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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

Back-to-school season is all about preparing for the school year ahead. This is just as true for students, teachers, and parents as it is for marketers and brands. The final weeks of summer are when the conversations and trends that will take over the rest of the school year come to the forefront.

From social media posts to message board comments, consumers flood the internet with their concerns, desires, and preferences for the coming academic year.

This year, we used our social listening platform Explore to understand the top trends and topics currently on the back-to-school audience's mind. Our query, looked at mentions of “back to school,” “return to school,” #backtoschool, and #backtoschool2022 from June 1, 2022, to August 30, 2022. As a result of analyzing English-language keyword mentions during the North American summer and back-to-school months, the majority of results came from U.S.-based internet users, followed by those in Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Want to know what this year’s back-to-school season looked like? Check out our 2023 back-to-school conversation blog all about it!

Just as in 2021, #backtoschool was the top hashtag used in this year’s back-to-school online conversations. However, a new hashtag made it into the top three: #clearthelist. Educators have long used this tag to help them get donations to stock their classrooms with necessary supplies. But it and others, like #adoptateacher, are more popular now that others, like #covid19, have slipped out of the top 20 hashtags in this conversation. 

On Twitter, the author with the farthest-reaching, back-to-school content was NASA. Two of their Tweets sharing free lesson plans and other classroom resources reached more than 60 million people each. Aid and support to teachers — material as well as moral — will likely be a continuing talking point throughout the school year. 

For parents and educators, safety is always top-of-mind as a new school year begins. In the United States, COVID-19-related issues like mask mandates are still top concerns, but our Explore query shows that social and traditional media mentions of school shootings and gun violence in this year’s back-to-school conversations were up nearly 550% compared to last year. This increase is directly related to the tragic Uvalde school shooting that occurred at the end of the previous school year. Marketers in conversation with U.S.-based audiences need to remain cognizant of — and sensitive to — issues of gun violence and safety in schools.

Every back-to-school season buzzes with the possibilities of what’s to come. That’s what makes it so exciting. Social listening isn’t a crystal ball, but it does offer marketers the data they need to plan for the months ahead. Don’t get stuck in last year’s trends; stay on top of what matters to your customers right now with Explore, our social listening platform. Schedule a quick demo today to see what it can do for you.

What 2022 Back-to-School Trends Say about the Year Ahead

Pride Month 2022 is upon us, and the only things more ubiquitous than rainbows are discussions of the meaning and power behind the month-long holiday. Beginning with the first Gay Pride march in New York City in 1970, an explicitly political event commemorating the Stonewall Riots a year earlier, Pride Month has since become a global celebration of LGBTQ+ communities, culture, and history. 

As the holiday has grown, more businesses and corporations have come to mark it with special marketing campaigns, limited-edition product lines, and representation in local Pride marches. But these efforts haven’t always appropriately honored the social and political gravity of the celebration. Every year, a large subset of Pride marketing's target audiences — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and their allies — speak out against its corporatization.

Brands, companies, and corporations have much to learn from their audiences and customers when it comes to how to approach Pride with self-awareness and tact. We analyzed thousands of online conversations and content about Pride marketing for insight on what brands should consider for this Pride Month and the ones to come.

1. Consumers anticipate Pride Month marketing

2. Many are also wary of Pride month marketing

3. LGBTQ+ audiences care about real-life issues

4. Pride is an opportunity to pass the mic

5. Pride is an opportunity for transparency

6. Businesses observing Pride Month is still significant

When Millennials were kids (and Gen-Z was non-existent), companies and brands generally didn’t observe Pride Month to the extent they do today. A turning point came in 1994. That year, IKEA debuted the first American TV commercial to feature a gay couple and a major consumer attitudes study highlighted the gay and lesbian consumer base for the first time.

Fast forward to today, consumers are more than just used to Pride Month marketing. They hotly anticipate it. Across channels, mentions of Pride and mentions of brands, companies, and corporations started to soar on May 31. 

As talk of Pride marketing rose, so did mentions of rainbow-washing, a term used to describe the hollow and sometimes outright hypocritical ways companies market to LGBTQ+ consumers in June.

This reflects audiences’ familiarity with Pride marketing and their frustrations with how consumerism has come to dominate the commemorative month.

