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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Guide

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

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

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

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.

Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?

The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

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

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

AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIn to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Every second Sunday in February, the only subject that generates more buzz than football's big game is the advertisements that air during it. During those four hours, television audiences are arguably the most receptive to ads than at any other time of year.

The big game arrived with a few changes to its advertising landscape. It was the first since 1989 to feature ads from multiple alcohol brands since Anheuser-Busch relinquished exclusivity in June 2022. Apple Music became the sponsor of the always highly-anticipated halftime show, replacing Pepsi, which had held that role since 2013. And lastly, the cost of a 30-second spot shot up to about $7 million, up from $6.5 million in 2022, according to Statista.

The Kansas City Chiefs won the game, and halftime show performer Rihanna won viewers’ attention, generating more mentions than both teams playing combined. Meanwhile, a separate showdown took place between the many advertisers of the NFL's biggest game. Did your favorite ad generate the most conversation? We used Meltwater Explore to analyze keyword, hashtag, and social media handle mentions of the top brands of the night to find out which brand "won" the big game.

Tip: Watch our free on-demand webinar about our exclusive Big Game LVIII Analysis and get access to our exclusive Big Game Insights Dashboard.

From Sunday, the day of the big game, through Monday, February 13, Tubi’s commercial generated the most conversation online. The streaming app pranked the game’s millions of followers with an ad called “Interface Interruption” that seemingly changed their channels to a movie on the Tubi app. It sparked excited, amused, and, at times, heated discussion across the internet and garnered more than 102,000 mentions across social media, message boards, blogs, podcasts, news, and broadcast media. That amounted to nearly 30,000 more than the next most talked-about brand, Budweiser.

Tubi Interface Interruption | Super Bowl

Tubi wasn’t the most well-known brand advertising during the game, but its clever commercial concept beat out heavyweights like Pepsi and Doritos to get the most people talking. 

Biggest Social Exposure Increase: He Gets Us

While the volume of keyword, hashtag, and social media handle mentions is a great indicator of buzz, so is social media exposure. We used Meltwater Insight Reports to analyze the changes in social media exposure for the brands whose ads generated the most online conversation. By this metric, the Christian ad campaign 'He Gets Us' was the game's brand winner, with an 87% increase in social media exposure. Compare that to Tubi, which saw an impressive but smaller increase of 34%.

However, high social exposure does not necessarily mean admiration or positive attention. The brand's net tonality, which measures the sentiment of mentions, decreased by six points as many internet users and news outlets highlighted the organizations behind the commercials and their links to anti-LGBT and anti-abortion legislative pushes.

When it comes to sentiment, coffee chain Dunkin’ had the greatest change in tonality. Its commercial, starring actor and brand enthusiast Ben Affleck taking orders in a Massachusetts Dunkin' drive-thru, scored the brand a five-point increase in positive sentiment. On the day of the big game, Dunkin’ garnered about 4,000 positive article mentions.

Dunkin' 'Drive-Thru' Starring Ben

From pranks to celebrity cameos, this year’s ads on football's biggest night were as creative and buzzworthy as ever. Our Meltwater Explore analysis and Insight Reports revealed which ones had the most impact that weekend. As for which commercials will live on in public memory, only time will tell. 

Which Brand ‘Won’ Football's Big Night?

As the world turns to conversing and engaging online, there are a select number of channels that consumers and businesses can turn to - social media platforms. Social media has been an incredible force for consumerism, news, and creative content that the apps accounted for 50% of the time we spent on our phones in 2019. This increase of usage over the years (more than 3.8B users today and growing) has made it increasingly important for brands to leverage the wide reach that these platforms can offer. As with any evolution of socially constructed systems and norms comes a profession. Introducing: social media manager. 

