United States

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

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

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

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

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

Co-creation: When brands and organisations develop products, services and campaigns in direct collaboration with their audiences – be it through user-generated content or insight-driven strategy. A case in point is the telecoms brands Giffgaff, which allows its customers to dictate how the brand is run – having a say in everything from product development to pricing structures.

Co-creation is the future for brands. As modern audiences increasingly reject traditional advertising messages in favour of two-way conversations, collaboration and the opportunity to create their own content, brands must adapt to survive. The smart ones are those that are prepared to shift the balance of power: democratise the way they operate and realise they need to put their audiences at the heart of their brand.

By treating audiences not as customers, but as colleagues and collaborators, brands can build trust, authenticity and transparency – all key to connecting to millennials and gen Z. And through leveraging the voices, ideas and creativity of these groups, brands will soon begin to create content, campaigns, products and services that have more meaning with the real people that use them on a daily basis – driving brand loyalty and reducing the cost and risk linked to new product development.

The following ten-step guide will show you how to build co-creation into your business model in order to achieve better audience connection, and become an organisation that better reflects the wants and needs of your customers…

Utilise technology that facilitates audience collaboration and co-creation

Social media is no longer the only platform on which to connect with consumers; co-creation specific tech is out there, and it will make the co-creation process easier, more efficient and more effective.

Set creative challenges to your audience communities and create campaigns that both inspire and empower people to get involved and have a say. Encourage your audiences to get onboard by really communicating how much their ideas and opinions matter to your brand.

[Walkers invited people to create their own crisps flavour. 1.2 million people entered the competition. - this caption refers to the above image]

Engage with the right communities that have knowledge and experience of the products and services that you want to gain insight or content around. Connecting to targeted groups of people that actually use those products and services will gain far more relevant and valuable feedback. This can be done through engaging existing networks via databases or social media, then filtering with type forms, or utilising co-creation technology that will recruit and onboard your community for you.

Show your workings, where you source your products, who you partner with, how the brand operates and what it believes in. Invite your audience into the heart of your brand by being honest and open about the decisions you make and the way you operate. Transparency builds authenticity and trust and should be a key part of defining not just how you communicate with your customers, but with your employees as well.

Be 360 in your approach, conducting customer-led insight and journey mapping around every part of your business in order to define a blueprint for processes and customer experience. This should be done through rigorous testing of every stage of your customer’s user-journey in order to optimise their experiences, as well as by employing insight technology that connects you to your customers for constant feedback. CX (customer experience) should be central to how your brand is run and should be defined by direct customer feedback

Involve your audiences in a constant conversation

Involve your audiences in a constant conversation, gaining insights, feedback and ideas relating to every product and service you launch – and engaging them at every stage of the decision-making process. Customer contributors are motivated by immediate and constant feedback, so ensure you have teams in place to respond to every piece of customer feedback. This might be done through social media, chatbots, online feedback panels and forums or building specific areas on your site where customers can leave and exchange ideas.

Create communities which allow your audiences to like, comment on, share and validate each other’s ideas about your brand. Better ideas come from community collaboration.

Act on feedback and implement customer ideas into the way you run your brand or develop your products and services. If the insight, feedback and content generated from your engagement mechanic are actually taken onboard, people will see that you are serious about listening to them and democratising your business. Brands should be proactive about talking about those products and services that are informed by customer input, in order not just to market their co-creation credentials but to show their audiences that they really do take their feedback and ideas seriously.

Employ mechanics that allow you to review ideas that your customers submit, make comments on them then invite your customers to develop those ideas further. In this way, you are acting as a creative director to your team of customer creatives.

Don’t limit co-creation to just problem solving or new product definition

Instead, use it to define how your brand grows and the new markets it grows into. Co-creation can come to define your brand identity, being part of its brand positioning and marketing strategy. Just as you involve your customer communities with product development, you should allow them to shape your brand strategy and positioning – which will lead to deeper, more far-reaching brand advocacy.

Co-creation toolkit: Creating content with audiences

Doing more with less is a hallmark of nonprofit campaigns, that's why social media has been a boon to the industry. While the strength of a mission doesn't keep the lights on, it does lead to success for those nonprofits that harness their dedicated community to creatively spread their messages. Here are some of the best.

Tip: Learn how Make-A-Wish America uses the Meltwater suite for their national communications strategies and PR campaigns.

Social media is an incredibly powerful way to reach audiences.

Nonprofits are on a mission to make a positive difference in the world.

When you mix the power of social media with the world-changing missions of nonprofits, you get a combination of both reach and impact.

There’s so much we can learn from nonprofits and how they approach marketing. To inspire you (whether your business is a nonprofit or not), we’ve put together the 5 best nonprofit social media campaigns over the last several years.

