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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

Our latest report analyzing consumer trends in the retail sector confirms what many discerning, internet-savvy shoppers know well: Reddit is the place for researching before you buy. 

The forum-based social network now has more than 73 million unique daily visitors and a potential global ad reach of 233 million. For shoppers, the site’s thousands of communities, or subreddits, are a treasure trove of unbiased reviews and first-hand experiences.

Our analysis found that Reddit is the top social network for researching apparel, beauty, and consumer electronics items. Electronics, in particular, are a popular topic, with top subreddits for asking questions and getting answers about gadgets being:

Download our Retail Consumer Insights report to discover the top subreddits for other retail sectors and learn more about Reddit marketing.

Most marketers are only beginning to explore the possibilities of Reddit, but some brands, both in retail and beyond, have already found innovative ways to use the network. Here are five brands making a splash on Reddit that marketers can learn from.

Purple Innovation, the company behind the Purple mattress, has its own subreddit catering to current and prospective customers. Users post reviews, questions, observations, and gripes for input from the community’s more than 3,800 members, and discussions are helped along by  prompts and comments from brand user accounts. Through this centralized hub, Purple has a direct look at its customers’ biggest questions and concerns, as well as which other mattress brands they are eyeing most. 

This post, in which a Redditor shares their detailed review of a Purple pillow, generated 40 comments in the LifeOnPurple subreddit.

Mint Mobile's subreddit, partially moderated by official Mint Mobile customer service accounts, lets current and prospective customers explore the ins and outs of its wireless service. Along with answering questions, the company also uses comments to direct users to further support if needed. The key to this subreddit’s success is Mint Mobile’s light touch — not jumping into every conversation lets the Redditors take the lead, building trust within the community and fostering discussion. 

Learn more strategies for building trust in our 2024 Consumer Insights: Retail report.

With more than 150 comments, this post asking for opinions about Mint Mobile generated the kind of honest reviews that prospective customers are hungry for.

Customers can connect to Blizzard’s official subreddit directly from the company’s website. Boasting more than 94,000 members, it’s where fans of the video game developer go to discuss new releases, old classics, company news, and more. The company’s official Reddit presence complements the larger ecosystem of unofficial, and extremely popular, subreddits dedicated to its hit games. For example, r/Overwatch, a community for Blizzard’s Overwatch franchise, has more than 5.5 million members.

Comments on this post on Blizzard Entertainment's official subreddit offer insight into what fans love about video game villains.

In 2017, The Washington Post became “the first national news publisher to debut a Reddit profile page.” Seven years later, it’s still going strong, using posts, comments, and AMA (ask me anything) sessions in relevant communities to drive interested audiences directly to its stories. With its original reporting on a range of subjects, u/washingtonpost has endless context and information to add to Redditors’ discussions.

The Washington Post shares content in a range of subreddits, including those shown here dedicated to politics, Washington, D.C., and Joni Mitchell.

There are many active communities of U.S. basketball fans on Reddit, dedicated to both the National Basketball Association and its individual teams. The league taps into that built-in audience with its official Reddit profile, u/NBA. Though it does so sparingly, u/NBA has posted guides and AMAs to r/NBA, an unofficial NBA subreddit with more than 11 million members. One, with the league’s Head of NBA Basketball Strategy & Analytics, generated 200 comments. 

With its AMA sessions, the NBA's Reddit account engages with fans directly. Its response to question gave Redditors a behind-the-scenes peek at how the league operates.

Across industries, marketers are experimenting with new ways to engage consumers through Reddit and are landing on some creative and effective strategies. Let them be inspiration for your own approach — brands that are seeing what works now will have an edge down the line as advertiser presence on the platform continues to grow. 

Social listening and consumer intelligence can reveal what Redditors are saying about you and your competitors. Explore platform-specific insights about your brand with a demo of the Meltwater Suite.

