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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

Those who use Facebook for brand communications may have noticed a decrease in organic reach over the last few years. Many marketing professionals feel like they’ve been working hard to create content favoured by the Facebook algorithm, only to receive a huge kick in the face by the most recent algorithm tweak.

Encourage Engagement… but don’t engagement bait

Facebook Algorithm Change for Facebook Ads

In January 2018, Zuckerberg announced that it’ll be harder than ever for brand content to be seen by Facebook audiences. Posts by friends and family are being prioritised. With so many brands and publishers “spraying and praying” their message, it’s hardly surprising that Facebook is trying to remove irrelevant content for its users.

Similar to growth hacking on Google, many companies try to cheat the Facebook algorithm – for example, we’ve seen an increase in images disguised as video. This is because video is prioritised over images in the Facebook newsfeed. Until recently, some cheating tactics have slid through the net and worked. 

In the above image, it is clear someone is attempting to cheat the algorithm.

Why are companies going so out of their way to fight the Facebook algorithm changes, you may be thinking? Well to put things into perspective, research from Social@Ogilvy found that for Facebook business pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%. If we have only a 2% chance of reaching people who have chosen to hear from us, just imagine how low organic reach is for those who haven’t!

We must admit, this change is pretty alarming, but we’re not doomed. Creating high-quality content is still likely to reach our audience and ride the algorithm wave. Here are our top tips for creating engaging Facebook content.

Back in December 2017, Facebook announced they’d be cracking down on so-called ‘engagement bait’. This is where users attempt to exploit the Facebook algorithm by asking viewers to like and share posts. See below for the kind of posts we’re talking about!

Engagement bait posts will be de-prioritised by the newsfeed since the Facebook algorithm update. According to Facebook, their machine learning technology will review posts to detect engagement baiting. Brands that publish genuinely interesting content that receives a lot of engagement will not be affected.

The key is to understand our industry, audience and trends that occur within it. Only then can then create content that will be most appealing to our target market.

How? Find out as much to know about your target market and industry. We can use media monitoring to look at trending themes around our industry to discover hot topics. In addition, look at what kind of content is creating engagement for your competitors. Finally, survey the audience you have and find out what they’d like to hear more about.

Blending owned with paid for media, by using Facebook ads to promote our content and increase engagement, is one way to get over the Facebook algorithm issue. It’s true that we’re entering a “pay to play” realm, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk.

Fortunately, Facebook ads are pretty attractive to marketers due to their advanced targeting capabilities! Facebook ads offer users the ability to really drill down into target demographics, for example, job titles, interests, likes, age etc.

To get started with Facebook ads, first decide what your objectives are. Below is a screenshot of the objectives Facebook offer. You’ll notice there’s quite a few, Facebook has been really focusing on its “paid for” function… I wonder why? 

Next, define who you wish to target. We can use our audience or buyer personas to decide exactly what demographics and interests we want to target.  Find out more about persona mapping here.

After this, set budgets and create the advert. We can use an existing post or create a new advert. There are loads of different types of Facebook ads, so we can get creative!

To help structure your thoughts initially, we’d suggest using Google Analytics to analyse the type of content that’s bringing in the most amount of traffic to your website. You can also look at what is driving engagement on your social media channels.  

For a full guide to getting started with Facebook ads, check out Facebook’s business page. They have case studies, inspiration, and in-depth guides to each feature. If you’re interested in a high-level overview of 

We’re not saying give up with Facebook, but unless Facebook is where the majority of our brand’s audience is, it may be worth focusing our efforts elsewhere, particularly if we’re limited on time and resources. Use a social listening tool to understand conversation split by channel.

Our most recent webinar with Marie Ennis-O’Connor taught us how to find, grow and nurture our social communities.

According to AdWeek, Facebook video gets triple the engagement and 1,200% more shares compared to text and image posts. In addition to this, video is currently the highest ranked kind of content within the Facebook algorithm.