Many Americans consider themselves unbiased. However, we, often unintentionally, make judgments about other people based on what we see—whether it’s race, age, gender, religion, or physical ability.

To help challenge our preconceptions, Ad Council created their groundbreaking campaign: Love Has No Labels. The goal was to help people rethink bias and  to “make love feel celebrated and more normalized.”

Love Has No Labels | Diversity & Inclusion | Ad Council

The campaign video was an instant success – recently hitting 160 million combined views. It was the most viral social media campaign ever.

Hundreds of celebrities shared the campaign, including former First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Charity: Water’s “September Campaign” is proof that nonprofit social media campaigns can be sustainable. Participants in the program raised more than 1.8 million dollars in 2015.

The September Campaign asks people born in September (founder Scott Harrison’s birthday month) to invite friends and family to donate to Charity: Water instead of buying gifts and share this story to social media.

This campaign demonstrates the power of social media as a word of mouth vehicle. When people witness the impact of donations made by friends family, and acquaintances across social media, it makes them feel compelled to help even more.

In one of the most successful (and unexpected) nonprofit social media campaigns of 2017, #MeToo became a rallying cry against sexual assault and harassment.

But we have to backtrack back to 2007 when Tarana Burke of the nonprofit Just Be Inc. launched the original #MeToo campaign. #MeToo was meant to be a movement that provides “empowerment through empathy” to survivors of sexual abuse, assault, exploitation, and harassment.

Fast forward to 2017 and Alyssa Milano Tweeted: "If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet."

Within days, millions of women and men used social media to share the abuse they’ve faced in their own lives. 

The #MeToo campaign proves how powerful personal stories can be in igniting a movement.

4. Big Tobacco Be Like (Truth Initiative®)

The Truth Initiative® is on a mission to end smoking. Their social media campaign Big Tobacco Be Like was a creative and eye-opening take on some harmful misconceptions that younger generations have around “social smoking” (i.e., people who only smoke at parties or on the weekend).

At first, Truth started with YouTube videos, but the marketing team took the #BigTobaccoBeLike social media campaign to new heights when they began a massive influencer marketing campaign.

The Big Tobacco Be Like videos have now amassed more than 59 million views, but their biggest achievement might be the 55% increase they’ve seen in young people agreeing that, even if you smoke occasionally, you are still supporting Big Tobacco.

5. Earth Hour (World Wide Fund for Nature)

The World Wide Fund for Nature’s social media campaign “Earth Hour” is an example of nonprofits using social media to help change the world. Every March, Earth Hour calls on individuals and businesses to turn off their lights for one hour to symbolize a dedication to combating climate change.

In 2017, Earth Hour celebrated its 10th anniversary and 187 countries and territories took part in what was their most successful campaign. They Tweeted 105 times, receiving more than 23,800 interactions and 3,200 mentions during the event.

But our favorite part was their branded Facebook Frame:

The Earth Hour Facebook Frame reached more than 1,000,000 people across the platform – allowing people to share their own world-changing stories with their friends and family.

Every brand and business on the planet has a unique story to tell. To be successful in communications, you need to understand your unique value proposition and how to share that information with your chosen audience.

Examining and learning from some of the best nonprofit social media campaigns is a great way to expand your marketing toolbox and try others’ strategies for yourself.

When you’re ready to dive into the strategy of social media marketing to enhance your campaigns, learn more about boosting your brand awareness using our Meltwater Suite for marketing professionals.

5 Best Nonprofit Social Media Campaigns

Ten years ago, before media databases and Google-able phone numbers, the hardest task of any PR campaign was tracking down journalists’ contact details. Whether you had access to the infamous News Media Yellow Book or tried to MacGyver your way to a phone number, it was both a time-consuming and headache-inducing process.

Now, the tricky part isn’t tracking down journalists’ latest newsroom extensions. It’s figuring out when and how to engage with them in a way that’s professional, effective, and personalized to each one—especially when it comes to social media.

If you’re still wrapping your head around how to interact with journalists online, here are three questions to help guide an outreach strategy and bullet points to help you engage with journalists on social media.

First, pull out your trusty (and most updated!) media list and, line-by-line, figure out who of your top journalists are using social media and which platforms they’re using. (P.S.: Meltwater’s database search function makes this a breeze.)

2. Are they using social media regularly?

For those that are using social media, are they posting daily? Several times a week? If so, you’re in business. If not, stick to email. You don’t want to risk your messages being overlooked because they simply aren’t seeing them.

3. How do they interact with PR professionals and/or brands (if at all)?

This might take a little digging into their feed, but here’s what you want to get a feel for: Are they asking for sources or quotes on their platforms? Are they responding to pitches directly? Are they interacting regularly with PR people and brands? Are they telling those people to direct message them or are they having public conversations? Or are they simply linking to their own stories and not engaging at all?