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

In the last week of May, one of the most retweeted tweets about brands and Pride poked fun at the idea that the month has become more about marketing than honoring the 1969 Stonewall riots. It reached 454,000 people in one day.

Meanwhile, the piece of content that garnered the most engagement in that period was a TikTok explaining what rainbow-washing is. 

Don’t let 🏳️‍🌈washing distract you & make you complacent to the very real issues that still exist. #pridemonth #rainbowwashing #lbgtq #ally

As this Twitter keyword cloud shows — with the words corporations, rainbow capitalism, and logos looming large alongside legislation, crowdfunding goals, and community — consumers are discussing the disconnect between Pride marketing and their values. 

Does this mean you should trash your rainbow logo? No! But as conversations about Pride marketing continue throughout the month, pay attention. These comments, posts, and tweets offer clues to what your audience values most. 

Speaking of what your audience values most, let’s look at popular hashtags. The last week of May, #pride and #pridemonth were understandably the two most popular Pride- and brands-related hashtag on Twitter. But, not far behind in third place was #dontsaygay, which beat out both #pride2022 and #pridemonth2022.

This year, many are using the month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ resistance and resilience to rally support against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill and many others like it in the United States. 

Not every brand needs to, or should, position itself as an authority on LGBTQ+ issues during Pride month. But any doing Pride-specific marketing owes it to its audience to be knowledgeable about the civil rights threats LGBTQ+ communities face today.

On Twitter, the most blistering criticism comes in the form of jokes and memes. On June 1, one joke format in particular became the go-to for critiques of Pride marketing. 

Skewering ad campaigns of Prides past with the phrase “that’s why this Pride month, I’m partnering with,” these tweets highlight corporate attempts to shoehorn brand ambassadors’ lived experiences of marginalization and oppression into marketing content. The below tweet reached more than 24,000 people in one day and helped inspire numerous other twists on the joke.

Beneath the punchlines is very real exasperation with how companies position lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people and their traumas in pride campaigns. At the same time, audiences want brands that engage in Pride marketing to also engage in efforts that benefit LGBTQ+ communities. 

Other than cash donations, the best thing brands can offer LGBTQ+ activists, change-makers, and leaders are their platforms and resources. Hiring LGBTQ+ creators and shining a spotlight on community events and organizations is one way to start. Most importantly, let whomever you collaborate with lead the direction of the campaign and compensate them fairly. Otherwise, you might find yourself being the central focus of a viral meme next year.

Along with marketing, audiences also spent the first day of Pride discussing how to wield collective effort and consumer power for change. 

Many people in the target audiences for Pride marketing are eager to support small businesses and organizations led by members of the LGBTQ+ community. If that doesn’t include you, this is a great time to help someone else shine.

Is the company behind your brand a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people? Does it put its money and resources behind the values it markets during Pride Month? In many ways, June is an opportunity for LGBTQ+ communities to look back on their legacies of resistance and take stock of where they are today. The same can be true for institutions, organizations, and businesses. What strides can you celebrate and in what ways are you not doing enough?

On the flipside, if your Pride Month marketing has nothing to back it up, don’t be surprised if people start asking questions online. As eager as consumers are for information on where to spend their money, they are also eager to learn where not to. Another much-retweeted statement came from left-wing think tank Data for Progress promoting its report on the companies that fund anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the United States. Two May 26 tweets reached more than 156,000 people in less than a week.

As we've covered, the week of June 1 featured thousands of prominent and far-reaching conversations and pieces of content with funny, thoughtful, critical, and positive statements and observations about Pride Month marketing. And like the below TikTok, which garnered the most engagement across channels in that time period, they are generally pro-LGBTQ+ rights and representation. 

happy pride month! 🏳️‍🌈 #pride #pridemonth #canada #banks #corporations #funny #satire

At the same time, one of the pieces of content that received the most engagement across channels was a homophobic and transphobic call for people to stop supporting businesses that celebrate Pride. Some of the more than 46,900 people who engaged with the tweet were critical of its message, but the vast majority liked and/or retweeted it without comment. 

In the United States, the number of major businesses that publicly oppose anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has grown steadily over the past few years. Still, proposed laws attacking protecting access to healthcare and freedom from discrimination at work, in school, and in public continue to gain ground.