For success with video try the following things:

Ensure video can be enjoyed without rather sound – many users watch video on mute

Post the video directly to Facebook, rather than linking them to Vimeo or YouTube

Live stream Q&A’s, behind the scenes videos, events and walkthroughs of new products

This article by vidyard, ‘10 ways small businesses should be using video’ is full of inspiration to get you started! Remember, Facebook Live video doesn’t have to be shot on the highest quality camera with sound mics left, right and centre. The whole appeal of going live is that it’s raw footage, adding to the authenticity of a brand.

We can’t improve our strategy and aim for higher engagement if we don’t currently know how well (or not well…) we’re doing. Blend data found through a social media monitoring tool with data found through an engagement tool such as Meltwater Engage. Aim to report back on negative or positive movements monthly.

Likealyzer is a great resource for businesses looking to improve their organic reach on Facebook using data to support their strategy. This free online tool, offers recommendations as well as metric analysis. Give it a go by popping your brands Facebook business page URL in the box to uncover your key insights!

Here’s what Likealyzer has to say about Coca Cola’spage.

Hopefully, the above tips will provide you with some ways of continuing to reach your target audience, despite the latest Facebook algorithm change.

Staying up to date with the latest social media updates and changes to platforms must become part of our daily role. The writing was on the wall for quite some time when it comes to this update. Those who followed key industry updates would have noticed this prior and felt less of the effects because of this.

We’ll be posting key news on big social media updates on our blog to ensure our subscribers stay relevant in the changing social media landscape. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss out!

Tip: Check out 5 Ways PR Pros Can Take Advantage of the Facebook Algorithm Change

Facebook Algorithm Change – Now What for Brands?

In a crowded market, getting your audience to actively engage with your brand can become a challenge. Nowhere does that play out more than on TV. With social media, the race for engagement goes beyond the weekly Nielsen ratings. That's why some of the most creative social media campaigns are those associated with TV programs, here are five of 2017's best.

For avid TV show watchers, social media, a.k.a. the second screen, offers a binge-worthy avenue to get the most out of their favorite television series.

Social media is the perfect space for the truly passionate and casual viewers alike to connect with other fans, ask questions, speculate on plot twists, and dare I say, share spoiler alerts.

In 2017, shows like The Walking Dead, Empire, and This is Us, all topped Nielsen charts as the most talked-about TV series. But which TV show takes the crown for the most brilliant social media campaign in an effort to drive awareness?

5 Best Social Media Campaigns for TV Shows

1. Stranger Things 2 “Facebook Camera”

One of the most anticipated series of the year is finally here and the Stranger Things 2 social media campaign did not disappoint.

Netflix spared no expense in making sure fans were engaged on social media. Everything from cinemagraphs and custom content for each social network (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) to a plot tease and memorable moments, the Stranger Things 2 social campaign was something from another world.

Stranger Things on Twitter: "TRUE FANS WON'T SKIP.… "

One great takeaway from this campaign was Netflix’s willingness to experiment with new tactics. For example, the show utilized new Facebook camera effects by creating one of their own for the premiere! 

Stranger Things on Twitter: "First, it's cute. Then, it's RAWRRR! Our Stranger Things Facebook lens is live: https://t.co/4zOk0DKYKE… "

This article wouldn’t be complete without at least one mention of how Game of Thrones used social media.

HBO and digital marketing agency 360i teamed up to raise awareness for an upcoming season of GOT. And who better to roast than one of the most hated characters on the show… King Joffrey. 

The campaign was picked up by more than 144 news outlets worldwide and went down in history as the first-ever crowdsourced comedy roast on social media. When all was said and done #RoastJoffrey earned 850 million impressions, a finalist spot in the Shorty Awards, a YouTube playlist, and a place as a Giphy. This campaign is a prime example of how powerful a well-crafted hashtag idea can be.

Game of Thrones: Roast Joffrey (HBO)

3. Pretty Little Liars “The Betrayal”

Many critics argue that Pretty Little Liars was the first TV show to really capitalize on social media as a place to generate awareness.