This will help shape how you approach engaging with each journalist on their most active platform—whether you’re casually nurturing a relationship through sharing and commenting on their content or plan to use Facebook or Twitter as your primary pitching platform.

Once you’ve got your short-list, here are our top do’s and don’ts for engaging with journalists on social media:

Reach out through a personal account. Just like you prefer interacting with humans—instead of generic email addresses and branded Twitter accounts—so do journalists. It’s also easier to nurture an ongoing relationship when they can put a face to a name.

Still include a hook! In the same way that you’d look for a compelling hook when sending an email, you want to give the same thoughtfulness to your tweet, Facebook post or Instagram DM. Have something interesting to say about something they just posted? That’s a great place to start.

Ask for their outreach preferences. When they respond, direct message them and ask “I contacted you on Twitter; is that the best place to reach out to you?” That’ll help you figure out your most direct line to them moving forward.

Stalk. Meaning, it’s not necessary to like every tweet, photo, or post. Rule of thumb: If it would creep you out, it’ll likely creep them out too.

Join online journalist communities and/or events in the hopes of pitching your stuff. It’s absolutely fine (and encouraged!) to tune into a journalist-focused event (like the weekly #wjchat Twitter chat) to better understand them, how they work and what they’re paying attention to. But don’t show up and try to pitch your latest product or arrange for a coffee. It’ll feel inappropriate and out of context—and do way more harm than good.

Go straight for the pitch. Unless it’s a crisis and you need to get in touch with them ASAP, follow them, say hello, and like and share the content you find most compelling and relevant before you start asking them to write stories about you. (If you were on the other side of that screen, you’d want them to do the same).

Check out the mastheads of media outlets that you like, make note of the writers. When you find yourself enjoying an article, make a note of the byline. Check out other articles that the journalists you like may have penned and which other outlets they’re writing for. Look for them on Twitter and start following them. After a few rounds of this, you’ll amass a list of journalists that you’re tracking. If you want to quickly expand that list, use a media database.

How to Engage with Journalists on Social Media

Unexpected market forces mean that well-conceived campaigns can still rub audiences wrong, but have you noticed that some brand snafus are seemingly short-lived controversies, while others turn into crises? After reading these examples of brand blips, it bears reminding ourselves that a brand is ever-evolving in the public eye. And having an agile strategy that includes a media intelligence platform might be the easiest way to stay (or get) out of a crisis.

It might be a side effect of how many of us live online, but brand crises seem to be coming at a faster clip than ever before. Uber is a prominent example of a brand that stumbled, kept stumbling, and has yet to recover.

And while some brands have had a hard time coming up for air, others, seemingly poised for a crash, pull back in the nick of time and keep moving along as if nothing happened. By taking a closer look at how brands recovered, we might learn what makes an “almost crisis” peter off and turn into a mere blip.

Even though we believe tracking brand keywords through your media monitoring and social listening tools and keeping an eye out for early warning signs that trouble is heading your way is the best defense against full-scale crisis, it doesn’t hurt to pick up a tip or two from brands who were caught off guard.

Kim Willis on Twitter: "It should be obvious, but having a feminist like #WonderWoman hawking a product called ThinkThin isn't a good look. https://t.co/RnAuJn6F7g… https://t.co/LjCHEKBQH6"

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Wonder Woman was one of the most anticipated action films of 2017. As consumers discussed the film on social media prior to its premiere, so did brands in conference rooms. Of course, those discussions would inevitably yield cobranded promotions.

Ife B. on Twitter: "People Not Happy With #WonderWoman's #ThinkThin Partnership https://t.co/6SyRx4u0Yv via @TeenVogue << terrible marketing idea"

While it’s certain that a variety of snack bars were competing to have the right to sponsor a campaign around the movie, the honor went to thinkThin. Unfortunately for thinkThin, it’s their brand name that caused a disconnect with audiences’ expectation.

Blunder Woman? Critics are steaming that... - Colorado's  "Everyday"  Show

Everything else being equal, if the bar were named thinkHealthy, (presumably) there wouldn’t have been an almost-crisis. So what ended up happening?

Condemnation rained from mainstream media and social media for a week or so, and by the time the film was released in June 2017, there was little mention of the ill-conceived partnership. Wonder Woman went on to become a huge blockbuster and neither brand was boycott.

Why did it blow over so quickly? Because 2017 was a hard yet empowering year for women. We started the year at the biggest international march in history and finished with large clap backs with the #metoo movement. And while they didn’t call off the campaign, neither brand promoted it on social media. There was no press release and the partnership was a trip to the premiere presumably, that continued, but there was no mea culpa or press release announcement of the winner(s). Without increased promotion of the partnership, it faded from social media, as the public moved on to other pressing issues.

