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

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

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

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

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

The Meltwater Blog

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

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

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

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

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

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

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

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

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

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

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

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

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

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

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

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

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

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

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

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

Social Listening Blogs | Category

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

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

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

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

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

Brand Management Blogs | Category

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

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

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

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

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

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
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

What do United Airlines, Wells Fargo, and KFC have in common? They’re all world-renowned brands that have found themselves entangled in PR crises. 

In case you missed it, United Airlines injured a passenger they were trying to remove from an overbooked flight; Wells Fargo admitted to creating fake accounts to bump up sales quotas; and KFC once ran out of chicken (yes, really!). Luckily, they’re all still around to tell the tales of when their brands fell out of favor, which shows promise to other brands who might one day become embroiled in their own PR nightmares.

Recovering from a PR crisis isn’t easy, nor is there always a clear path to do so. Getting ahead of the curve is key in mitigating damage, or at the very least, gifting yourself more time to come up with a plan. 

That’s the beauty of using social listening and media monitoring for crisis monitoring — you can get real-time alerts when conversations start to boil over and start taking action before things spiral out of control.

Here’s a closer look at crisis monitoring and how to use it to save your brand’s image.

How Meltwater Can Help You Start With Your Crisis Monitoring Today

Crisis monitoring is the proactive approach to watching for potential events, conversations, or content that could negatively impact your brand image on a large scale.

We’re not talking about a bad review or an unhappy customer who vents on social media. A crisis is a game-changing event for companies that can erode shareholder value, cause sales to plummet, and destroy your reputation. 

Crisis monitoring gives you a system to keep an eye on potential problems and alert you when there might be a problem. These problems might be a viral video of a customer’s experience or opinions, an organized boycott of your products, or even a product recall. When you stay vigilant, you can respond to emergencies in a timely manner and reduce the impact on your organization.

Crises can have a direct impact on your brand’s reputation. Media monitoring tools act like smoke detectors that tell you when a fire is starting so you can quell the blaze before it spreads — or worse, destroys your company. 

A brand crisis carries greater consequences than just making you look bad. In some cases, like the one experienced by Bud Light, it can send sales and stock shares tumbling. In other cases, it might send employees packing so they can distance themselves from a company’s actions. 

Recovering from a crisis and doing damage control isn’t easy. It takes more than an apology to win back customers, particularly as more consumers are demanding authenticity from the brands they do business with. Your best option is to mitigate crises before they get out of hand. It’s better to lose a few apples than upset the entire apple cart.

Getting ahead of a crisis means having the right monitoring strategies in place. Social media is a great place to spot potential crises. For example, you can track mentions and hashtags to see what your audience is talking about. 

Complementary tools like Meltwater can automate and enhance this process. Meltwater tracks billions of data points and conversations online and offline in real time to help you get a complete picture of your brand health. The platform also analyzes consumer sentiment to learn how people are talking about your company. 

Another option is to send feedback surveys to customers, employees, and stakeholders. You can learn more about how they feel about a situation or event. Look for patterns in feedback to detect whether something bigger might be brewing.

No matter which combination of strategies you use, the right KPIs will help you gauge the effectiveness of your crisis management techniques. These KPIs include but are not limited to:

Using media monitoring tools allows you to take a data-driven approach to crisis management. This gives you concrete information so you can investigate in the right places and respond accordingly.

Monitoring tools keep tabs on things like reviews, customer sentiment, share of voice, and discussions that involve your company or industry. They give you plenty of context to know why people feel the way they do to help you decide how to enter the conversation. 

For example, the Meltwater media monitoring software lets you monitor unlimited keywords across social media, newspapers, podcasts, blogs, and other sources. You’ll get real-time alerts when a keyword sees a surge in interest. You can also build real-time dashboards to collect the metrics that matter to you and see how those metrics change over time.

You can also set up Google Alerts for your brand and related keywords. Each time those keywords are mentioned in the media, you’ll receive an email alert with links to the related content. You can see who’s talking about you, where they’re talking about you, and how much traction those publications are getting.

