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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

You think you know your competitors. You believe your product has an edge. But without competitive intelligence to provide a clear, objective view of how you stack up, you’re operating on instinct, not facts. 

Assumptions are the enemy in marketing. That’s why a competitive matrix is so powerful. It gives you a clear, side-by-side comparison of you vs. your competitors and where your best opportunities lie.

Here’s how to build a competitive matrix that moves the needle and why it’s a must-have in your marketing toolkit.

Competitive matrix definition: A visual tool that compares a company’s product, service, or brand against key competitors across various criteria, such as pricing, features, customer experience, marketing channels, or brand perception.

A competitive matrix usually takes the form of a grid or table. It gives marketers and other stakeholders a side-by-side look at how each entity stacks up in certain areas.

This tool helps you more easily spot strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the market that you could fill. It’s also incredibly effective at communicating competitive insights across departments, especially when product, sales, and marketing teams need to align on strategy.

Competitive matrices provide value across all stages of growth: 

Startups for finding a niche in a crowded market. 

Growing brands for sharpening their differentiation. 

Mature businesses for monitoring shifts in competitive positioning or guiding a rebrand. 

Any time you're launching a product, entering a new market, or reassessing strategy, this tool belongs on your desk.

TIP: Don't miss our blog on the best competitive intelligence tools on the market, along with helpful tips on how to use them!

Competitive matrices look like neat little spreadsheets, but they’re much more powerful. Here’s how they bring clarity to chaos and empower marketing teams.

A competitive matrix helps you see where every player stands at a glance, including you. 

Rather than reviewing vague impressions or word-of-mouth claims, you get a hard look at how brands compare based on measurable factors like price, features, reach, or customer reviews. The visual layout makes it easy to see who’s dominating certain areas, who’s falling behind, and who’s occupying the same strategic space as you.

This kind of visibility is especially useful in industries where differentiation is tricky, like SaaS or eCommerce. It lets you cut through distractions and ask targeted questions: Who’s going overboard on marketing spend? Who’s quietly building loyalty? Who’s competing on value vs. innovation?

Identifying market gaps and opportunities

Laying out a competitive analysis in a matrix reveals valuable white space — the unmet customer needs or underserved segments your competitors have overlooked. 

It might be a feature no one else is offering, a price tier that’s missing, or a messaging angle that hasn’t been claimed. A matrix comparison shines a light on where your brand can break away from the pack.

You can also more easily identify saturation in your market. For example, if every competitor is playing in the same lane, you have a chance to zag while everyone else zigs. This might mean targeting a different persona, shifting positioning, or introducing a new value prop.

Marketers are constantly realizing the need to prove themselves to other stakeholders and decision makers. A competitive matrix is a great tool to support your vision and show you’re making smart, strategic decisions.

Presenting a well-made matrix to leadership shows you’ve done your homework and helps you justify your marketing plan. It illustrates ideas rooted in evidence, not hunches, and other stakeholders can more easily follow along when your ideas are visually laid out.

Meltwater's suite of AI-powered intelligence solutions can help you get crucial competitive insights fast. Click here and fill out the form below to see it in action during a personalized demo!

Creating a competitive matrix involves deep research, an understanding of your market and competitors, and maybe a pinch of design skills. Once you have all the pieces, creating your matrix is a pretty straightforward process. 

Here’s how to build your own competitive matrix.

Start by narrowing down who you’re actually competing with. This might be a mix of direct competitors (those offering similar products to the same customers) and indirect competitors (those solving the same problem in a different way). 

You don’t need to pick every company in your niche. Focus on your true competitive rivalry (3-5 players) that are relevant to your current goals (e.g., brand positioning, product differentiation). 

Pro tip: If you’re not sure who to include, look at who your customers mention during sales calls, who’s bidding on your paid keywords, or who dominates the SERPs for your top search terms.

Next, decide which factors you want to compare. Examples include:

Stick with 5-10 criteria to keep your matrix focused and actionable.

Collect data from trusted sources, such as: 

Internal sources like your CRM and sales transcripts

Keep it honest and objective. It’s tempting to skew results in your favor, but a biased matrix only leads to flawed strategy.

With data in hand, start visualizing your findings in a matrix. You can keep it simple with a comparison table or go more visual with quadrant charts, bubble graphs, or color-coded scorecards. 