What’s clear is audiences aren’t passively consuming feel-good Pride content. As they’ve gotten used to branded shows of support for LGBTQ+ communities, they’ve also become more critical and thoughtful of the impact that marketing can have. As a general rule, whatever Pride initiatives your organization takes, start from a place of intentionality, informedness, and community-mindedness. Your efforts and outputs have more potential for positive, or negative, impact than you may think!

6 Points for Brands to Remember during Pride Month

Earlier this year, Meltwater Engineering Director Sebastian Spier sat in on a Zoom presentation that gave him a new perspective on how curiosity and passion can make way for innovation. As he sat in his Berlin home, a colleague hundreds of miles away gave him and several other participants the lowdown on how he saved his team thousands of dollars by optimizing a software cluster on the Meltwater platform in his spare time. 

“It was about how an engineer [on a team where] they have a day where they can work on a problem that has been itching them for a while,” Sebastian says. “It was a great story of how giving people liberty in what they work on yields great ROI.” The presentation, “120 to 24 Nodes,” by Meltwater engineer Alexander Gunnarsson, was one of many sessions that took place during the 12th official Devopsicon. But don’t confuse Meltwater’s twice-a-year, company-wide, knowledge- and skill-share spectacular with any old professional conference.

In the simplest terms, Devopsicon is an “unconference”, meaning it has no agenda set ahead of time. Rather, attendees propose and facilitate their own sessions, with the ability to come up and host new ones on the spot. The result is an event whose success is directly in each attendee’s hands. “I think that's one really cool thing about the event,” says Sebastian. “It puts everybody in charge.”

Devopsicon unofficially started at Meltwater in 2015 as a collaborative effort between the Gothenburg, Sweden, and Berlin engineering departments. Initially, they came together to discuss and plan how to update Meltwater’s processes with a DevOps mindset. After a few iterations, the departments went to Agile Coach Jeff Campbell for guidance on how to structure the growing event. He introduced them to the unconference structure and the official Devopsicon was born.

“The way a regular conference is structured, you get really excited by the keynote. And then the conference goes on for two or three more days, during which time you're just absorbing more and more content but not actually able to do anything about any of the content you've gotten until you get back to your job,” Jeff explains. “With the unconference format, if you hear about something in the morning that you think is really interesting, you can basically be doing something about it, come the afternoon.” 

Meltwater’s unconference is a place where people from all over the company meet, discuss, learn, and solve real problems that they face in their daily work.

It’s something we do a few times a year and is attended by about 80 people and lasts 5 days. It is a mix of conference talks, discussion groups, and working sessions. We use an unconference approach to allow flexibility in the schedule and for the programme to emerge as the week progresses.

An unconference itself is a conference with no pre-set agenda. Rather, the agenda is set by by the attendees daily, and is continually revised throughout the event.

This might sound chaotic to you, and if you’re not practiced in running them, it can be. However, with a bit of structure and the right preparation, it allows a group of people to continually respond to changing situations and new information.

https://underthehood.meltwater.com/blog/2018/01/16/how-to-organise-an-unconference/

DevOpsiCon (Meltwater's Un-Conference)

Sessions generally take one of a handful of formats: standard presentations with closing Q&As, quick presentations called “lightning talks”, discussion groups, and “get shit done” sessions where participants come together to actively work through a problem.

And while most sessions were DevOps-related in the early years, these days topics reach far beyond the software development and operations framework that gave it its name. Sessions can be as closely or loosely tied to technical work as desired.

“When I first heard of this idea of an unconference, I wondered how the heck that was gonna work. But people always come up with all kinds of creative ideas and we end up keeping the conference overflowing with sessions and options,” says Christina Arsenault, Meltwater’s Senior Director of Global Support who also helps with logistics, recruiting, and support for the event. 

After attending her first Devopsicon in Gothenburg in 2016, she joined the planning group. “I was amazed at how it could bring so many different areas of the company together that, even with your best efforts, can get siloed,” she says. “People might have assumptions about an area of the company they never dealt directly with. And all of the sudden they have a good acquaintance that they've made that now they can reach out to when they have ideas. You would see so many things after every Devopsicon that came about because people made that connection. I think that is just priceless.”

Like most events before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Devopsicon used to take place in person, alternating between Meltwater’s large Engineering offices. (Read more about how Meltwater handled the nuts and bolts of Devopiscon here.) Present-day, pandemic-safe Devopsicons take place remotely. Events like a virtual “after party” help make up for the spur-of-the-moment social encounters and brainstorms that made the in-person event so special. 