5 Brands Making Waves on Reddit

Measuring marketing ROI is a definitive way to assess whether your marketing efforts are working, what needs to change, and where to allocate budget. Here's how to calculate marketing ROI, the marketing ROI benefits, and examples for how to apply this important metric to different marketing initiatives. 

Return on Investment (ROI) is a business term used to describe profitability: the amount of money you spend on a campaign or other initiative compared to the amount you earn from that campaign. An ROI formula is used to calculate profitability, and ROI can be applied to all different marketing efforts. 

For every dollar you spend, how much are you generating back? This is the question that marketing ROI calculations try to answer. Given that one of the main goals of marketing is to drive sales, it is critical to understand the relationship between your marketing costs and the yield of your marketing activities. The answer will help you determine if your marketing strategy is working and which marketing investments are most effective.

ROI can also be thought of as a way to allocate time and energy balanced against short and long term goals. For example, if the return on the time it takes to research a new vender isn't worth it in the short term, based on other priorities for your team, then perhaps it's a project that can be delegated to someone else, or pushed to a later date.

Here are a few different ways that proving ROI can be helpful to marketers:

In order for the C-suite to allocate resources and budget to your team or campaign needs, you need executive buy-in. And demonstrating consistently positive ROI is one of the best ways to justify your proposed budget needs. 

Tip: Download the Marketers Guide to Unified Reporting

You need to know how and where to properly distribute the budget, once it's been approved. So understanding the revenue generated from different teams and channels is helpful. 

For example, if your paid social campaigns are generating a high volume of qualified leads, you may want to consider allocating more budget to your paid social program. This isn’t to say that if a program is not performing well, the budget shouldn't be allocated. Different programs have different marketing KPIs and every marketing strategy is different. 

Measuring ROI establishes a baseline for campaign success that serves as a reference for future marketing spend. Analyzing your results allows you to adjust your team's efforts accordingly and you can use these insights to forecast the impact of upcoming campaigns on revenue growth. 

An important tool in marketing involves analyzing your competitors; whether it’s identifying what kind of content they're producing, what channels they're on, or how many customers they have. When we talk about tracking the ROI of your competitors, we mean how their brand is performing against other competitors in our same industry. 

The objective of ROI calculation is to connect the dots between marketing efforts and revenue. There are numerous ways to calculate ROI, but the basic formula is simple:

(Sales Growth - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = Marketing ROI

Put another way: Sales minus marketing cost, divided by marketing cost = Net ROI

Another common way of representing marketing ROI is in the form of revenue to cost ratio, also known as an efficiency ratio. This calculation represents how much an organization needs to spend to earn a profit. Put simply: if your marketing expense is $40 and the revenue yield is $50, the efficiency ratio is 40/50, or 80%. The goal of any company should be to have this percentage be as low as possible. A lower efficiency ratio means your spending less and making more.

Calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) is also important, as it gives insight into long-term ROI across the consumer lifecycle. Here is the formula to measure CLV: 

Customer Lifetime Value = (Retention Rate)/ (1 + Discount Rate/ Retention Rate)

Your marketing efforts will ideally contribute to new customers becoming returning customers, which will significantly add to your ROI. A customer that purchases once from you will have a return of X, but if that customer purchases 3 more times they will have a return of 4X. 

Good ROI is ultimately subjective and will depend on the specific goals your marketing team has set. Negative ROI from a financial standpoint, could be the result of positive ROI when it comes to brand awareness. After brand awareness and increased market share is established, you can turn your attention to generating more sales from your marketing efforts, leading to a positive financial ROI. 

Brand awareness is harder to measure, but some metrics that are strong indicators include: UGC, social media followers, social engagement, and email sign ups. 

While the formula for ROI is straightforward, measuring it accurately has been a thorn in marketing teams' sides for decades. Correct and quantifiable attribution for the business revenue that marketing contributes can be incredibly difficult to track. Then throw in more qualitative marketing goals, like brand awareness and ROI becomes even more nebulous. 

