departments throughout an organisation the insights to actually establish those well-articulated business goals that any business initiative should have.

In that way, social listening tools aren’t so much a Swiss Army Knife as they are a spoon: just about everyone in the company can find a use for them. That being the case, good social listening tools can make the spend worth it by allowing multiple users to set up multiple profiles. So, if your marketing team is trying to figure out a way to get a spend through your boss for a social listening tool, the best way to do that is to make sure that your software is servicing a legitimate business need.  And so, without further ado…

5 Ways for Small Business to Get the Most out of a Social Listening Tool

Competitive analysis is an essential part of every business strategy. While a competitive analysis used to require a long, drawn-out and often expensive process with external contractors and agencies, these days, social listening can be used to benchmark yourselves against your competitors, in a variety of clever ways:

Positioning: What are your competitors saying about themselves – and is it resonating with relevant followers? Take a look at how your competition is positioning itself and its products and see if they’re getting any feedback from relevant community members that might inform your own marketing efforts. Don't just jump in and implement the insights you find, dig a little deeper and watch how conversations progress over a few months - you might find an interesting trend. If you're a small business, it's wise to look at other SMBs to ensure your budget can achieve the same things.


Product: Are your small business competitors giving any clues as to what they might be working on? How can you combat this with your own strategy? Again, don't be hasty and change company direction just because you know your competitor is working on something. Use the insights you find to explore deeper, for example, run an industry keyword search on the insight you've found to see if there's a progressive spike in engagement. Just because your competitor is doing something, doesn't mean its right. For example, you may find that conversation around a particular topic is dwindling, suggesting it's not a strategically wise move to follow suit.


Share of Voice: Which one of you is getting more engagement?  Vanity metrics like “followers” aren’t the best measurement of a social marketing strategy. Afterall, followers only bring something to the table if they engage with you. As such, instead of followers, use engagement as a success metric.


Social Listening

Social Listening in Dubai and the UAE: A Wealth of Opportunity for Marketing, PR & Comms

Why Now Is the Time to Practice Social Listening

Why Social Listening is Important at All Levels of Business

5 Ways Small Business Can Use Social Listening Tools

The Ins and Outs of PR for Product Launches

4 Ways Social Listening has Influenced HR

#MeToo – How One Tweet Inspired a Movement

Influential Futurists, Analysts, and Forecasters to Follow

How To Understand Your Consumers’ Voice With Review Tracking

Infographic: Should I Trendjack on Social Media?

Social Media Reactions: Greta Thunberg, UN Climate Action Summit 2019

Australian Media Landscape: Players, Influence, and Power

Social Listening

Social Listening in Dubai and the UAE: A Wealth of Opportunity for Marketing, PR & Comms

Why Now Is the Time to Practice Social Listening

Why Social Listening is Important at All Levels of Business

5 Ways Small Business Can Use Social Listening Tools

The Ins and Outs of PR for Product Launches

4 Ways Social Listening has Influenced HR

#MeToo – How One Tweet Inspired a Movement

Influential Futurists, Analysts, and Forecasters to Follow

How To Understand Your Consumers’ Voice With Review Tracking

Infographic: Should I Trendjack on Social Media?

Social Media Reactions: Greta Thunberg, UN Climate Action Summit 2019

Australian Media Landscape: Players, Influence, and Power

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