The role of a social media manager is integral to a company’s reputation, growth, and brand image. Not only are they keeping their eyes and ears attune to consumer conversations, but they are also creating and optimizing content that reinforces the consumer/brand relationship. A social media manager is responsible for sharing the right information to the world at the right time. Whether it’s a localized event, a product release, a partnership update; these announcements are done at the hands of the social media manager when given the proper information to strategically share the news in a digestible and well thought out way. 

These days, with more and more people spending time at home, social media platforms have seen more eyes on them than ever before - Facebook is up 27%, YouTube up 15%, TikTok up 15%. This means higher expectations for new and exciting content is inevitable. Many of these users admit this will continue after this pandemic era.

Below is an infographic that depicts a day in the life of a social media manager. Which parts of their day might surprise you? 

The Daily Life of a Social Media Manager

 Social media is the perfect vehicle to leverage and positively impact website traffic, that is, when social platforms are used correctly.

The golden rule in marketing is getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Although many of us comms pros usually live by this notion, we also sometimes forget that while the core message remains the same, how it’s communicated needs to be tweaked depending on the channel it’s distributed on. Sure a one size fits all approach makes our life easier when it comes to content creation, but the same can’t be said when it comes to improving results.

Radio content doesn’t work for TV. TV content doesn’t work for social media. Social content doesn’t work for print. You need to create content for social media in order to see ROI from social posts and stop trying to fit the content you already have on channels they’ve not been created for.

“At Meltwater, we’re seeing an increase in clients adopting social-first content strategies in order to drive website traffic. A social-first content strategy considers social media during the ideation and brainstorm phase of planning content, rather than as an afterthought to amplify content reach. This has proved to be a successful method for those wanting to increase link click-throughs on social media”

With this in mind, here are 10 tips to remember when sharing content on social media. Follow them and increase link click-throughs in no time!

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to create and share web content across all social channels. You’re not going to increase link click-throughs via social media if you’re audience aren’t present on the channel. Use a social listening tool to understand where your audience hangs out as this will aid channel prioritisation and focus. You can do this by analysing social conversations about your brand per channel.

Social listening insights will stop you from leaning towards a channel you want to be present on and more towards the channel you should be present on.

“Conduct social listening of conversations developing around your industry/ competitors too. You may find a difference in social network usage, suggesting where your brand’s audience may be to heading to next! Untapped social media channels offer a chance to reach new audiences and increase click-throughs from unique website visitors.”

Although we’re seeing social networks mimic their rival’s technologies (like Instagram rolling out Snap’s Stories), each social network is still fundamentally different from one another. The unique characteristics must be respected when sharing web content on social media if you have any chance of driving web traffic.

The image below from AddThis offers a high-level overview of the differences between social network content and tone of voice.

Let’s take Twitter vs Instagram as an example.

Twitter defines itself as “what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now.” It’s a platform for real-time commentary, sparking global conversations. Instagram, on the other hand, defines itself as “a simple, fun & creative way to capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages with friends & family”.

One channel relies on imagery and the other relies on text.

If you’re aiming to increase click-throughs on Twitter, consider the ‘chatter factor’. Will your content spark debate? How can you take the conversation from Twitter onto your web page? For example, prompting people to continue the conversation in the comment section of your webpage works nicely.

When creating content for Insta, consider the ‘shopability factor’. Is the photo attractive enough to not just generate likes, but get people to click on your microsite and explore?
Due to the real-time nature of Twitter, it’s best to post timely content. Newsjacking, moment marketing, company announcements, customer service campaigns and crisis control responses are forms of content that work well for Twitter and will most likely increase link click-throughs compared to other forms of content. On the contrary, evergreen content, that always remains relevant, works better on Facebook.

If you want somebody to explore your post beyond the caption your need to spark audience emotion. The best way to do this is through storytelling. This can be tricky with limited characters, so get creative and look at what others are doing in your industry. Most companies find evoking the below emotions significantly impact engagement and increase link click-through.