Tools like Excel, Google Sheets, Canva, or even PowerPoint are great starting points. They have plug-and-play templates that you can customize to your needs.  

The key is clarity. Make it easy to spot who’s leading in what areas and where your brand stands out (or falls short).

Take your finished matrix and zoom out: Who’s dominating? Who’s failing to deliver? Where’s the white space? 

Use your analysis to inform messaging, product development, go-to-market strategy, or pricing updates.

Then, rinse and repeat on a regular basis. Competitive analyses can become outdated. Revising it regularly helps you stay relevant and strategic.

TIP: Check out our free webinar featuring tips and strategies from a competitive intelligence analyst!

Competitive matrices can take different forms and styles. Some are more complex than others. Others are geared to specific use cases.

Use these competitive matrix examples to jumpstart your own.

Most competitive matrices will take the form of a table, where competitors are displayed as rows and features or other criteria in columns (or vice-versa). 

In this example, we see numerical scores assigned to each competitor and criterion. Color-coding the scores makes it easy to see top performers in each category.

One way to align features and pricing is to build a Feature matrix. This quadrant-style matrix evaluates what your platform offers and how those features stack up in terms of relevance and uniqueness.

The horizontal (X) axis measures differentiation (how unique a feature is). On the left are features everyone offers (commodities) and on the right are features only you offer (unique). 

The vertical (Y) axis tracks popularity or usage, from features used by a handful of users (bottom) to those relied on by nearly all your customers (top). 

When you plot your product’s capabilities along these axes, you begin to see which features are common, which are niche, and which are your most compelling selling points.

The upper right quadrant—highly used and highly differentiated—is where your strongest value proposition lives. These are the features that drive purchase decisions and justify premium pricing. 

The lower right contains more specialized features, less frequently used but still uniquely yours, ideal as add-ons or enterprise-level upgrades. 

The upper left includes popular but common features—useful, but not market-moving. 

The lower left is the noise—features that few customers use and that most competitors offer, which may be cluttering your messaging or product focus.

The key is to know what matters to your audience and where your product shines. From there, you can build your pricing and positioning around that insight.

The 2x2 matrix is one of the most widely used competitive analysis tools. It evaluates a company’s competitive position based on two essential factors.

These two axes typically represent variables like price vs. quality, innovation vs. usability, or market share vs. growth potential. Each company or product is plotted in one of the four resulting quadrants, offering a quick snapshot of how different players are positioned. 

What Is a Competitive Matrix? How to Analyze Competitors

With companies putting out content across multiple channels every day, having a defined brand tone of voice is more important than ever, and a key part of brand management. 

A consistent tone and unique brand voice not only defines companies, but it also helps them stand apart from competitors. In this guide, we'll cover how to develop a unique voice for your brand! 

What to Avoid in Your Brand Tone of Voice

In essence, tone of voice describes how a brand speaks to its audience in marketing materials, on social media, in emails, press releases, blogs, and ads. Your brand tone impacts how your audience perceives your messaging. 

Tone of voice is all about how you communicate as a brand, as opposed to what you communicate. 

Tone is the foundation of any brand's communication with its audience. The same information presented in different tones can be interpreted in wildly different ways. Take announcing a sale for example. Which of these two tag lines sounds more appealing to you:

SALE: 50% OFF ALL INVENTORY, EVERYTHING HAS TO GO

The summer sale you've been waiting for is here! 50% of all inventory!

Tone is expressed through word choice, sentence structure, punctuation, and even font and capitalization. Different occasions call for different tones, but no matter which one you choose make sure it aligns with your brand voice.  

It enhances customer experience and drives culture, community, and conversation.

It humanizes your brand, showing off a personality that reminds your audience that humans are behind the company or social media account.

It encourages interaction. Writing conversationally invites customers to get engage with your brand.

It creates a consistent brand image. Uniformity across the way you communicate strengthens the core values you are trying to portray, making your brand image more consistent.  

Different tones of voice exist in branding, but a common thread between them is the consistency they bring to brand messaging. You don't want to sound funny and humorous one day and pompous the next. The way your brand sounds to audiences is as important as how it looks, so it's critical that you have a definitive style of speaking. 

If you're stuck on where to begin discovering your own unique brand tone of voice, watch this video featuring examples from some of the world's leading brands: Starbucks, Uber, MailChimp, Harley-Davidson, Coca-Cola, Old Spice, and Tiffany.