As digital marketing, email, paid and organic social, and other forms of advertising have grown in sophistication, it's gotten easier to calculate marketing ROI, but it's still not an exact science.

Here are some examples of marketing ROI for the digital age that can help form a complete picture of all the hard work your marketing team puts in to help grow the business:

Email is a tried and true avenue for reaching new and existing customers. It's a great way to offer deals, promote new products, and move inventory. Email subscriber numbers and activity are also a great indicators of consumer trends and interest. Measure email marketing ROI in a few different ways: by weighing the time it takes to create and send an email vs creating and posting a blog post for example. You could also track the sales attributed to email subscribers to determine if you should invest more or less time in your email strategy.

Another way email marketing factors into your marketing ROI is on the advertising side. You might use some marketing budget to buy a sponsored post in another company's email newsletter, in order to get in front of a new audience. Using a tracking link on the ad, you can calculate how many new customers you gain, and this will factor into whether or not you buy the spot again in the future. 

As we mentioned above, companies that may burn cash for the sake of rapid consumer awareness or market share growth. This is the classic measuring short term hardship against long term gains, and is very common amongst startups. 

Perhaps a  venture-backed app has a $3 million annual marketing budget and doesn’t expect to be profitable for a couple years, but has begun to generate some revenue ($250,000) through in-app purchases. The calculation here would be $3,000,000 - $250,000, yielding a net negative marketing ROI of -$2,750,000, or -91%.

A type of marketing that has gained significant traction in the world of e-commerce is podcast advertising. These ads generally follow a standard format and call-to-action to visit the website. You can track the leads generate through UTM links or promo-codes.

Say a T-shirt company pays a podcast $500/month for two ad reads. They are able to track their traffic and see that the ads have directed 62 leads to the site, and of those 62 leads, 7 made a purchase of $80, yielding a revenue of $560. The calculation would be (7 x $80) - $500 = $60.

Plugging these numbers into the marketing ROI formula cited above, we get (560-500)/500 for a marketing ROI of 12%.

It doesn’t have to stop there either. What if 3 of the 7 purchasers signed up to be on your newsletter list, encouraging them to become longtime customers? Potential future purchases by them could additionally be factored into this ROI formula.

Understanding and proving marketing ROI not only helps the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and campaigns, it provides invaluable insight into industry and consumer trends. 

Hopefully, now you have a clear understanding of what marketing ROI means as a metric and how to calculate it! Let us help you prove your ROI as a marketing professional! Fill out the form below to get a free tour of our platform.

Understanding Marketing ROI: Definition & Measurement

Are you struggling to develop a brand identity? In today's crowded consumer market, a strong brand identity can mean the difference between positive growth, engagement, and generating meaningful sales, or constantly falling short.

4 Steps to Designing a New Brand Identity

3. Develop a Strong Mission Statement and Unique Value Prop

Before you can begin revamping your brand, take a step back and look closely at the current aspects that make up your brand identity. 

This exercise is there for you to ask questions, take a holistic view of all things related to your brand and identify things you think work, and things that maybe hurt you from a recognition, authenticity, and relatability standpoint. It's also the perfect time to look at your top competitors, and the industry as a whole. Who are the major players? Are there any signals that a disruption is on the way? 

Using social listening is a great way to get started with a brand audit. Curious? Schedule a demo to see social listening in action! 

Your social media bios, logos, banner images

Social media posts that get the most traction

Email open rate, subscribe rate, and click rate

Blog posts: Does your brand voice match other areas of your site?

Are customers routinely abandoning carts? What is the drop off point? 

Once you have thoroughly audited your brand, you’ll be able to use it to craft more relevant messaging and encourage stronger customer retention.

It's absolutely critical that you not go about a branding exercise based only on what you think customers want, or even worse who you assume your customer is. Do you really know for sure? Perhaps there's an entirely untapped market for your products that you hadn't even considered. 