85 % of Facebook video is watched without sound, yet in a recent Facebook study, 76% of rated video adverts required sound to be understood. When creating video content to be distributed on social media, ensure the narrative can be followed through imagery, without sound. Add subtitles to increase link click-throughs and post engagement. Check out Facebook’s handy closed-captioning tool which allows you to upload your own captions or generate captions automatically.

When creating content for social media, professionals are in a unique position to arm themselves with more informed engagement insights. For example, they’re able to understand when people click a link, the pages they explore next or when they drop off their site. Social listening to conversations developing around competitors can also give you an insight scoop into the strengths and weaknesses of their strategies. Such insights should be used to A/B test content with optimisation in mind.

The majority of social networks offer native analytics for business accounts within the app, but if you’re interested in more advanced insights, such as trending themes, consider investing in a third party social media analytics tool to help increase link click-throughs.

Don’t forget that image sizing differs by channel. Nothing will detract your audience from clicking a link to your site than an accompanying image that has been cut off as this signifies content that has been poorly put together. You can find the 2018 guide to social media image dimensions here. If you think the content will resonate on other social networks (keeping in mind their unique characteristics) you can easily adjust content sizing using free tools like Canva.

It’s also important to optimise content for mobile users, especially since 80% of social media usage is consumed via mobile. Increase link click-throughs by considering the user experience of engaging with content via a smaller screen vertically, but also the behavioural differences of mobile vs desktop users.

No comms message is complete without a strong call to action (CTA). CTAs are crucial when trying to increase link click-throughs.

“Every piece of content, regardless of what channel it’s distributed on, should have a goal it wants the audience to complete. However, CTAs should be adapted depending on the channel and its characteristics.”

If the aim of the campaign is to double marketing database subscribers, you may want to push this through a timely competition for Twitter. On the contrary, since Facebook supports evergreen content quite nicely, its better database sign-ups through whitepaper downloads for this particular channel.

We often have clients ask “When is the best time to post on social media?” Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as simple as Sunday at 6 pm (despite what people may think).

“The best time to post on social media and increase link click-throughs depends on the time your audience is online on a given social network. This means the best time to post on differs by channel and communities.”

Work out when the best time to post on social media is by looking at what times and days you get the most engagement on social media currently.

For Twitter, go into ‘Twitter Analytics’ and sort by ‘Top Tweets’, you can then look at your top tweets. Analyse which time and day get the most engagement.

For Facebook, go into ‘Insights’ of your page, to look at what days you get the most reach and likes.

On Instagram, if you have a business profile, you can look at Instagram’s analytics feature.

Rolling out a social-first content strategy doesn’t mean creating content for social media only. Marketing campaigns that produce high website traffic tend to be created with integration across all marcomms channels in mind. Customer experiences should be seamless, no matter where the message is viewed. With so many people multi-screening, the chances of your audience coming across the message on different channels (not just social media) is high. An integrated approach ensures consistency and maximum message impact.

10 Tips to Increase Link Click-Throughs on Social Media

With the Liberal Party trumping the Federal Election, Meltwater looked at a fortnight’s worth of social data in the lead-up to the election to reveal what influenced voters’ choices.

Australia headed to the polls on Saturday 18 May 2019 and the nation had been inundated with information from every possible avenue of news dissemination. This deluge of information provided the necessary decision maker on who they voted into the hallowed halls of government in Canberra. And with social media being a primary source of information, topics of interest swirled through the minds of the voters.

With the Cambridge Analytica scandal and ‘fake news’ closely associated with electioneering efforts overseas, the people of Australia made their votes count by combing through the facts of the policies put forward by the politicians. Due diligence in fact-checking has become part and parcel due to the multitude of information and ‘fake news’ available in our mobiles.

So what made Australians tick during this Federal Election? Which politician made you think twice about the direction that Australia will be taking in the next three years? Meltwater jumps into the pool of news data on the upcoming elections and looks to unravel electioneering trends.

The Federal Election is important in the enactment of future policies governing the country and a myriad of issues influence how the people of Australia voted. Using the data in the month of May, the issue of Tax topped the list of issues that worry the people of Australia the most. This is unsurprising as this is where it will hurt the most for everyone – their hip pockets.