The new format has made the event more accessible than ever, as people who normally could not travel for the event can now hop in from wherever they are. Plus, the wonders of video conferencing can, in some cases, allow for a different level of intimacy. As Sebastian points out, the format let facilitators bring participants right into their kitchens for a latte session and a popular cake decorating session. That would have been impossible in the earlier days of the event.

Devopsicon 12, which took place from April 26 to April 29, had more than 250 proposed topics. In the end, about 250 participants took part in five sessions occurring simultaneously for 14 hours a day, for four days straight. Like previous virtual Devopsicons, the recordings of the sessions immediately result in a sizeable knowledge bank.

It kicked off with "Technical Coaching: A Way to Spread Skills and Build Culture," a keynote presentation by Technical Agile Coach and software developer Emily Bache. Topics of the many subsequent sessions spanned an inspiring range. From using Meltwater data to drive sustainability for the company and clients to a how-to presentation about the features of design software Figma. From a live hacking JavaScript session to a presentation on how brain chemicals can be leveraged to strengthen teams. From a meeting among 3D printing and modeling enthusiasts to a “lightning talk” about terraforming GitHub to a discussion of how to improve the onboarding process for new hires. 

(Read more about what Meltwater engineers are up to in their official blog Under the Hood.)

“I think for new hires, or if Meltwater buys a company and then we bring their engineers to Devopsicon, they will have a sense of what type of crowd Meltwater is immediately,” says Sebastian. “It will tell you that it's serious, but not to a fault. There are so many subtleties that wouldn't happen in a formal onboarding process that will happen in an event like this. It's one of the signature events for product and engineering, for sure.”

Today, Sebastian starts each day with a cappuccino he made himself using skills he learned straight from the coworker thousands of miles away who held a barista tutorial session at Devopsicon 12. It’s just one result of the untold number of connections and sparks born every six months at Meltwater’s favorite collaborative event.

Devopsicon 12, Meltwater's Beloved Unconference

Celebrating International Women’s Day, 2022

Today, communities across the globe are coming together to celebrate International Women’s Day! A lot of progress has been made since IWD was first observed in 1911. But as of 2022, the gender pay gap, violence against women, transmisogyny, and other injustices are still pressing issues. Along with being a time to celebrate women’s achievements, IWD is an occasion for people everywhere to heed calls to action to accelerate gender parity. This year’s IWD theme is #BreakTheBias, urging awareness of, and action addressing, the conscious and unconscious biases that hold women back in the workplace every day. 

Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn’t enough, action is needed to level the playing field.  — (IWD 2022)

Here at Meltwater, we’re committed to diversity, inclusion, and championing every member of our team. That’s part of why Comparably named us one of the Best Companies for Women and Best Companies for Diversity in 2021. You can read more about our diversity and inclusion initiatives on our Careers page.

There’s always more that we can do and learn when it comes to recognizing and celebrating women. So for IWD 2022, we asked three members of the Meltwater family to share their insights on being women in leadership.

1. Julia Nill - Enterprise Director, EMEA

Women in Leadership: Julia Nill

Julia joined Meltwater in 2015 as an International Management Trainee, quickly advancing to become a Managing Director of Meltwater Africa 2020, she co-founded the Women in Tech initiative at Meltwater, becoming a leading voice for gender equality. Julia is based in Cape Town and is currently the Enterprise Director of Meltwater EMEA.

Have each others’ backs. A practical example is on Zoom calls. If someone has a great idea and it’s your female colleague, take yourself off mute and acknowledge how good that idea was and celebrate that on the spot.

Be or get a sponsor. Someone that is there to help nurture your career and see opportunities, see strengths, see where you can improve, and therefore help further where you want to go.

Prioritize. You have to know what matters to you, what you want to fill your day with. We all have the same amount of time, so it’s up to you how you want to use it. I have found a great way of prioritizing the things that fuel me and that give me energy. And that means that I can bring my best self to work, but also my best self at home.

Define success for yourself. Someone's success is often all you see, but it is only the end result of someone’s late nights, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. It’s difficult to separate what success means to you and what it should look like for you if you're too busy looking at someone else's version of it.

Above all, be authentic, be real, and stay true to yourself. Probably the three most important ingredients for success I can think of. 

