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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

“This is the new battleground for corporate communications: a landscape where misinformation travels faster than facts.”

When a viral Facebook post in March 2025 falsely warned residents of Northern NSW about an imminent cyclone – complete with an official-looking logo and a doctored Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) alert – it triggered panic, confusion, and mass shares within hours.

This is the new battleground for corporate communications: a landscape where misinformation travels faster than facts, fuelled by algorithms and synthetic content. Brands are no longer just challenged by what they say, but by what others say about them, instantly and everywhere. Reputational risk has become constant and immediate. So how do leaders take control when they’re no longer the first, loudest, or most trusted voice in the room?

The trust gap is widening – and brands must fill it

As social platforms retreat from content moderation and the influence of traditional media wanes, trust has splintered. Nearly three-quarters of Australians now say they struggle to distinguish real from fake online – a clear sign of rising public exposure to misinformation. In this climate, credibility is no longer a static asset. Brands must earn it again and again. That starts with building first-party trust: human, transparent communication delivered through reliable, owned channels that audiences can turn to when seeds of doubt take root. You can’t outpace every falsehood. But with consistency and clarity, you can build the kind of goodwill that endures beyond the next misinformation storm.

But trust alone isn’t enough – your message must be found.

Even the clearest message means little if no one sees it.  Today, more than 60% of Google searches end in zero clicks, with users relying on AI-generated summaries built from third-party sources. If your message isn’t visible in the broader ecosystem – in trusted media, expert voices, or social conversations – it may not be seen at all.

Discovery today isn’t just about search. It’s playing out across podcast feeds, TikTok loops, Reddit threads, and influencer reels. Just look at the 2024 U.S. election. Donald Trump was late to a scheduled rally to record a three-hour podcast with Joe Rogan – a move widely credited with boosting his campaign. Australia’s Anthony Albanese took a similar approach, appearing on high-reach influencer podcasts like ‘It’s a Lot’ with Abbie Chatfield and ‘Happy Hour’ with Lucy Jackson and Nikki Westcott.

This evolution is also reflected in journalism itself. At this year’s Walkley Mid-Year Awards, ABC’s Lia Walsh won for her U.S. election coverage – not through traditional reporting, but short-form, social-first storytelling on TikTok and Instagram.

To build authority now, brands must show up in the conversations people are actually having, in the spaces where attention lives.

Comms leaders must take control across every channel

As the conversations that matter to organisations have scattered across channels, the role of the modern communicator has dramatically expanded. The days of ‘simply’ managing a press release, media interview, or press conference are long gone. Instead, today’s comms leaders are responsible for shaping narratives, managing risk, and responding in real time across news, search, social, and owned channels.

This demands more than just presence. It requires a clear, consistent voice that cuts through the noise to build what we call owned authority: a brand identity that is recognisable, reliable, and resilient in the face of rapid change. This owned authority also becomes an organisation’s most valuable asset when misinformation spreads fast.

With these expanded responsibilities, it’s little wonder that comms teams have embraced AI tools, using them to monitor sentiment, generate real-time briefings, and analyse media coverage. But the true opportunity isn’t just in working faster – it’s in working smarter.

AI now helps teams move from hindsight to foresight: predicting sentiment shifts, flagging reputational risks, and enabling preemptive action. When combined with human insight and emotional intelligence, this is what gives communicators the edge.

As AI reshapes how stories are told and heard, it’s also redefining what leadership looks like in communications. The shift has elevated reputation from a “soft” concern to a commercial priority. When trust and visibility directly impact business performance, reputation becomes mission-critical.

Communications has become a strategic lever that is not just aligned with business goals, but helping to define and drive them. What was once a support role is now central to decision-making, brand resilience, and organisational agility.

Comms teams are now shaping not only what brands say, but how they operate and lead in a complex, high-stakes world. Because in this era of AI-driven narratives and fragmented attention, the strongest brands won’t be the loudest – they’ll be the ones led by communicators who act with foresight, clarity, and credibility across every channel.

