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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

If your brand ended up in a headline today, would you know it?

Earned media can build your reputation (or quietly break it) without costing you a dime in ad spend. But if you’re not monitoring it, you’re flying blind. 

Today’s news spreads fast and public opinion shifts faster. That’s why keeping tabs on what others are saying about you is a modern day public relations survival skill. Here’s how you can hone yours with earned media monitoring.

Best Practices for Effective Earned Media Monitoring

Earned Media Monitoring definition: the process of tracking and analyzing unpaid brand mentions across news outlets, blogs, social media, and other third-party sites.

Earned media monitoring watches for coverage you didn’t pay for or publish yourself. Think press mentions, influencer content, product reviews, and viral social media posts.

Earned media is what other people are saying about your brand to other people. When a journalist, influencer, or publication mentions your brand in a story, it feels authentic. 

In many cases, it’s what potential customers trust the most. Monitoring earned media gives you a real-time view of your brand’s reputation. It can also help you spot trends, measure PR impact, and catch issues before they become crises.

Every mention has the power to add to or detract from your brand image. When you actively track this coverage, you can spot opportunities to amplify press coverage, address negative feedback early, and learn how the public really sees you. 

These insights are gold for your PR and marketing. It tells you what messages are resonating and where your brand visibility is growing. It’s a core part of knowing who your audience is and how to stay relevant and in front of them.

All media holds value, but earned, paid, and owned media each bring something unique to your PR and marketing:

Earned media is what you don’t control. It’s organic coverage that comes from others talking about your brand.

Paid media includes anything you spend money on — ads, sponsored posts, influencer partnerships, etc.

Owned media is everything you control, like your website, blog, social media channels, and email newsletters.

The real power comes when earned, paid, and owned media work together. For example, earned and paid media drive traffic to your owned platforms. Owned media ensures a consistent voice and message. Earned media adds social proof and credibility, boosting your owned media.

Monitoring earned media ensures you’re not just pushing messages out, but also listening to what’s coming back in. When you align all three, you build a more effective, balanced media strategy your audience can trust.

TIP: Check out our Data-Driven PR Playbook to learn more about tools and strategies that can help your earned media monitoring efforts!

To track earned media mentions, you need to know where to look. Here’s how you can track mentions based on where they come from.

Traditional media includes newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines. These channels might seem old-school, but they still carry serious influence.

Tools like media clipping services or offline media monitoring platforms help you catch these mentions as they happen. However, solutions like Meltwater can help you combine traditional and digital media with social media data for a comprehensive view of your brand's coverage.

Digital media includes blogs, social media sites, podcasts, online news outlets, and forums like Reddit or Quora. These are fast-moving spaces where public opinion spreads quickly and virally. 

Tools like Google Alerts can catch basic mentions, but dedicated platforms like Meltwater scan millions of digital data points to give you real-time updates and analytics.

Beyond just counting mentions, smart media monitoring involves sentiment analysis and trend tracking. You should know how people are talking about your brand, and whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral.

This data gives you context, not just numbers. You can use these insights to find patterns, measure and analyze media coverage and its impact, and stay ahead of emerging trends before they shape your brand for you.

There are quite a few tools in the “earned media media monitoring” category. These stand out for their accuracy, reach, and features. 

Meltwater’s media intelligence covers traditional and digital media in one platform. It monitors more than 270,000 news sources, social media platforms, podcasts, newspapers, and other outlets.

AI-powered features and customizable dashboards and reports help you make sense of the numbers so you can see how your coverage impacts your strategy. 

See how Meltwater Media Intelligence makes comprehensive earned media monitoring easy! Just click here and fill out the form below for a personalized demo.

Brandwatch focuses on social listening and trend analysis. It analyzes conversations across social networks, blogs, and news, helping brands zero in on audience sentiment and overall brand image. 

Brandwatch makes it easy to compare data over time so you can track how your brand health evolves alongside media coverage.

Built for PR teams, Cision monitors media and manages outreach in one platform. It combines earned media tracking with press release distribution, journalist database access, and campaign management and measurement tools. 

Cision is ideal for strong brands that do a lot of media pitching. You can track each pitch within the platform and see how your outreach pays off.