Comprehensive consumer insights can help you move forward with crafting a brand identity that will resonate with your ideal customer.

3. Develop a Mission Statement and Unique Value Prop

Once you have a clear picture of who your customer is, the next step is to identify your core company mission and value proposition. These together shape who you are, the promise you make to your customers, and create a foundation that will allow you to build a brand representative of your company mission and what you’d like to present to the world.

Example: Let’s say you own an HVAC repair company in Arizona. Your mission could be that you never want your customers to go without air-conditioning for more than six hours. So the unique value that you offer is 24/7/365 emergency air-conditioning services. You work hard every day to make sure you fix your customers’ broken ACs quickly and efficiently, setting your company apart from the competition by showing up when needed, day or night.

With a strong brand identity and clear mission such as this, your company will definitely stand out.

Tip: Consider analyzing the data around your brand to help tell your story and where it is going. Check out this infographic for help!

Analyze your brand aesthetics and tone of voice. Do they match the intentions of your mission statement and values? 

Remaining competitive in your market is crucial to success, so be sure to check in on your branding regularly. You likely don't want to make big changes, unless you're going for a full re-brand, but you can always finesse things within the parameters of your branding guidelines.

Is it still unique? Or have many of your competitors adopted the same attitude? Is the competition now providing the same level of service?

If so, refine the promises you make to your customers and do something new to stand out and attract their attention. Perhaps a PR campaign or renewed dedication to keeping your products affordable, despite there being more players in the market than when you started..

As you can see, brand identity is crucial to the success of any business. Take this process seriously and follow these steps and you'll greatly improve your ability to stand out in your market.

This article originally appeared in Bookmark, it was written by Aleah Taboclaon from Business2Community, and legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

Designing and Refining Your Brand Identity

If you're a small or enterprise level business in today's world, it's a fact that your employees are on social media. Particular for younger employees, just starting their first "real" job out of college, they've never known a time when social media wasn't an ubiquitous part of life. And this can easily lead to inappropriate posting etiquette. 

Whether innocent or not, when representing a business in any capacity, employees should have clear guidelines when it comes to posting on social media. 

After all, you want your employees to be brand ambassadors, so giving them all the tools and empowerment you can will help boost your message in the best way. 

Use the below as a template to follow when creating your internal social media guidelines. [Or access our free downloadable template here!]

Guidelines for Employees When Posting on Social Media 

These guidelines apply to (COMPANY) employees or contractors who create, engage with and contribute to content pieces and marketing such as blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of Social Media. Whether you log into platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or Medium; or comment on online forums, blogs, or media stories — these guidelines are for you.

While all (COMPANY) employees are welcome to participate in Social Media, we expect everyone who participates in online commentary to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These rules might sound strict and contain a bit of legal-sounding jargon but please keep in mind that our overall goal is simple: to participate online in a respectful, relevant way that protects our reputation and of course follows the letter and spirit of the law.

Be transparent. If you are writing about (COMPANY) or a competitor, use your real name, identify that you are an employee of (COMPANY), and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in what you are discussing, be the first to say so.

Be truthful. Never represent yourself or (COMPANY) in a false or misleading way. All statements or claims made must be true and substantiated.

Don't spam. Post meaningful, respectful comments on social media platforms — no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive.

Use good judgement. Exercise common sense when engaging with social media accounts. Ask permission before publishing potentially sensitive information based on conversations that were had internally.

Familiarize yourself with the company privacy policy. Any external social media posts that mention people with the organization, products, or company-specific language and terms must not violate (COMPANY)’s privacy policy, confidentiality, or legal guidelines.

Offer your perspective. We encourage you to provide unique and helpful perspectives within your area of expertise, on non-confidential activities at (COMPANY). These can lead to positive engaging conversations with customers or potential customers!