2. Laila Mousa - Account Executive Director, Middle East

Women in Leadership: Laila Mousa

Laila started with Meltwater in 2010 as a Sales Consultant, part of the team responsible for establishing Abu Dhabi operations. Since then, she’s risen through the ranks, building out crucial markets for Meltwater in the Middle East, becoming an Account Executive Director in 2020, and leading the team responsible for some of Meltwater’s largest accounts in the region.

Lean on your support system. My parents were the most amazing mentors that I have had. I’m very proud of them, and I really lean on their shoulders for everything so far. 

Fake it until you make it. When I started at Meltwater I considered myself closed off, shy, and having major stage fright. I still remember my first visit to the Saudi market with a client. At that point, women doing business in Saudi was very rare and very unheard of. Getting in that meeting room by myself in front of a room full of men was such a nerve-wracking experience. Did they listen to me? Not really, not in the beginning at least. Did I run away? I really wanted to hide. But it took me a while, almost 20 minutes, to get their attention and respect. It was on that trip that I really wanted to do something different to break the glass ceilings. 

Don’t be shy about asking for help or advice. No one will think less of you. We always tend to want to prove ourselves. But looking for help and support systems, you need that to be successful, whatever your role is.

Find that go-to person in your career. It could be inside your organization or outside your organization, to create that support system and help you in seeking guidance.

Build your confidence. My confidence grew significantly as I grew in my career, meeting my goals and my expectations for myself. When imposter syndrome starts creeping into my mind, I always try to take a step back and take a toll of what’s going on, what’s going well, and what I have achieved. Build my own confidence block by block. 

3. Pooja Farkade - Senior Director, Business Applications

Women in Leadership: Pooja Farkade

Pooja joined the Meltwater team in 2013 with past experience at Oracle and as a Fellow for the Clinton Foundation. Today, she is part of the global Research and Development Leadership Team, as Head of Global Enterprise Applications, and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lead with empathy. People are at the front and center whenever I think about leadership. You need to lead with empathy, whether you’re solving a customer issue or you’re meeting with an employee. It’s always the empathy and the compassion that you have that can open the doors to finding creative solutions.

Have integrity. By that, I mean having ownership and accountability. You need to lead the way for your teams by walking the talk so that they see that you are reliable and you are dependable.

Be adaptable. Being able to have that critical thinking is the most important thing.

Have the curiosity to learn. Learn as much as you can. Have an open mind. And build that business acumen. 

Learn to work with people. Be resourceful, be collaborative, and build those relationships, because ultimately the world’s a team sport. 

Be kind to yourself and the people around you. Through it all. 

Have a happy, mindful, and empowering International Women’s Day! We hope you take some time today to celebrate the women in your life and reflect on what you can do to #BreakTheBias.

Happy International Women’s Day, 2022!

In many ways, the age of the “mad man” is over - especially as the brand landscape has become such an intricate, digital and nuanced space. No longer can agencies rely on charisma and persuasion alone to convince would-be clients that they are bringing something exciting to the table. And, as PR, marketing and communications steadily continue to merge, so the focus is less on the volume of a pitch and more on the value - but what does this mean in practice? 

2. An Introduction To Who and What Your Agency Is

3. Show Them That You’ve Done Your Research

6. Show Them You’re In It For The Long Haul

Tip: Learn how to hire a marketing agency.

Clients want to know that you can help them:

Increase productivity and get closer to meeting business objectives

Stay ahead of market trends to pre-empt opportunity and identify threats early

Give them insights into their industry, market share and potential customers especially if it’s insight they didn’t have before

Increase their ROI, affecting their bottom line in a tangible way that can be demonstrated to the big decision-makers

Understand the competitor landscape. Do your market research and let them know you understand their industry pain points

Understand realistic timelines and how to reach them

Wow their consumers with something different

But most importantly, during the pitching stage, they need to see that you are credible, invested in their success and understand their market and the technicalities behind the creativity. According to Statista, global agencies pitch on average 4 times a year and a lot of time, money and resource investment goes into getting those off the ground. So, we want to explore ways in which you can make that effort worth it - every time. So, with this in mind...

Tip: Learn how Mira helps PR agencies pitch faster.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to creating a pitch deck because customisation is key. That being said, there are some standard recommendations for agency partnership pitches that come into play. 