Mention supports small businesses and growing brands with brand mentioning monitoring. It checks multiple sources, including blogs, news sites, and social media, to find mentions in real time.

A simple alert system combined with affordability makes it ideal for users who are new to media monitoring.

Features to look for in a media monitoring tool

Media monitoring should go beyond basic mention tracking. Other features to look for include:

Multi-channel coverage (traditional and digital)

AI provides one of the biggest advancements in media monitoring. Automation and AI can instantly sort through thousands of articles and posts, identify the tone of each mention, and flag emerging trends without human input. 

AI also helps with natural language processing, which means the system can understand context, not just keywords. This gives brands more accurate alerts, better insights, and less time spent digging through irrelevant noise. 

Tracking earned media is only half the battle. You also need to prove its value. 

To do this, you’ll need to track key performance indicators (KPIs) that illustrate each mention’s impact. Common KPIs include:

Volume of mentions (how often your brand is discussed)

Reach and impressions (how many people saw the mention)

Sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative tone)

Share of voice (how your brand stacks up against competitors in the media landscape)

Backlinks and SEO impact (how mentions drive traffic and improve search rankings)

Engagement (likes, shares, comments on social media posts or articles)

Earned media’s value doesn't always tie directly to sales, which is why attribution models are essential. A multi-touch attribution model works best here, especially in PR and marketing campaigns where earned media builds awareness at the top of the funnel. 

For example, you might not see an immediate conversion from a mention, but that media coverage could be the first step in a longer customer journey. Tools like Google Analytics, UTM parameters, and CRM integration help track how earned media influences traffic, conversions, or brand lift over time.

Meltwater client GoStudent uses media monitoring to quantify and measure each mention. The startup relies on press coverage to expand its business. A global presence makes collecting each mention challenging, which also complicates the way they calculate ROI of coverage.

Meltwater set up an RSS feed to improve reporting efficiency. In seconds, the client can see how many press hits they received in a given time period, break it down by market, size, audience, and other filters, and draw relevant insights from the data.

Read the full GoStudent customer story to see how Meltwater could your organization!

If you plan to use earned media monitoring in your strategy, these best practices can help you create a comprehensive plan and get the most out of every mention.

Set up real-time alerts and notifications for your brand name, product names, key executives, and common misspellings.

Dig into the sentiment and engagement behind each mention.

Act fast on high volumes of positive or negative mentions.

Deploy human review teams to look for signs of sarcasm, slang, or industry-specific terms that machines might misread.

Share positive press in your social media feeds and newsletters.

Adjust your messaging based on what’s resonating with your audience.

Look for patterns in coverage and sentiment.

Earned Media Monitoring: How to Track Your Brand’s Impact

Even before its premiere in late June, F1 the movie was making headlines for its goings-on behind the scenes. Produced by Apple Studios, the film secured $40 million in brand sponsorships for the fictional, on-screen F1 team APXGP, for which the film’s protagonist Sonny Hayes (played by Brad Pitt) drives. Unlike traditional product placement deals that feature a brand for just a few moments, F1 sponsors were visible throughout the film as their logos adorned the central characters’ cars and costumes. 

We used our consumer intelligence and influencer marketing solutions to see which sponsorship activations had the biggest impacts in the weeks leading up to F1’s staggered, international premiere dates at the end of June. Here three of the top-performing activations that drove big results for sponsoring brands.

Looking to dig into the details? Click here to access our full analysis and consumer intelligence insights dashboard about F1 sponsorships.

Note: The data discussed below looks at relevant English-language mentions of the F1 movie and a selection of movie partners on media and social media sources from June 1 to June 30, 2025.

Gareth Bale’s black carpet Instagram posts for Heineken UK

This Instagram post tagging @heineken_uk achieved a 1.52% engagement rate and more than $902,000 in estimated media value (EMV).

Retired footballer Gareth Bale attended F1’s London movie premiere on June 23, and his two posts from the black carpet paid off big for movie and league sponsor Heineken and its non-alcoholic offering Heineken 0.0. 

Posts mentioning Heineken in online conversations about F1 the movie reached an estimated 25.7 million social media users and generated about 956,000 engagement actions.

Overall, the brand achieved an estimated reach of 25.7 million in social media conversations about the movie, far beyond that of other movie partners. And over 60% of that reach came from Bale’s posts alone.