According to Mashable, “seven years after it debuted, Pretty Little Liars is still the “most social TV show” in history, racking up more than 256 million engagements across social platforms.

#TheBetrAyal campaign was ingenious in using social media, going beyond Twitter to Facebook and Instagram, plus a smartphone app to allow users to vote on which character they thought would be guilty of the “ultimate betrayal.”

At its peak, #TheBetrAyal campaign reached 36,000 Tweets per minute and led the show to its highest season rankings ever.

4. Orange is the New Black “Behind-the-Scenes”

One of the most powerful ways to engage fans is to take them behind the scenes. No other TV show does this better than the crew of Orange is the New Black on social media.

This campaign is a perfect example of how powerful and engaging “real moments” can be on social media. These moments help to humanize the show’s characters – drawing viewers deeper with each post.

The most talked-about and social TV show ever, The Walking Dead, has an incredible 40 million+ fans across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So what is a show to do when they’ve done pretty much everything there is on social media? 

Release a brilliant campaign called, “Fear Stories” of course!

The 5 Best Social Media Campaigns for TV Shows

The best executives become synonymous with their brands, and earn the status of respected industry thought leaders. Think Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Reed Hastings, and Elon Musk. These thought leaders spread their—and their company’s—point of view in countless interviews and speaking engagements across the globe. It’s every PR pro’s dream to have a bona fide influencer in-house and spend their time deflecting press requests, instead of pitching endlessly for them.

How to Identify an Executive Thought Leadership Platform

While some executives may come into your organization with their own built-in following and a knack for courting the press, that’s more the exception than the rule. For most of us, we need to put together a PR strategy to build their thought leadership profile, and help them become an attractive source for the media. While we don’t have enough room here to do a deep dive into the topic, there are a few key activities you’ll want to focus on.

As the first step, you need to evaluate the topics your executive is most interested in and experienced with talking about, and how they fight in with your current PR strategy. While it can be tempting to take all the opportunities you can get, contributed content and media coverage doesn’t link back to your organization’s purpose and business goals is fluff.

Once you’ve identified the target topics, flesh out talking points with messaging that relates to your value proposition without being self-promotional. Go over the messaging points with the executive, then schedule a 1:1 media training session for them where they’ll get grilled on those talking points. With the feedback from that session in mind, work with them to refine their delivery of the messages until they become comfortable with the subject matter, and no longer feel scripted.

After you’ve determined the right topical fit for them, you’re ready to dive into the following influence-building tactics:

Build out their social presence. Coach them on being present on social as a way to build their profile. Let them use a social media management tool to boost their success. Don’t take on too many social media platforms though—identify the ones that are most important for your industry and your customers and focus there. Help them identify your industry’s top influencers and analysts and follow them and start engaging over time.

Sign them up for (some) notifications. When they finally get a comment from a journalist they’ve been building a relationship with, you don’t want them to miss it. Setup mention alerts to keep them in the loop without overwhelming them.

Get them blogging. This can mean sharing their thoughts on your company blog, blogging on LinkedIn, or managing a Medium account. Consider a mix of content that’s exclusive to the channel and repurposing contributed content for a new audience.

Apply for speaking engagements. Look at local industry conferences first, and customer events put on by your key partners. Start building out presentations on your key topics, and pitch to larger conferences as the executive gains experience and comfort with presenting them.

These small steps will help your executives start building their public profile as a subject matter expert.

Some Executives Aren’t Ready for Primetime

Despite the communications team’s best efforts, not all executives are cut out to be thought leaders. Despite the careful crafting of talking points and hands-on media training, things like this happen:

One executive asked the marketing team to drive his thought leadership platform, but wouldn’t take meetings with them to work on content concepts. When he was given contributed articles for his byline, he refused to approve them, saying they lacked an “ah-ha!” moment. That’s right—he expected his team to manufacture ah-ha moments and substantial thought leadership pieces without his participation. Unfortunately for him, there need to be thoughts from the thought leader, otherwise it’s only marketing content.