Narrative warfare: How AI is forcing a reset in corporate communications

Online content, whether it’s a landing page, a blog, or a social media post, is a powerful tool for businesses. Among other things, it's a lead generation tool, making you discoverable by potential customers, it spreads the word about what you do and who you are, it helps you develop brand loyalty and showcase your personality. 

Content connects you with your audience, but only if people actually see it. So what can you do to increase the visibility of your online content? Read on! We've got you covered 😎

What Does Content Visibility Actually Mean?

Broadly speaking, content visibility refers to your brand's overall presence online — your digital footprint in the minds of consumers. Having good visibility helps increase conversions, web traffic, follower growth, subscribers, and brand equity.

How you approach content visibility depends somewhat on the goals you have for each piece of content, and your content marketing strategy overall.

For example, maybe you have a robust blog writing program in place, but now you want to diversify and repurpose your content by creating YouTube videos. So you'll need to create a YouTube strategy and start nurturing subscribers on that platform. Or maybe your social media posts are not getting any traction, so you need to invest time in social engagement and make sure your content is serving its purpose.

Whatever your needs, we can help you get started. 

Here are 10 ways you can increase the visibility of your online content:

1. Focus on quality over quantity in followers

10. Create new content on a regular basis

It’s tempting to focus on big numbers for social media followers or blog subscribers. But if you pad your audience with periphery and random people just to boost your numbers, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Followers that don’t actually care about your posts or your business aren't doing you any favors. That’s why you should focus on quality over quantity. 

Start by defining your target audience. Use a media monitoring tool like Meltwater to search specific keywords across various social media platforms, for example, like in the example below, “organic food” or “gluten-free” could be interesting topics for a health brand to search for.

Follow the people joining conversations relevant to your brand. You can also take a peek at followers of similar brands and competitors and give them a follow, too. If they’re already interested in the topics you cover, they’ll be more likely to follow you back.

Interested in seeing our tool in action? Simply fill out the form at the bottom of this blog to schedule a free demo.

Engagement is one of the most fundamental strategies marketers can use to boost online visibility. The more people you get talking about and engaging with the things you post, the more likely it is that others will see it. 

Encourage people to interact by asking poll questions, using video, posting edgy content that sparks conversation, or going a more lighthearted route using memes and GIFs:

But you can't depend on your followers to do all the work. It's important to participate in the comment section and share posts when people tag you (which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more followers see that you share when you're tagged, the more UGC you'll get!). 

All of these engagement efforts will ultimately help improve your content marketing as well as the reach of your brand and online content.

While there isn’t one magical, perfect time to post on social media for the most visibility, you can increase the chance of people discovering your online content by optimizing for times and days when the majority of your followers are online. 

That goes for blog posts, too! Google Analytics is great for showing blog traffic spikes.

Related resources: Best time to post on TikTok & Best time to post on Instagram in Australia

Most people start their online browsing on a search engine. So it’s crucial that you optimize your site so you show up higher up in search results. 

Here are some of the SEO metrics you want to optimize for, to send positive signals to search engine algorithms:

High time on page & time on site (this is why internal linking is essential!)

Low bounce rate (if a search engine suspects your content didn't serve the intended purpose, it may be flagged as clickbait!)

Goal completions (such as filling out a form on your website)

Domain rating (largely influenced by high quality backlinks to your website)

Make sure your content is unique, and your meta descriptions and titles — what users see in search results — are descriptive but not clickbait to avoid being penalized. 

Also, include relevant keywords and organize your online content in a logical, easy-to-scan manner. If needed, you can partner with a search optimization partner to refine these efforts and strengthen your overall SEO performance.

Did you know you can also optimize your YouTube videos for SEO? Visit our blog to learn more!

Including visuals on your web pages, in blog posts, and in your social media feed is one of the best ways to boost engagement. Photos, infographics, GIFs and videos are all great ways to increase content visibility online. Not only do visual posts get more shares, likes and comments, people tend to retain the information in them better.