McDonald’s’ limited-edition F1 Happy Meals

The fast food giant, an F1 regional partner for Latin America, tapped into nostalgia with its Happy Meals promotion offering exclusive F1 miniatures as the toy inside. Though Happy Meals are traditionally for kids, the promotion appealed to the film’s adult audience, harkening back to childhood playtimes spent with toy racing cars as well as the chain’s ‘80s and ‘90s partnership with Hot Wheels. 

This Instagram post from @smoothrac3r achieved an eye-popping 180% engagement rate and generated over $546,000 in EMV.

That creative take helped the regional promotion go viral globally. This was largely thanks to a significant engagement boost from an organic Instagram post by car content account @smoothrac3r. As a result, McDonald’s scored the second highest engagement rate of the F1 partners we analyzed, outperforming Pirelli and Paramount+, among others.

Pirelli’s and F1’s Hot Wheels collaboration

Speaking of toy cars, tire manufacturer Pirelli enjoyed a significant boost in engagement thanks to Hot Wheels’ collaboration with F1. The toy brand created 1:64 scale replicas of the cars from the film. And since Pirelli, F1’s official tire supplier, also provided the tires for the film, the brand featured prominently in the visuals from the Hot Wheels campaign.

This Instagram post from @hypewhip achieved an engagement rate of 1.37% and generated over $109,000 in EMV.

One from the official Hot Wheels account and another from automotive account @hypewhip collectively generated 90% of the tire brand’s over 166,000 engagement actions in relation to F1. Notably, neither was a sponsored post with Pirelli, but both mentioned the brand’s name in their captions and featured their branded Hot Wheels tires in the visuals.

Our sponsorship analysis of the F1 movie offers some important insights and lessons for brands. Dive deeper into the results, including comparisons between F1 league and F1 movie sponsors, by checking out our F1 Movie Brand Visibility Dashboard. Brands analyzed include those discussed above, as well as others like IWC, Tommy Hilfiger, Mercedes-AMG, and Qatar Airways. In the meantime, here are three quick takeaways from the activations mentioned above:

Shareable content from interest-based accounts can outperform official partnership posts. Social media posts from interest-based accounts drummed up significant excitement around brand activations, helping McDonald’s and Pirelli ride the F1 publicity wave straight into the spotlight. Brands can help encourage these kinds of engagement-driving organic mentions by creating visually compelling activation assets that fan accounts can repurpose and reshare with minimal effort.

Tap into shared emotions and memories. When it comes to the entertainment world, success isn’t always about star power. Creative campaigns that resonate with audiences on an emotional level can have global appeal, as demonstrated by the McDonald’s Happy Meal activation. 

Influencer alignment is key. And other times, success is about starpower, especially when it is leveraged for cross-audience appeal. Gareth Bale’s sports- and luxury-focused, international following is a perfect match for F1’s polished brand. As the success of his Instagram posts shows, the F1 premiere was an opportune event for Heineken 0.0 to highlight itself as a premium name in non-alcoholic beverages.  

Three F1 Movie Activations That Drove Big Online Buzz

Here at Meltwater, monitoring and analyzing trends is part of our DNA, and it’s what has helped us ensure that we’re not just meeting our users’ needs, but anticipating them. Over the past few years, we’ve carefully observed major shifts in the media landscape, transforming how enterprises use social and news intelligence and the capabilities they require. Trends move at breakneck speed, narratives evolve at the intersection of social and news, and, on top of it all, long-term market and industry shifts are reshaping consumer behaviors en masse. That’s what drove us to create Explore+. 

A category-leading, enterprise-grade social and media intelligence solution, Explore+ delivers flexibility and scale without sacrificing depth. Here’s how it’s redefining intelligence for consumer insights, marketing, and PR teams.

Understanding what people are saying about your organization, your competitors, and your industry isn’t a one-team priority. Those who want to lead conversations in today’s fast-moving media landscape need insights that all roles can align and innovate on without being a data whiz. 

Explore+ brings intelligence from across social, news, broadcast, reviews, and other sources together on one platform. Advanced dashboards and AI assistants (more on that below) deliver the 360-degree views organizations need to move quickly with confidence. No steep learning curves, just shareable, visual analytics that teams across organizations can use to inform decisions that drive impact. That swiftness means everything when the next hot trend is taking off or a PR emergency is brewing. 