One overlooked area of opportunity in crisis communications is to connect with other departments within the company. For example, your customer service team might be fielding numerous complaints about a specific product, which could eventually bubble into a crisis. You can collaborate with other teams to learn more about product defects, recalls, or issues and have a response plan prepared.

Want to see firsthand how Meltwater can help your brand monitor a crisis? Fill out the form below and an expert will be in touch!

Your crisis response plan largely depends on the situation you’re trying to mitigate. Regardless of the response, crisis response plans typically follow the following steps.

From natural disasters to product failures to cyberattacks, a good response plan begins with knowing your potential threats. Make a list of worst-case scenarios so you can start planning how to handle them.

Choose tools that will help you monitor multiple channels, including social media, blogs, podcasts, and other media. You should also have tools to monitor customer feedback, surveys, and help tickets for crisis situations.

Decide the KPIs that will help you measure the effectiveness of your crisis monitoring. KPIs will guide your efforts and demonstrate your success in handling the crisis.

Identify the key people in your organization who can handle the fallout of a crisis. A crisis response team usually includes members from HR, marketing and PR, legal, and the C level. Make sure everyone on your team knows their role and responsibilities.

Keep training your crisis response team so they feel confident when a real crisis arises. They’ll know who to contact, what they should or shouldn’t say, the stakeholders to communicate with, and other actions to take. Feel free to simulate specific crises so your team can learn to think on their feet. 

Keep your crisis response plan in a safe and accessible place. It might not contain all the answers, but it at least lays out the steps you need to take. You won’t have to waste time reinventing the wheel and can instead move straight into action.

Tip: For a comprehensive rundown of how to handle a crisis, check out our free Complete Guide to Crisis Communications!

Time is of the essence when detecting and responding to potential issues. These best practices can help you improve your response, save time, and reach an ideal outcome.

Don’t wait for a crisis to happen. Always be on the lookout for issues that might impact your brand, including social media, online reviews, industry news, and direct brand mentions.

Make sure you’re monitoring the right keywords related to your brand, products, and industry. Set reminders to review and update these keywords every month or quarter, or whatever timeline makes sense to your business.

Ensure your crisis management team knows what to look for and how to respond. Regular training and drills can keep everyone prepared, plus they’ll avoid feeling caught off-guard when a real crisis arises.

Make sure company leaders are aware of potential issues and the steps being taken to address them. They can offer support and help manage public and internal perceptions.

Let each new experience be a lesson for the next one. You can also look to other brands in your industry to see how they’re responding to negative publicity or crises.

Becoming entangled in a crisis isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact, there’s a lot of opportunity in a crisis for your brand reputation to emerge stronger. It isn’t necessarily about what the crisis is, but rather how you respond that determines how others perceive you. 

Take this opportunity to align the entire organization to effectively manage the crisis. Use monitoring tools to measure sentiment and public perception during the process and see how your strategies are influencing others’ opinions. This allows you to see whether your messaging is reaching the right people and having an impact on their perceptions.

Meltwater helps you monitor your brand across the web 24/7, allowing you to respond to crises before they erupt. Our data includes online and offline channels, including print media, audio, video, social media, and more to give you the most comprehensive insights about your brand. From keyword monitoring to sentiment analysis and share of voice, you can get real-time insights and red-flag alerts to help protect your reputation.

Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below.

The Ultimate Crisis Monitoring Guide: Definition, Importance, and Methods

Paris 2024 may prove to be one of the most-watched Summer Olympics since London 2012. Case in point: It’s already generating significant buzz in the media and online. From January 1 through May 31, 2024, there were about 1.05 million posts about Paris 2024 that generated 138 million engagement actions. To better understand how organizations use high-profile events like the Olympics to transform their brand identities on the world stage, we used our consumer intelligence solution to take a closer look at Olympic sponsors and their partnerships with competing athletes.