Be courteous. When disagreeing with others’ opinions, keep it appropriate and civil. If you find yourself in a situation that looks as if it’s becoming antagonistic, do not get overly defensive and do not disengage abruptly. Try to remove yourself from the dialogue in a respectful way. Ask a manager for help if things escalate.

Be diplomatic. If you want to write about the competition on social media, make sure you do so diplomatically. Make sure you have your facts straight before interacting on the topic of competitors. Before engaging, it is imperative to check with your manager to avoid commenting on anything related to legal matters, acquisitions, disputes, or any third parties (COMPANY) may be in litigation with.

Don’t make a crisis worse. Never participate in social media when the topic being discussed may be considered a crisis situation. Even anonymous comments and content may be traced back to your or (COMPANY)’s IP address. Refer all social media activity and content around crisis topics to Legal and never engage with this content on behalf of (COMPANY).

Protect your privacy. Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and (COMPANY)’s confidential information and privacy policy on social media. What content you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content you post on each platform carefully. 

This article was written by Todd Defren from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

10 Important Guidelines for Employees on Social Media [Template]

The world moves a lot faster than it used to, and the impact of digital and social media has forced the role of PR professionals to evolve dramatically. Luckily, PR automation solutions have helped teams around the world adapt to the increasingly complicated media landscape.

The growing complexity of how information travels certainly hasn’t made communications teams any less strapped for time, but AI-powered technologies can help PR pros work smarter. 

Whether it’s pitching reporters, monitoring stories, strategizing campaigns, or proving ROI, PR automation tools can help communications professionals free up time and focus on what they do best—cultivating relationships and crafting messaging that will resonate.

Let’s explore some of the ways that PR automation can unlock communications teams’ productivity through AI and data-driven strategies.

As AI has grown in the public consciousness and become more commonplace in business settings, a common worry is that the technology will ultimately replace human professionals.

Sure, there are some who feel AI in PR automation strikes at the very heart of the profession—relations. After all, you can’t (or, at least you shouldn’t) automate your relationships with people.

But, while we wouldn’t want to automate everything, automation can certainly be used to handle some of the busy work that goes along with a PR pro’s role.

When leveraged correctly, automating some tasks, like media monitoring, media outreach, social media, and reporting can save time while also improving planning and results.

“Using tools to automate our tasks helps us be smarter about our work while improving our productivity,” said Wendy Marx, president, Marx Communications. "It transforms PR from an intuitive art to a more rigorous profession backed by data and analytics.”

AI-powered technology solutions like the Meltwater Media Relations Suite can help PR professionals get more done and create a PR strategy that produces tangible business results. By automating tedious manual tasks and arming PR teams with hard data, Meltwater empowers you to build more focused media relations programs, better understand your audience, and make more informed decisions.

Let’s take a closer look at how public relations pros are incorporating automation into their day-to-day work with a few examples.

Building media lists can be, well, tedious. With automation, it can be less so.

A technology like Meltwater’s Media Relations solution features a robust media database so PR professionals can be extremely focused in their outreach and pitching. Furthermore, our software automatically enriches the database’s journalist profiles with the latest information, and is regularly adding new contacts. 

Say goodbye to hours spent building a static media list — Meltwater makes that a thing of the past.

“After 10 years of manual searches to build outreach lists as a digital PR, automated list building has cut a job that used to take three days on average per release down to one morning’s work, max,” said Corinne Card, co-founder of Full Story Media.

Beyond the list building, automation can also help PR professionals with follow-up, making it easier to optimize outreach across your entire team. A solution like Meltwater features a CRM-like tool, which helps synchronize your team’s media outreach efforts to avoid situations such as journalists being approached about the same story by two different team members. 

This also helps keep track of interactions with journalists, which makes it easier to build relationships with them because you have a record of all previous engagements. With Meltwater Media Outreach, you can also effortlessly track metrics like emails sent, open rate, bounce rate, and more. These solutions are meant to help save you time while also making your outreach more effective. 