Tagging your posts with hashtags helps more people see them. Include tags that are relevant to your industry that your customers may search or follow. You can also check what tags are trending and use them to boost your visibility even further. 

Just make sure you stay on-brand with whatever you post, and avoid stuffing them into your content unnaturally. Twitter’s advice is to use no more than 3 hashtags per Tweet. On Instagram, however, 10-15 hashtags is common practice, so it's also important to know the "culture" of whichever social platform you're using to make maximum impact.

Related: Guide to Twitter analytics, hashtags, and more.

Since social media sites typically keep your most recent content at the top of your feed, important posts can quickly get lost in the shuffle. Most sites include a feature that allows you to “pin” a post to the top of your page, so it’s always the first one visitors see. 

You might choose to pin an important announcement, a post that really captures the essence of your brand or drives a lot of website traffic, a link to a project you’re proud of, or a piece of online content that received a high level of engagement. 

When you share other people’s content, you’ll get your name in front of the person whose content you shared, as well as their followers. This is a great tactic for forging relationships with influencers, expanding your follower base, and finding opportunities for guest posts, which help with your backlinks.  

Leveraging connections with influential third parties is all part of the online content game. If you’re having trouble finding relevant online content, use media monitoring to see what editorial content is positively impacting your industry.

Developing a clear, consistent brand voice is crucial for making your online content resonate as strongly as possible. Remember that being conversational on social is a great way to increase engagement and content visibility. Having a distinct voice will make it easier to cultivate a following of fans who enjoy the way you interact. Social is increasingly being used as a PR tool as well, so don’t underestimate these channels when building your brand.

Social media is a powerful tool, but make sure it's used strategically. Going too off-the-cuff may result in crises that are easily avoidable. Ensure that you don't commit these common social media mistakes.   

Lastly, to serve all of the above tactics for increasing your content visibility, you need to be creating new and fresh content regularly. This provides you with more things to share, to link to internally, and provides search engines with stronger signals through the keywords you use. 

While net new content is important, don't forget the power of repurposing! Regularly audit your articles for information that can be updated, and also try converting popular blogs into videos to provide more diverse and accessible ways for people to consume your valuable content. 

See also: Content Marketing Trends for 2023, Marketing Trends 2023, current Instagram Trends, TikTok trends

You work hard on crafting compelling content that’s relevant to your audience. Don’t let all that hard work go to waste! Follow these 10 tips to get your online content and your brand in front of more people who want to see it.

Curious how Meltwater can help you uncover relevant topics for your content pipeline? Request a demo to find out by filling out the form below!

10 Ways to Increase the Visibility of Your Online Content

On top of managing and monitoring an ever-growing list of channels, today’s PR and marketing teams are also expected to regularly report on their owned, paid, earned, and shared media efforts.

All too often, these reporting responsibilities create a series of challenges: PR and marketing professionals struggle with fragmented data across the many technology platforms available to them, wasting time switching between tools and losing the clarity that a single, unified view could provide.

Without a comprehensive view of your brand performance across channels, it’s easy to miss emerging risks, potential opportunities, or shifts in audience behavior. Siloed reporting efforts also from PR, marketing, and insights teams also lead to duplicated efforts and inconsistent messaging. Beyond these headaches, incomplete or inconsistent reporting can make it difficult to demonstrate ROI to your stakeholders in leadership — a problem that can directly impact your budgets for future efforts. 

That’s why we’re thrilled to bring our new Unified Dashboards to Meltwater customers, providing the holistic, customizable view of your brand performance that you so badly need. With our Unified Dashboards, PR, marketing, and research teams can now combine owned content, paid social, earned media, and, soon, influencer data into one comprehensive view.

Unified Dashboards

With Unified Dashboards, teams can finally measure total brand performance across paid, earned, and owned media in a single, cross-channel view. Instead of toggling between platforms or piecing together reports from different sources, teams can see the full picture of their communications strategy in one place. This unified perspective makes it easier to track progress, identify gaps, and demonstrate the impact of your efforts with clarity and confidence.