For our full analysis, check out Paris 2024: The Art of Transposing Brand Identity into a Global Event​. In the meantime, let’s take a closer look at our findings on one important marketing aspect of the Games: brand ambassadorships.

Note: This blog analyzes data from January through May 2024 of global conversations in English and French from Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, websites, media, forums, and reviews. 

The Olympic Games has partnered with corporate sponsors since 1920, when corporate ads first appeared in the official program for the Games in Antwerp. Coca-Cola began its Olympic partnership with the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, while Omega became the Official Timekeeper for the Games in 1932. Today, those leading brands are joined by more than 30 others as Worldwide Partners, Premium Partners, and Official Partners of Paris 2024. 

Our analysis of mentions, engagement actions, and estimated reach of content by and about these brands found that sponsorship tier did not necessarily correlate with higher visibility. For example, Coca-Cola and Airbnb, two Worldwide Partners (the highest tier of sponsorship), generated comparable mention volumes to LVMH, a Premium Partner (the second-highest sponsorship tier). 

However, LVMH far outperformed all other sponsors across tiers in terms of engagement and estimated reach. With nearly 3,000 related posts which generated about 748,000 engagement actions (primarily driven by the Louis Vuitton and Dior owned social profiles), the company has succeeded in translating its luxury brands’ identities for Paris 2024 audiences.

Its campaign deems its brand ambassadors as Artisans of All Victories (Artisans de Toutes les Victoires), directly linking athletic excellence with luxury craftsmanship.

Ambassadorships with competing athletes are a primary way Olympic sponsors tie their brand identities to the excitement and global prestige of the Games. To learn more about how they are performing ahead of Paris 2024, we analyzed online and media mentions of 14 highly-discussed ambassador-athletes. 

Among them, three emerged as significant conversation drivers in terms of engagement actions:

Louis Vuitton ambassador and French rugby player Antoine Dupont

Omega ambassador and Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra

Dior ambassador and French para-cyclist Marie Patouillet

Along with generating the highest volume and estimated reach of the 14 athletes analyzed, mentions of Dupont also had the most engagement actions. Those engagement actions first spiked (by 500%) the week of March 11, just days after LVMH and Louis Vuitton announced the partnership. Louis Vuitton saw a corresponding 326% spike in engagement actions that same week. 

Patouillet had two corresponding spikes in engagement actions with Dior. The first occurred the week of February 19, when the partnership was announced. The second, smaller corresponding spike occurred the week of May 20, when Patouillet wore Dior while carrying the Olympic flame on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet. Both spikes suggest that Patouillet’s ambassadorship has been particularly valuable for the luxury brand in the lead-up to Paris 2024.


By contrast, Visa ambassador and American sprinter Noah Lyles generated spikes in engagement actions for his personal brand, but those did not correspond with spikes in engagement for Visa. This may be due to the timing of the partnership announcement, which occurred back in November 2023. As a result, when Lyles set a new personal best time as he won the 60m at the Boston Indoor Grand Prix on February 4, his boost in visibility wasn’t reflected in Visa’s engagement actions. 

Our report about the road to Paris 2024 offers a multi-faceted analysis of the Games, from examining top conversation topics to tracking sponsorship performance over time. When it comes to sponsor and athlete-ambassador visibility, we found:

The timing of sponsor brand ambassadorship announcements can have a significant impact on their success. 

Debuting partnerships in the few months before the Games begin — timed to coincide with major entertainment events or sports tournaments — can boost engagement actions and reach for both athletes and brands.

Brand Ambassadorship Lessons from Paris 2024

Many social media marketer typically starts their day by scanning their social listening platform of choice, maybe sharing a few interesting articles, thanking new followers, responding to mentions, wondering where the past two hours went, and then starting the cycle all over again.

They also need to respond to whatever requests land in their inboxes from PR and marketing teams. Sounds a bit haphazard, right? This recurring set of activities isn’t a sustainable or efficient social media workflow. 