Try to keep this value orientated and succinct by outlining what you are trying to communicate to them on the day. This is an opportunity to grab their attention with a bold statement (backed up by a source) or a value-orientated objective.  Start with a strong creative concept, theme or story that runs throughout your pitch and is backed by data at every step. 

This can include your vision and mission statement, an introduction to key members of your team and why you are uniquely equipped to support this client in taking their brand to the next level and easing internal pressure, for example. 

This is also a good place to demonstrate your value by referencing use cases and testimonials. Make sure the data drives the narrative here, using performance metrics and real-world examples that clearly demonstrate success. Source positive quotes about your agency and press releases online, using a media monitoring tool to find mentions.

Now that’s enough about you. Remember, your potential client needs to clearly see how partnering with you will benefit them - both immediately and in the long run. 

In The Art Of The Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills That Win Business by Peter Coughter he says: “Remember, the appearance of spontaneity is the product of preparation”. Start by highlighting the things that your agency and their brand have in common as a segway into why this partnership makes sense. This could be shared values, a common commitment to experimentation, creativity or a cause. 

Or, it could be something as simple as understanding the same markets because of location. Once you’ve established a parallel, it’s time to show them something about their business that they didn’t know. The real wow-factor is by offering them insights or showing them mentions of their brands online. How do you achieve this? By using Meltwater’s Boolean search to find mentions in editorial and social media, scanning millions of sources almost instantly. 

Highlight instances of where their brand has or hasn’t interacted with those mentions. The goal here is to present opportunities and threats in a relevant and interesting way. 

Showing them competitor intel they may not already know. Again using Boolean searches you can draw out competitive insights to show you understand their position in the industry and market share. Gathering intel on their current processes and content will also help you analyse their language and tailor your messaging within your pitch, this is an important tactic and will give you a key advantage. 

Take some of the insights you’ve drawn and use them to hypothetically sell a creative idea, showing first-hand the relationship between your deep knowledge of consumers, the web, their industry and brand and how it links to the execution of exciting campaigns. The goal here is to have them asking “when do we start?”

You can also offer in-depth competitor research to get their attention and show them the strategic thinking behind how you approach marketing, PR or communications. How do you get these insights? Use a media monitoring tool to profile their audiences, identify competitors they may not have noticed and bring up big topics in their industry with the proof to back up why they are relevant. 

Make sure the campaigns you propose are integrated and can simply be executed across multiple platforms or broadened with user engagement. Remember to keep your storyline or theme as a red thread throughout. 

While credibility, insight and creativity are big selling points, clients need to know that this will not mean extra work and complications for them. As with any transition or partnership there will be a teething phase and the goal here is to show them how you’ve thought through the challenges of managing change, and are ready to transition in ways that will directly benefit them. 

Practical ways to do this include selling them on automation, collaboration and effective communication strategies. If you’re already using a social media management software, you’ll have the capability to manage paid and organic social campaigns for a single collaborative workspace. This means faster responses, happier customers and more significant cost savings for the client. If you don't have a social media management platform, it is designed to help teams streamline workflows and achieve significant time savings. Here are some insights as to why it might be worth investing in a social media or community management tool:

39% of consumers expect brands to respond within 60 minutes of reaching out on social media, while

79% expect a response in the first 24 hours. (Convince and Convert)

71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family. (Lyfemarketing)

54% of social browsers use social media to research products. (GlobalWebIndex)

39% of customers only trust brands if they have interacted with them on social platforms. (Edelman)

Most importantly, showing the client the value your partnership will add to their business is essential. If you're the only agency using a social listening or community management you will certainly add more value than those that don't. But crucially, by understanding their audience's demographics, interests and conversations you will be able to deliver a pitch backed by real-time data and intelligence.

Did you know, one study found the average length of agency-client relationships to be 3.2 years (Cohen) and in the same breath Michelle Goodall, CMO at Guild, says to “never underestimate the power of networks” in terms of the importance of client retention for business growth. 

Long-term clients can be more lucrative, especially as you are not repeating the induction process. So, how do you demonstrate your desire to commit? Speak to the long-term plan and show them how you are equipped to adapt to their changing needs over time. 

Show them you understand their long-term potential and are futureproofing your agency accordingly. 

Seemingly small details, like the formatting and length of your pitch, can have a significant impact on your performance and ability to engage potential clients. Some key points to note:

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