Reporting should never slow down decision-making. Unified Dashboards enable real-time collaboration by letting users share live, auto-refresh dashboards with stakeholders — even those who don’t have Meltwater access. Everyone can see the same up-to-date insights, reducing misalignment and ensuring faster, more informed actions across your organization. View-only filtering and editing adds an extra layer of security so stakeholders can safely explore the data most relevant to them without impacting the underlying dashboard design.

AI-assisted widgets transform Unified Dashboards from static reports into dynamic storytelling devices. These automated insights quickly surface the “why” behind shifts in performance, saving your team hours of manual analysis and helping uncover trends that might otherwise go under the radar. Combined with advanced filtering and data inputs, including cross-module pulls from Explore+ and our Social Media Management solution, teams can drill down to the exact data points that matter most, diagnose issues, and act with precision.

Every team’s reporting needs are unique, which is why Unified Dashboards are built to adapt. An expanded template and widget library also makes it easy for users to jumpstart dashboard creation while tailoring metrics to their specific use-case. Plus, owned, earned and paid metrics can be customized at the widget level, and cross-channel efforts can be merged into a single view for deeper analysis. This flexibility ensures your dashboards evolve alongside your campaigns and organizational priorities.

For organizations operating at scale, governance and structure are critical. Unified Dashboards provide enterprise-level controls with workspaces and folders that keep teams organized, aligned, and secure. Whether you’re managing multiple brands, regions, or departments, this framework ensures everyone is working from the same source of truth while maintaining the right level of access and oversight.

Want to learn more about unified dashboards? Fill out the form below for a demo!

Unified Dashboards Now Available for Meltwater Customers

You don’t have to be a Taylor Swift fan to have heard the news that she and football player Travis Kelce got engaged. It was the proposal heard around the world, and now that Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl is out, America just awaits its version of a royal wedding. How did the brands at the center of the occasion fare with the viral moment? And what lessons can marketers glean for highly anticipated nuptials ahead? We used Explore+ to analyze brand performance and uncover insights marketers across industries need to know.

Unless otherwise noted, the data below analyzes relevant conversations across various channels, including digital news, radio, podcasts, forums, websites, blogs, and social media platforms, such as X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and others, from August 26 to September 18, 2025. 

Which brands got the biggest buzz from the Swift-Kelce engagement?

Swift’s (and Kelce’s) engagement announcement involved four key brands: Artifex Fine Jewelry (her ring), Ralph Lauren (her dress), Louis Vuitton (her shoes), and Cartier (her watch). 

This Instagram post by @einsider and @enews generated more than $1.6 million in Estimated Media Value (EMV).

Across sources, discussions of the betrothal mentioned these brands about 15,000 times, generating about 975,000 engagement (the online kind) actions. About 17% of that overall engagement came from an Instagram post by E! Insider and E! News highlighting the brands in Swift’s engagement photos. 

Of the four brands, mentions of Artifex Fine Jewelry achieved the highest share of voice and engagement actions, followed by Ralph Lauren. Artifex also achieved the highest share of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), or the approximate monetary value of earned media efforts, at 54.2% or just over $334 million. A significant portion of this value was generated by a New York Fashion Week and Fashion Week Instagram post mentioning all four brands, with the customary close-up shot of the ring.

The AVE Artifex generated was significant on its own, but especially considering that 74.5% of the discussion around the ring did not mention the brand at all. And though mentions of Artifex spiked the day of the engagement on August 26, they petered out by August 30, even as discussion of the ring continued. 

How did Foreigner capitalize on the Swift-Kelce engagement?

Of course, the brands Swift wore for her engagement shoot weren’t the only entities to capitalize on the moment. Jimmy Fallon, Martha Stewart, the band Foreigner, Flavor Flav, and Buffalo Wild Wings were among those who used the occasion to gain some visibility via social media content. 

This Instagram post by @ForeignerMusic generated about $560,000 in EMV.