There were a total of 68,900 social mentions and a whopping 68% of them were negative in sentiment. This could be due to widespread concern over the Labor Party’s controversial reform policies on ‘franking credits’ and dividend imputation. The Liberals worked hard on this issue and arguably it could be the reason that won them the elections.

The emphasis on taxes was echoed in the news as the topic had 23,600 mentions, the most of all the topics. This high coverage in media outlets might have helped the Liberal cause too.

The global and shared challenge of climate change was next on the agenda for voters. The issue garnered 54,000 social mentions and 21,900 news mentions. The voting public had an eye on the plans the government was implementing to tackle the environmental threat and proposed policies for the mineral export and mining industries.

Another bread and butter issue of education remained a key issue for the people as policies to cut budget spending on schools worried the general population of parents and teachers. The topic had 37,800 social mentions and 23,000 news mentions. Netizens were predominantly negative at 46%  as Australians reflected on the prospects of the education system.

With elections being the definitive tool for the people to hold the political community accountable, it can be said that social media has become the main medium to voice, advocate and share opinions. And with social media being so dynamically engaging between both communities, key leaders ultimately bear the brunt or receive praise for their policies and stances. With almost a million social mentions, a lot has been said about these five protagonists of this election.

Incumbent prime minister and leader Scott Morrison was mentioned 365,000 times and 55% of them had negative undertones. Compared to the other four individuals, it is the highest percentage of negative sentiments directed to an individual. However, Bill Shorten was mentioned 587,000 times. Dubbed as the ‘unlosable’ election for Labor, many have highlighted Shorten’s lack of general popularity with voters as one of the reasons.

Shorten, Richard DiNatale and Clive Palmer posted around 46-48% of its social mentions with negative sentiment but Pauline Hanson, the face of the right-wing One Nation Party, surprisingly garnered a lower-than-expected 30% negative sentiments. She topped it off with 22% of social mentions being positive in sentiment and the election results were better than expected for her party. On the news front, the Liberal and Labor leaders naturally were mentioned the most with each of them getting more than 50,000 mentions.

With opinions and information available from both social media and news outlets, voters were considerably well-informed and certainly making sure they were fully exercising their democratic right. With the new leaders in position, social media insights should be harnessed to relatively give politicians a sense of which topics people are concerned about. And it is now left to them to fulfil the promises they made or face the reaction in three years’ time.

Want to find out how Meltwater can help deliver brand insights and competitive intelligence for your company? Click below!

An Analysis of Australian Federal Election Coverage

Digital takes the cake in the modern marketing world and social media is an important slice. But, they’re not entirely the same thing.

Digital marketing is a cool Generation X who knows the ropes of the internet and how to market your company in classic world wide web fashion. Social media is a more casual millennial, the product of the Gen Xer’s, who bucks against anything traditional and stays connected to the world 24-7.

You need both to spread your message effectively.

Let’s see how understanding the ways the two intersect and stand apart, benefit your business.

Digital marketing is any brand messaging or advertising you do on the internet. It includes creating or managing:

Social media refers to digital places where a small part of digital marketing happens, specific channels designed for social sharing and interaction. Each one has a different purpose, crowd, and rules you have to play by.

These are just a few of the major channels important to businesses and digital marketing:

While social media refers to specific websites, digital marketing on the other hand, can be both our digital marketing materials and the act of marketing ourselves online.

Even without an active, free profile, you can pay to run digital marketing ads on social media channels. No one really does that though, because who doesn’t want the free marketing power of social media?

In modern marketing, not having active social media profiles is sort of a red flag for consumers. It tells them you’re not modernized or accessible, and by not being open to publicly communicate with consumers it might look like you have something to hide.

Consumers want you on social media and not just in the form of ads. They’re trying to have a conversation with your brand, ask questions, review your business and even reach out to your customer service team.