An executive loved wooing the foreign press, despite the company’s revenues coming primarily from the United States. He was surprised when a Silicon Valley-based reporter asked him about one of those interviews, where he’d continually referred to his team as “the beautiful people” and had remarked that everyone the company hired was young and attractive. Some executives struggle with the understanding there’s no “off the record” with journalists, and that sexist or discriminatory comments aren’t going to be able to be swept under the rug.

Luckily, these sorts of examples are outliers. Most of your executives aren’t going to have significant liabilities—like being a serial sexual harasser or an alcoholic—you have to work around. At most, you’ll just have to temper their enthusiasm and expectations. Building a profile as an industry thought leader takes time. But with the proper planning and support, you can get your executive team on the road to being your biggest PR assets.

How to Make Your Top Executives Your Biggest PR Assets

How to show the connection between PR and website traffic?

ROI achieved through the communications department was traditionally difficult to measure, and because of this, many companies found showcasing true business benefit and ROI from Public Relations to be tough. Fortunately, since the introduction of PR tools such as media intelligence, the communications team are much better placed to measure the right metrics and prove our worth. Showing the connection between PR and website traffic can be a good way to do this.

From media reach to top publication placement, there are a number of ways to measure PR ROI and the metrics we use will vary depending on our campaigns overall objectives. A concrete metric or KPI that we strongly advise measuring, that many PR professions are not, is how PR is measuring and tracking the needle in terms of driving user traffic to our website.

Business leaders often forget that increased media visibility has a direct effect on the number of users and website visitors, and so it’s good to challenge their way of thinking! The more user traffic we drive to our website, the greater awareness created. High traffic volume can also improve our organic reach through SEO. All of which help us act more competitively!

Measuring Public Relations & Website traffic correlation

Meltwater understood the need for pros to track and measure their Public Relation's impact on site traffic, and to prove their PR ROI. So we recently rolled out a new Google Analytics feature within our media intelligence tool that can easily detect the connection between the two data sets. This new feature has greatly helped professionals speak in the language of their c-suite – numbers. Quantifying your PR efforts can improve boardroom buy-in and our communications budget is also less likely to be cut as a result.

The Google Analytics widget displays the sessions and referred sessions to a selected website against the media exposure for a Meltwater news or social search.

Exploring referral or direct traffic is handy for those wanting to understand which media outlets (e.g. press releases, blog posts, particular landing pages, social channels etc.) are driving the most traffic from earned coverage. We can use the data to tweak our content strategy based on the insights

So there you have it, a very simple way of measuring your PR efforts and determining how Public Relations is influencing other marketing initiatives.

If you’re interested in expanding your PR campaign reporting capabilities with this simple Google Analytics widget, fill out the form below and prove the connection between Public Relations and website traffic.

How to show the connection between PR and website traffic

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

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

PR Challenge 1: Rapid technological growth

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

PR Challenge 3: Harder to impress journalists

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Understand whether their key messages resonating

Identify how PR has fueled social media engagement

Learn how the conversation around your brand is developing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The biggest challenges for PR pro’s right now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Extracts from this blog post were published in The Drum. 

Mimrah Mahmood on Singapore’s Changing Media Landscape

If you’re like many leaders, the early stages of your business required a lot of decision-making, from fundamental decisions like your core services or products all the way to decisions about design. Whether you put a ton of time into each and every choice or quickly call the shots to move on to the next one, it’s safe to say that your business evolves—and as it does, the look and feel of your brand can change, too.

If you could get your hands on it, you probably wouldn’t even recognize Influence & Co.‘s first logo. Graphics, colors, fonts, logos, and messaging change over time, and that’s normal. But after a while, the customers who stay with your business year after year expect a certain look and feel. With 90 percent of buying decisions made subconsciously, that consistency is key to quickly and emotionally connecting with customers as your business grows.

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