For example, Foreigner, known for 70s and 80s hits like “Feels Like the First Time” and “I Want to Know What Love Is,” used the engagement to re-emerge in the pop culture conversation. The band’s September 3 posts on X, Facebook, and Instagram formally offered to be the couple’s wedding band. 

On Instagram alone, that post generated over a half million dollars in EMV, helping attract followers and significantly boosting the Foreigner Instagram account’s average engagement rate for September. Considering 60% of female participants and 73% of participants in the TSwift engagement conversation are between 13 and 17 years old, Foreigner’s well-timed post likely helped introduce them to a new generation of music fans. 

What can marketers learn from the Swift-Kelce engagement?

Swift and Kelce’s marriage story is only just beginning, but it has already revealed valuable marketing lessons for brands in and beyond the wedding sector:

Just because you’re seen doesn’t mean you’re known. Visual visibility during viral moments doesn’t automatically translate into brand name prominence. The next time one of your products is involved in a cultural touchstone, media outlets are your ticket to seizing the opportunity. We see this time and time again, from the fashion publications that promoted Celine as the brand behind Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl jeans to the entertainment outlets that publicized Leuchtturm as the brand behind the notebook Chappell Roan read from at the Grammys. Ultimately, it was media coverage from E! and other outlets that helped surge social buzz around Artifex Fine Jewelry by name. With every digital moment examined under a microscope, brands involved, even peripherally, need to leverage earned media to make the most of virality.

Creativity and cultural intelligence can beat proximity. On the surface, Foreigner’s social post, coming from a dad rock band beloved by Boomers nearly a full week after the engagement, shouldn’t have gone viral. Yet, it resulted in a massive brand win for the group, all thanks to its humor and clever angle on the occasion. Because Swift’s audience has long been largely composed of young girls, “Swiftie dads” are a known presence at her concerts. Media outlets from the Toronto Star to GQ have covered the phenomenon for years. Plus, Swift’s involvement with her fiance’s football career have only given Swiftie dads even more opportunity to bond with their Swiftie daughters. In that context, Foreigner’s post was smartly on brand, and it paid off in a surge of engagement. Use social and consumer intelligence solutions to gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s interests so that you’re ready when the next viral opportunity comes up.

Which Brands Benefitted Most from the Swift-Kelce Engagement?

Since the beginning of this millennium, social media has grown to become a part of everyday life for around 65 percent of the global population, or 96 percent of those with internet access. It’s a powerful tool for education, entertainment, and communication, and naturally, modern consumers often use social media for customer service when they want a brand to respond to their query or complaint. 

At the same time, the rise of social media has also contributed to an environment where customer service is more important than ever. If a consumer has a bad experience with a brand, they can leave bad reviews on sites like TrustPilot, Google Reviews or Facebook, or even simply post about the problem on sites like X/Twitter or Reddit.

Too many negative comments on these channels will soon start to impact the brand’s reputation, potentially leading to fewer customers and falling revenues. So good customer service is a business critical part of the customer journey.

And that’s why social media needs to be integrated into your customer service contact center, instead of existing in a separate silo. If customers are just as likely (if not more) to voice issues on social rather than by phone or email, then it makes sense for the contact center to be able to handle social channels with the same level of efficiency as other communications. 

In this blog we’ll look into why it’s a good idea for brands to integrate social engagement into their customer care strategy, and what’s involved in building a social media contact center.

Why Use Social Media for Customer Service?

Key Features of an Effective Social Media Contact Center

Best Practices for Managing a Social Media Contact Center

Make it Simple for Customers to Reach You with Meltwater & 8x8

There are a lot of reasons to embed social media into your customer service strategy, but the foremost is its popularity. If your customers have internet access, they’re almost guaranteed to be social media users. With so many people choosing social channels, it simply makes no sense to ignore them in favor of email and telephone calls. 

In fact, there’s a unique advantage to resolving customer problems on social: visibility. Because social discussions take place in public, it’s a very transparent place to demonstrate your commitment to excellent customer service. When you take care of a customer on social media, everybody can see it, and this helps boost your brand reputation. 