Tone of Voice of Famous Brands + How To Guide

You likely have seen communications materials from Skype, one of the world's leading telecommunications apps. Skype's brand guide explains, "Humour is an important part of the Skype voice." A "gentle wit" helps the company present its products and services in an approachable way. This tone of voice is appropriate for an app like Skype that many people use to stay in touch with family and friends.

Walmart has extensive brand voice guidelines for its internal and recruiting comms. It notes that its voice is always human, vibrant, helpful, and inclusive, but its brand tone of voice changes to suit different needs. Messages can span a relatively wide range of formality and seriousness, but communications always tend to be respectful, yet enthusiastic. Because these guidelines have to do with communications in the workplace, a professional tone like that one is a great choice. 

Messaging app Slack is primarily used for business communications, but it uses an informal tone to distinguish itself from competitors. Its brand guidelines explain that it tries to strike a careful balance in its tone.

While we intend to have a more conversational, human tone in the main, that doesn't mean that we're overly informal. Our tone will vary depending on the audience, the context, and the information we need to get across.

There are many great examples of brands with motivating tones of voice, including clothing brand Urban Outfitters. Its tone — described in its brand book as free-spirited, honest, direct, cheeky, and youthful — has exactly the kind of motivating energy that appeals to its young customer base. 

Like the companies mentioned above, Greenpeace's tone changes depending on the context. While not a company per-se, the environmental nonprofit still a distinct voice that they adhere to for all their communications. According to its brand guidelines, Greenpeace uses an authoritative tone when talking about the organization's research and a matter-of-fact tone when talking about world events. Both help communicate expertise when the occasion calls for it.

Other than the ones just discussed, here are some other examples of tone your brand voice can have:

Use these and other kinds of tone of voice to find the one that fits your brand (and the context it's communicating in) best. 

Your brand tone of voice should reflect your brand's personality. 

When thinking about your brand voice, imagine your brand is a person and you are having an actual conversation with them. How does it sound? Formal or colloquial? Funny or serious? Is there a particular cadence that it speaks in? 

A solid brand voice should steer the rest of your brand's communications, so it's worth getting right. Here are some key tips for establishing a brand voice that hits the right note.

3. Adapt based on the reason you're communicating

For communications professionals, understanding your audience allows you to target your outreach appropriately. The same applies to tone of voice.

Just like conversations IRL, you should adapt your communication style to who you are speaking to. For example, if you are a travel brand whose primary clients are gap year students, you'll want to be more laid back in your communication style. In contrast, if you are communicating with corporate professionals, you may want to be more formal in your messaging.

While you probably have a good idea of who your target market is, there is no harm in digging deeper into their interests, professions, the influencers they follow, etc. This will help you to build a fuller profile of your potential customers. You can then use this profile to build an appropriate tone of voice. How do you do this? Analyze customer data, create surveys, and use media monitoring. 

Learn more about audience segments and personas.

Conveying a personality that makes your brand likable and approachable requires you to consider the following questions:

What kind of culture do you promote within the brand?

Taking these answers into account, you can decide on the unique qualities you want to portray through your communications and messaging and devise a content strategy around them. 

Consider Innocent Drinks: Their unique tone of voice is notorious in the marketing world. They use an informal, light-hearted tone to speak to their customers and often post quirky puns and blog posts. 

One reason why Innocent’s tone of voice is so successful is that it is authentic. Being quirky and humorous is part of their company culture and how the company began. In turn, the brand's audience has had a positive reaction to its tone of voice.

3. Adapt based on the reason you’re communicating

It's important to moderate your brand’s tone of voice depending on the situation. You can still be authentic while adapting how much you push your brand’s personality. If you are handling complaints or important information, a more formal tone is necessary. If you are sharing general conversation and links to content, you can speak more informally.

Finally, when pushing a competition, event, or sharing good news, you can play with your language even more. Showing off your brand’s personality can attract attention and yield greater buzz.

Related: Learn more about crafting a crisis communications strategy.

4. Create a list of brand voice dos & don'ts

Even though adapting is important based on the situation, you don't want your tone of voice to meander all over the place. Avoid creating confusion among your customers by establishing a list of "Dos & Don'ts" when it comes to your communication style. 

This not only helps establish a cohesive brand identity outwardly, it minimizes issues or uncertainty that may arise internally, when determining messaging among amongst your marketing, PR, and comms teams. 