Modern enterprise teams need to stay nimble. A crucial part of Explore+’s versatility is its flexibility. Comprehensive data coverage, flexible data slicing, and unlimited real-time searches remove the obstacles to exploring anything and everything, including localized phenomenon, niche verticals, and multi-year trendlines. From quick temperature checks to structured deep dives, you don’t have to trade speed for quality insights.

For those familiar, Explore+ builds on the strengths of Meltwater’s Explore and Radarly platforms, unifying them into a single enterprise-grade solution that delivers both breadth and depth. This evolution combines the best of both worlds—fast, intuitive discovery and structured, scalable insights—so teams can adapt to any question, from any corner of the business.

This high level of data quality doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the fruit of Meltwater’s domain investments and relationship-building over the past 20+ years. We’ve been steadily building for this moment so our customers can stay at the cutting edge of whatever comes next.

Unmatched efficiency and transformed teams

A key consideration in building Explore+ was having intention behind every feature, not just throwing shiny buttons in for the sake of it. That guiding principle led us to incorporate AI in ways that actually enhance the user’s ability to work strategically, no matter the role, with enhancements that power workflows and keep them on track.

Insights, communications, and marketing teams can spend less time on common tasks, like creating Boolean strings and automating reports, thanks to Mira–Meltwater’s AI engine. They can skip straight from questions to answers with Mira Studio, the chat-based experience embedded in the platform that does the heavy lifting to instantly provide insights like market trends, key content summaries, and competitive intelligence. Critically, they can get those insights to key stakeholders right where they already collaborate most with the Meltwater Copilot, which surfaces Explore+ intelligence directly within Microsoft Teams and Office. 

Additionally, Explore+ offers advanced dashboarding features and over 50 customizable, analytic widgets that let users visualize key data in whatever way works best for stakeholders across projects and departments. And stay tuned — soon our customers will have the ability to reconcile earned, owned, paid, social, and influencer data, making it even easier to democratize insights within complex organizations.

Finally, enterprise scale and governance are crucial aspects of Explore+ that ensure the success of your global listening programs. As most large-scale teams know, lack of structure is a recipe for slow progress and quick chaos. Teams run the risk of managing overlapping searches, building redundant dashboards, or missing out on key findings discovered elsewhere. 

Explore+ addresses this with features like user roles, custom permissions, and folder systems with private data storage, bringing controlled flexibility and alignment to otherwise unwieldy processes. Multi-layered governance ties all the moving parts together, giving enterprises the oversight and structure they need to scale access to intelligence without sacrificing clarity. 

That means your global insights team can manage standardized dashboards for executive reporting, while your local market teams create tailored views to their regional needs. This balance of control and flexibility ensures that social and media intelligence moves thoughtfully across your unique organization. 

With Explore+, we’re entering a new chapter of our mission to empower smarter decision-making. Through industry-leading technology and best-in-class service, we’re transforming the future of enterprise intelligence solutions. Join us as we keep building toward a more informed tomorrow—request a demo below to learn more.

Tailoring Social and Media Intelligence for Global Enterprises

You should always be periodically updating your public relations strategies to fit the current climate of buyers, competitors, and technology.

The step-by-step process we lay out in this blog will help you craft a PR plan and template so any PR opportunity or issue that arises, you'll be able to address head-on.

How to Optimize Press Relationships with Good PR Planning

A PR strategy (public relations strategy) is a comprehensive plan designed to manage, shape, and maintain the public perception and image of an individual, organization, or brand. It involves intentional communication efforts to build relationships with various stakeholders, including customers, media, investors, employees, and the general public.

A well-crafted PR strategy aims to foster positive relationships, enhance credibility, manage reputation, and ultimately influence public perception in a favorable way.

Goal Setting: Defining clear objectives and outcomes that align with the overall organizational or personal goals.

Audience Identification: Understanding the target audience(s) and their preferences, interests, and concerns to tailor messages effectively.

Message Development: Crafting key messages that convey the desired narrative or information to be communicated.