“By tracking who opened my pitches, I can tailor my follow-ups to reporters who may have glanced at my message and got sidetracked versus a message that was unopened, whether it’s because the reporter deleted the message without reading or it’s still waiting to be read,” Adam Yosim, Senior Account Executive, Stanton Communications.

Relying on the latest technology, you and your team can spend less time on manual tasks. Solutions like Meltwater now leverage generative AI to automate press release production. By leveraging Chat GPT, Meltwater’s PR Assistant can draft an AI-written press release for you; simply give the system a natural-language explanation of what your release should be about, and the tool will draft the copy. 

Want to see firsthand how Meltwater can help automate PR processes? Just fill out the form below and an expert will be in touch!

The media landscape has only grown in its complexity over the past decade. PR professionals need to know who’s talking about their brands or clients across traditional news, social media, blogs, podcasts, online forums, and more. This begs the question—how on earth are you supposed to do that?

Luckily, modern technologies can help automate the media monitoring process, combing through all of that data to find your team the right stories you need to inform your PR strategy.

A tool like Meltwater’s Media Monitoring solution scans more than 270,000 news sources across the globe. Plus, you can choose up to 15 different social media channels to monitor at any given time.

“Automated media mention reports every morning at 7 a.m. allow me to start my day knowing what’s happening in clients’ industries,” Chloe DeYoung, PR manager, Element explains. “I get alerts for my clients, their spokespeople, industry news, and even competitor mentions.”

Modern PR technologies can automate the process of collecting “clippings” so that teams can focus more of their time on creating effective campaigns and crafting relevant messaging instead of sifting through the news of the day. Furthermore, AI can scan all of that content and analyze it for mentions, sentiment, and more.

“In my first co-op placement, I did the ‘clippings,’” says Celia Sollows, president, The Little Public Relations Company. “We received news mentions via fax, waded through several newspapers, cut out stories, pasted them on paper, then photocopied and delivered them. Word count and analysis was done manually. Today I log in to a platform and get stories plus analysis.”

Automating this process is especially important when it comes to crisis management. 

With Meltwater’s social listening solution, PR professionals can build searches for your brand name and any other relevant keywords (e.g. product names, senior executives, etc.) that are likely to be mentioned when people are discussing your business and industry. You can also set alerts to be sent out to key stakeholders when there are any unusual spikes of those terms being discussed in social media. 

Tip: Check out our blog to learn how to create media monitoring analysis reports.

PR professionals need to be able to demonstrate the success of their efforts and show conclusive evidence that public relations delivers tangible business results. Unfortunately, the reporting process can often be a pain point for many PR teams.

But new technologies can automate much of the reporting process so PR pros always have access to dynamic, up-to-date metrics on their performance.

“Automation, if used correctly, can really help track campaign metrics,” says Kristina Markos M.L.S., communications instructor, Lasell College. “Having instant access to data and metrics is key.”

A solution like Meltwater gives PR teams access to customizable dashboards via our Analyze tool. With Meltwater, you can seamlessly track a wide variety of metrics critical to PR pros, including:

Our customizable dashboards are always updated with live data from whatever timescale your team chooses, whether that’s days, months, or even year-over-year. That way, you get the latest, most relevant information in a matter of seconds.

“When it comes time to report on our work as an agency, we’re able to see all-encompassing coverage, from traditional media, to social, to influencer content,” DeYoung says. “Then we work within analytics to track website visits and paths from our efforts.”

You can use these dashboards to build automated reports that are emailed at regular intervals. Plus, fresh media coverage can be shared via email with colleagues in an automated newsletter format, ensuring that the PR team's successes are consistently highlighted within the business.

Social media automation has changed the game for many a PR pro. Tools that allow brands to schedule posts to save time and enable them to draw more traffic to their site.

While automating social media posts IS convenient, it’s still important to engage with your followers.

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