According to Meltwater’s Insight Reports, negative sentiment around the Wonder Woman and thinkThin® partnership’ spiked and disappeared within a week.

Marvel Entertainment on Twitter: "Marvel and @northropgrumman join forces! Come check out the #MarvelNYCC booth tomorrow at 3pm EST.… "

Timed to launch at the NYC Comic-Con, Marvel and Northrop Grumman based their partnership on an existing template: slick, branded superheroes with superpowers that embody their sponsor’s corporate values and culture. In this case, it was a new team of “Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus” superheroes fighting alongside Marvel’s popular Avengers. The goal was to highlight aerospace initiatives, STEM education, and forward-thinking technology by Northrop Grumman. Turns out Northrop Grumman’s reputation as a defense contractor rubbed comic aficionados wrong. Tellingly, one person pointed out that Tony Stark’s company produced weaponry, forcing him to turn his back on it when he realized its affects on humanity. Within 24 hours of the very vocal outcry on Twitter, the activation campaign and relationship was canceled.

Admitting that they didn’t think the partnership through, Marvel pulled out. A quick mea culpa made the almost-crisis immediately dissipate and Marvel went on to enjoy their lauded position at the NYCC.

(((DRAPETOMANIAc))) on Twitter: "Virtually all-white ad, 'See Detroit Like We Do,' raises eyebrows https://t.co/ixzkrCkVyT"

Bedrock Detroit launched a campaign whose aim was to empower their namesake city. The tagline was “See Detroit Like We Do” and included images of urban professionals enjoying a downtown life of dining out, entertainment, and work. The thing is, in planning the shoot and booking models, the campaign forgot an essential aspect of Detroit, its diversity.

Considering the levels of planning and approval these images must have gone through before being placed on posters around the metro-area, it’s a wonder that someone didn’t say, “Hey, if we’re using this tagline, should we make sure it includes different aspects of the population, whether that is skin color, age, family structure, or other socioeconomic factors?”

Dan Gilbert apologizes for controversial graphic on Detroit building

Once the outrage popped up, Bedrock Detroit founder, Dan Gilbert, personally issued an apology and the ad campaign was pulled. Even as the mainstream media covered the issue’s eruption on social media, the general public moved on to other matters. The question that remains is, will Bedrock be more conscientious going forward? Will they show Detroit as “a city that is open, diverse, inclusive?” Hopefully using the data that their community and audience is sharing with them about their campaigns will guide their future campaigns.

According to Meltwater’s Insight Reports, the Bedrock campaign caused tonality (sentiment) to dip negatively for the Detroit realtor, but within two weeks the brand was back in the green.

Using a media monitoring and social listening platform likely assisted these brands in quickly responding to their communities. Considering how quickly decisions were made, it looks like Marvel and Bedrock Detroit had crisis plans in place. Springing into action to stem the blood flow with succinct apologies and pulling the campaigns in question requires both an agile and prepared PR team. And while those responsible for the thinkThin partnership can’t necessarily apologize for their approach (since it’s the product’s name that caused the public to react), their ability to keep their cool and step away from the ledge also indicates that a crisis plan was likely already in place. Their decision to not promote (if not quite cancel) their #thinkWonderWoman campaign resulted in social media moving on by June 8, less than a week after the film’s premiere. Every one of these brands was spared a protracted crisis by their quick thinking and prepared comms team.

To make sure you have signposts in place before your brand is mentioned in social media, download our e-book on crisis comms. Being prepared for a crisis well before you’ll need it is the easiest way to recover quickly.

Crisis Management: How 3 Brands Recovered Right Away

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

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

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

Best-in-Class Media Outreach Is Informed by Conversation

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

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

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

Use Media Intelligence Outside of PR and Social

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

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

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

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

Staying on Trend: The Importance of Monitoring Trending Topics Online

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 listening 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!

The Meltwater Blog

Co-creation toolkit: Creating content with audiences

5 Best Nonprofit Social Media Campaigns

How to Engage with Journalists on Social Media

Crisis Management: How 3 Brands Recovered Right Away

Staying on Trend: The Importance of Monitoring Trending Topics Online

Facebook Algorithm Change – Now What for Brands?

The 5 Best Social Media Campaigns for TV Shows

How to Make Your Top Executives Your Biggest PR Assets

How to show the connection between PR and website traffic

The biggest challenges for PR pro’s right now

Mimrah Mahmood on Singapore’s Changing Media Landscape

5 Ways to Maintain Brand Consistency As You Grow Your Business