Media Relations: Engaging with journalists, bloggers, and other media outlets to secure positive coverage and manage any potential negative stories.

Content Creation: Developing compelling content such as press releases, articles, blog posts, social media content, and multimedia materials.

Crisis Management: Preparing for and managing potential crises or negative situations that could impact the reputation of the individual or organization.

Monitoring and Measurement: Tracking and evaluating the effectiveness of PR efforts through metrics like media mentions, sentiment analysis, email tracking and audience engagement.

Adaptation and Improvement: Continuously refining the PR strategy based on feedback, results, and changes in the environment to ensure ongoing effectiveness.

Let’s start with the basics. Why is having a PR strategy important?

The answer is simple: PR, especially good PR, doesn’t happen on its own. 

Yes, people may be talking about your brand and products. And yes, there’s a chance that news media outlets might cover what your company is doing without you pitching them. But these are exceptions, not the rule. And if you want lightening to strike twice, you need to have a PR strategy in place. 

Public and media relations strategies help you take control over how you appear to your audience and the press. You become the driver of the conversation, not just a passive participant.

For example, let’s say you’re planning to launch a new product. How will you spread the word? There's marketing, of course. But strategic PR can contribute to more interest by increasing your reach beyond your owned channels.

Or let’s say something unfortunate happens, like a recall. Recalls require immediate action and, sometimes, PR crisis control. You can’t waste valuable response time to develop a well-thought-out and comprehensive PR strategy for handling the fallout. Rather, you should have a templatized plan already in place.

When issues or opportunities arise, refer back to your strategy so you can move forward with confidence.

So what does it really take to develop a solid PR strategy? 

We’ve found that having a PR strategy template helps brands to stay on task and check all the boxes. Save this guide and refer back to it as you’re developing your PR plan.

Steps to creating a successful PR strategy:

To get more tips on how to build your PR strategy, check out our Guide to Modern PR, the Data Driven PR Playbook, and the biggest PR takeaways from Meltwater Summit 2025. 

Start planning your PR strategy by reviewing previous PR initiatives, goals, and activities. How are your goals shifting? Are there any areas that went unaddressed that you now have more resources to allocate towards?

Look at how your company has historically appeared in the media. Who were you pitching? Where were you featured? Did you receive positive coverage or negative coverage (or both)?

Benchmark your past performance using metrics such as the number of media mentions and target audience reach. 

To accurately measure the number of media mentions you receive, a media monitoring solution can help you quickly surface mentions across online news, social media, radio, and broadcast. 

You should also have custom scoring set-up to give your reporting better context. 

Once you can see how you've been pacing agains previous goals, you can identify any new PR needs. For example, if your company has grown in the last year, you might need to add some people to your PR team. Or, if a new competitor has emerged, you might want to start monitoring their social media and mentions.

Effective public relations strategies hinge on clearly defined goals. Without an objective, you have no way of knowing if your efforts are paying off.

https://meltwater-experience.pages.dev/meltwater-blog-micro-content/creating-a-pr-strategy/

A public relations strategy can help you achieve all of the above and more. Make sure your goals are clearly defined and accessible so you can easily refer back.

For more, check out our list of the 14 proven PR KPIs that matter.

Your PR market includes all the journalists and media sources with whom you have connections. Growing your media relations should be part of your plan so that you have more opportunities to get mentioned.

To find your PR market, think about your target audience. You can use consumer insights to find out: Where they go to find information, what news sources, blogs, or publications they read, which social media channels they use the most, and top influencers they follow. 

The Meltwater Blog

Earned Media Monitoring: How to Track Your Brand’s Impact

Three F1 Movie Activations That Drove Big Online Buzz

Tailoring Social and Media Intelligence for Global Enterprises

How to Create a PR Strategy

Why You Need a Reputation Management Strategy (and How to Create One)

Social Media Statistics for Hong Kong [Updated 2025]

Why No-Buy Challenges Are Still Trending in 2025 and What They Mean for Brands

2025 NBA Finals Stats: How Big Was the Online Buzz?

How PR Can Tackle the Growing Disinformation Challenge

2025 Social Media Statistics for Thailand

10 Brand Awareness Metrics to Measure Your Performance

Mobile Gaming in South Africa 2025: Trends & Growth Opportunities