It also enhances relationship building with your customers — if somebody sees a positive outcome after they engage with a company on social media, it improves their impression of the business and helps turn customers into brand advocates. 

Even better, it’s a very cost-effective way of delivering customer care. Issues that can be rapidly resolved on social channels are deflected from your contact center’s phone lines and email inboxes, reducing the level of resources required to deliver good quality customer care. 

Meet customers in their preferred channels

So it’s great for your business, but how does social media help customers? From their perspective, they get a faster response, on a channel that’s convenient to them. Nobody enjoys writing a complaint email, or dialing a call center, so if a consumer can get a fast resolution through a channel where they are already spending time, that’s a big win for them. This kind of positive, convenient resolution increases brand loyalty and customer retention. 

Social media contact center definition: A social media contact center is an evolution of conventional contact centers, in which relevant messages and comments from social channels are processed through the same systems as traditional channels like phone calls and emails. 

In practical terms this can mean technical integrations between contact center platforms like 8x8 and social media engagement tools like Meltwater’s social media management solution, enabling agents to both receive and respond to comments and DMs from their brand’s social channels.

In some cases, a social media contact center may exclusively handle social media communications, but often other channels will be handled alongside them. This means that whether customers contact the brand through a social channel, send an email, or make a call, their issue is taken care of by the same customer care team, so that a consistent level of service is delivered across all channels. 

This consistency of customer care is one of the key benefits of integrating social media into a customer contact center. It also enables integrated analytics and reporting, so it’s easier to get a 360-degree view of how customer service is performing across all channels. 

There’s another big advantage — by integrating social media with your help desk and CRM systems, you can build a more complete picture of your customers and their interactions with your organization. 

Without social media integration, an agent dealing with a customer call wouldn’t be aware that they’d made multiple previous enquiries on X, Instagram, or Facebook, which creates a poorer customer experience. But armed with that knowledge, the agents can deliver far better outcomes. 

What makes a social media contact center? As we’ve discussed, the integration of social media data and engagement capabilities with existing customer service platforms is critical because the whole idea is to ensure no matter where a customer query or complaint comes from, it receives exactly the same level of care and attention. 

So, whatever social engagement platform you’re using, it needs to be fully integrated into your help desk system so you can assist the customers via whichever channel is most convenient for them. As well as the mainstream social channels like Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok, don’t forget about lesser known channels which are growing in popularity, like Threads and Bluesky. 

An effective social media contact center should be able to import queries from these channels into the help desk system, as well as enabling agents to respond to them from within the same system. 

This integration should also include analytics and reporting capabilities, tracking metrics like response time, sentiment, resolution rate, and customer satisfaction. Measuring these things is critical for operational efficiency, enabling you to clearly understand the contact center’s performance so you can identify optimization opportunities. 

Delivering excellent social media customer service requires strategic alignment, consistency, and customer-centric engagement. Here’s how to get it right:

1. Establish clear guidelines and response protocols

Create a comprehensive playbook that outlines how agents should handle different types of interactions (e.g. complaints, inquiries, compliments, crises). This should include:

Response templates for common issues, and links to self-serve resources

Escalation paths for sensitive or complex cases

Timeframe expectations (e.g., reply within 1 hour)

Platform-specific etiquette and tone-of-voice guidelines

Clear protocols empower agents to respond quickly and confidently, reducing errors and maintaining consistency.

2. Maintain a consistent brand voice and tone

Whether a customer interacts with your brand on Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok, the experience should feel familiar and on-brand, just as it does across all of your other non-social channels. Consistent CX is critical to building a strong brand. 

Core tone characteristics (e.g., friendly, professional, witty)

Do's and don’ts for language, emojis, humor, and personalization

Visual guidelines for image or video responses, if applicable

A unified voice strengthens brand trust and ensures that every touchpoint reflects your values.

3. Monitor social media channels proactively

While it’s vital to respond to comments and messages explicitly directed at your brand’s owned social channels, there are other things you should track on social, since not every relevant message will directly tag your brand. 

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