Recently, a local news station near me featured a consumer tips and tricks segment. They advised airline passengers to report issues and problems on the social media pages of whatever airline they were flying, instead of waiting in line at the airline’s customer service desk in the airport.

This strategy is to address problems as they’re unfolding.

Let me say that again: it’s easier and faster to get help from big companies via social media than in person, from people literally being paid to help you.

Mostly, because the whole digital world can see what you say on social media and brands don’t want you sharing your unhappiness with the masses. It’s the equivalent of letting the public listen to every customer service interaction anyone has ever had with your company. It’s invasive.

Even for the world’s biggest brands, social media is a place to relax, have fun and communicate casually.

Consumers LOVE fun interactions with businesses online. And when you think about it, isn’t the point of marketing to make the world take notice of what you’re saying? When you’re interacting with consumers on social media, not just pushing a prewritten marketing message, people take notice.

The novelty of branded social media accounts is interesting. Since brands aren’t actually people, even adults love interacting with them as if they were people. We’ve all formed strong, long-term connections with our favorite brands, even without social media.

So, when we can understand and communicate with those brands on a more personal level, it’s a little bit like a kid meeting their favorite cartoon character. We’re getting to see the personalities of our favorite brands, in an uncandid, uncontrolled environment. It’s fun in a way that marketing usually isn’t.

Just take a look at Wendy’s letting their hair down, the TSA being hilarious on Instagram or even Old Spice being totally absurd on Pinterest.

If your digital marketing is working like it should, you’ll be creating brand evangelists. These ride-or-die consumers LOVE you and they want the world to know. Your branded social media channels give them a place to sing your praises, kind of like church.

Let your biggest fans do your marketing for you, with positive reviews, product videos, testimonials, how-to guides, hacking tutorials and more. All you have to do is provide the place to do it: your branded social media channels.

Social Media (Especially When it isn’t Free) IS Digital Marketing

Everything you do on social media becomes part of your digital marketing, whether you want it to or not. Social media is transparent, so there’s nowhere to hide. All of it falls under the umbrella of your branding and marketing.

In a broad sense, many people think of digital marketing as full digital marketing campaigns, with a budget, goals and strategy. Social media is almost always one of the many mediums and components of that type of campaign.

Supplementing your Social Media with Digital Marketing

You can do a lot more with your social media by adding some digital marketing elements.

Paid advertisements are an option to get your digital marketing message in front of an extremely targeted social media audience. Hypertarget your audience using social media’s wealth of personal information and data.

You can literally buy (a little or a lot) more control over your social media influence and reach. Straight-up digital ads aside, you can also pay to boost your social media and reach more people. Since social media algorithms severely limit the natural reach of most business accounts, we typically recommend paying to boost your efforts.

An extremely common use of social media is to support your digital marketing efforts through free promotion. Screaming your news from the digital mountaintops is as simple as sharing a link to your latest blog post on your Facebook page.

Take advantage of your most relevant social media channels for promoting new website content, blogs, videos, events, promotions, sales, new products and more. Most blog publishing tools, such as HubSpot, include an option to schedule social sharing in advance.

Just remember, when you’re using unpaid social media, talk like a human, not a business. Even loyal fans of your brand will be turned off to hear a formal marketing tone of voice in your social posts.

Basically, while there’s a lot of overlap, you need both digital marketing and social media for the most effective modern marketing. Ignoring any tool at your promotional disposal is a bad idea and both of these are lifelines for the modern marketer. So, understand how they work, how they work together, and how they can work for your business before you dive into either.

This article originally appeared in Impulse Creative. It was written by Danielle Rhodes from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The Meltwater Blog

Which Brand ‘Won’ Football's Big Night?

The Daily Life of a Social Media Manager

10 Tips to Increase Link Click-Throughs on Social Media

An Analysis of Australian Federal Election Coverage

Digital Marketing Versus Social Media: What’s the Difference?