Communicate in a warm, friendly tone of voice

The Ultimate Guide To Finding Your Brand's Tone of Voice

Hashtags used to be simple: Just add a pound sign in front of a keyword and hope it trends. But times have changed, and their role and importance has evolved. Marketers need to use them more strategically, which is why hashtag analytics is a non-negotiable.

Today, hashtags fuel discoverability, engagement, and virality. The right hashtag can boost reach, find your audience, and ride trending waves. But the wrong one leads you to dead air — no clicks, no ROI. 

Hashtag analytics via social listening cuts through the noise so you can focus on what actually works. Here’s how you can find the best hashtags that get traction. 

Key Metrics to Track in Hashtag Analytics

How to Use Hashtag Insights Strategically

Hashtag analytics: The process of tracking and analyzing data related to hashtag performance on social media platforms.

General social media analytics focus on a broad range of metrics (think follower growth, post engagement rates, etc.). It’s a closer look at the bigger picture.

Hashtag analytics are different. They collect metrics like reach, engagement and how often they’re used. This gives marketers a bird’s eye view of how certain hashtags perform. 

Without this specific data, you could be missing chances to grow, connect, and convert.

Hashtags are still one of the fastest ways to get discovered on social media. Users click on hashtags to see similar content using those same hashtags, which signals high interest and intent.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are flooded with content, and users have shorter attention spans than ever. Hashtag analytics helps you hook the right users by pinpointing which tags actually drive engagement, not just impressions.

For marketers, a hashtag tracker equals real-world results. Monitor campaign hashtags to:

Find words or phrases that spark the most interaction

Hashtag data turns guesswork into game plans. They aren’t there to decorate your posts, but rather to help you get discovered and engage your audience. This is only possible when you use the right hashtags, and without data, you’re just throwing spaghetti at the algorithm.

TIP: Check out our blog on the Best TikTok Hashtags for more views, including our Hashtag Hero AI assistant to help you generate the best hashtags for your posts!

Whether you’re using Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, or Instagram hashtag analytics, there are a few key metrics to pay attention to:

Reach: Number of unique users who saw the hashtag

Impressions: Total number of times the hashtag was seen

Engagement rate: The total number of likes, shares, comments, or clicks on posts using the hashtag

Sentiment analysis: The tone or connotation associated with the hashtag

Audience demographics: The type of user who interacts with the hashtag (e.g., age, gender, location, interests)

Trend time: How long the hashtag has been popular (or how its popularity has changed)

Together, these metrics give you a comprehensive idea of what’s working on social media and help you choose better hashtags for your campaigns.

Whether you’re tracking a single hashtag on Instagram or trying to find a collection of hashtags to use across multiple channels, the process looks similar.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how to analyze hashtag performance:

If you already have some hashtags in mind, start with those.

Or, you can check out competitors’ content to see what hashtags they’re using. Do the same for influencers in your niche. 

Plug those into an Instagram hashtag analytics tool or something similar to start generating data.

Look at specific metrics for each hashtag, such as reach, impressions, engagement, and frequency of use. Timeliness is key here, as you don’t want to use hashtags that are no longer relevant or popular.

Not all hashtag meanings are straightforward. Case in point: the infamous #WhyIStayed hashtag used by DiGiorno.

The pizza brand used this hashtag to promote pizza, not knowing it represented domestic violence victims.

Check to see who else is using the hashtag and how they’re using it. For example, is it crowded with irrelevant content? Dominated by big accounts? Being used in a completely different way than it sounds?

Ideally, the hashtag should match your audience and niche.

TIP: For information on how to leverage trending hashtags without any unfortunate mix-ups, check out our Ultimate Guide to Trendjacking!

The Meltwater Blog

What Is a Competitive Matrix? How to Analyze Competitors

The Ultimate Guide To Finding Your Brand's Tone of Voice

Hashtag Analytics: Boost Engagement with Smarter Hashtags

What Marketers Can Learn from the In-Person Events Boom

Digital 2025 July Global Statshot Report

Generative AI Content Creation: The Future of Creativity

Social Media Statistics in Singapore [Updated 2025]

How Love Island USA Was a Marketing Goldmine for Brands in Summer 2025

The Song of the Summer 2025 Based on Online Buzz

Top 12 AI Communication Tools

Three F1 Movie Activations That Drove Big Online Buzz

Tailoring Social and Media Intelligence for Global Enterprises