For one thing, having a casual approach to social media activities can make it nearly impossible to go on vacation. For this reason and more, it’s important to create a social media calendar.

Get pro tips on how to run a successful social media program by studying some of the brands that are doing it right. Download our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Management today or read our Social Media Management Blog.

What Are The Benefits Of A Social Media Calendar?

What to Include in a Social Media Content Calendar

Getting Started with Creating a Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar is a working document used to schedule the social media content you will post across all of your platforms for the month, week, day, or even the time of day. 

A calendar like this serves as a communication tool for content review, putting the copy, images, and hashtags all in one place. It is often a feature of social media publishing tools and social media engagement software. 

Social media calendars are crucial because they allow you to plan ahead and make sure that you send the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.

Tip: Download our free Social Media Holidays Calendar and check out our Ultimate Guide to 2024 Social Media Holidays.

Preparing and following a content plan for planning and scheduling social media posts has many benefits, including:

Enhancing your planning and time-management

There's more, so keep reading to get your social media marketing workflow right with a content calendar.

Here's a free social media content calendar template you can use to get started!

In today’s marketing landscape, social media management goes far beyond just posting content on TikTok and Instagram. It’s become very important to ensure that your brand’s social media presence and activity coordinates with other time-sensitive content like TV ads or PR campaigns. 

Having a central place for different teams across your organization to see what social media content is planned, and when, allows you to better implement strategies to meet your social media marketing goals. 

When your content consistently appears on your audience’s feed, it becomes much easier to create two-way engagement on social media. Impressive online engagement increases your organic reach through a platform’s algorithm, which means that your posts get shown to new people, and you're more likely to get more followers. 

Another reason why you need a posting schedule is to be more organized. Who doesn't want that? When you stick to a social media content calendar, you're able to plan ahead and create larger volumes of content so you're not scrambling day by day. 

From saving you time to allowing you to align your content to your business objectives, let's explore the many advantages of planning out your content according to a social media content calendar. 

1. You can share an engaging mix of content types

Once you start documenting social media content in a calendar format, you’ll notice posting patterns that lean towards sharing certain content types significantly more often than others. 

While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever end up with a perfect balance of videos, visuals, and written content, a social media calendar makes sure you won’t leave out key content types on a regular basis. This approach also provides you with more data on the kind of content sparks the most engagement.

For example, you might share a new blog post each Wednesday and an inspiring image each Friday. Create placeholders in your social media calendar for these recurring activities so that you can effectively plan around them.

If you know you have a new blog post every Wednesday, you can plan a lot of content around it each week. 

Share the blog on your social media accounts

Plan recurring posts on social media, switching up the text that accompanies the link

2. Helps you create consistency across channels

While you don’t want to use the same tone and copy across all social channels, keeping consistent messaging in your content strategy and adopting a distinct voice will keep you on-brand, regardless of channel.

Viewing copy for each channel will prevent you from sounding like two or three different personalities. And will help avoid misfires, such as sharing conflicting information about the same event.

Ask yourself, "What’s my goal with this post?" Do you want to generate traffic, increase engagement, or share important information without engagement being the main goal? 

Make sure that you note the specific purpose of your post directly on your social media calendar. This will help you to understand which metrics you should be using to measure whether or not you’ve successfully met your objective.

Tip: Add a note detailing the type of content you are posting (e.g. event, blog, campaign, etc). 

Having this information visible ensures you plan for a good variety of content. Try to alternate between different types as much as possible. When the content is promoting your brand, it's generally best practice to avoid "sales-y" language and use engaging CTA’s.

4. Post about what your audience is interested in

When planning out your posts, it's important to know what topics are dominating the conversations online and use those trending themes as inspiration when creating your social media posting schedule.

To help you choose subjects for your social media content calendar, take a look at a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner to understand what your audience is searching for, then engage around these topics.

You can also use a social listening tool like Meltwater to uncover trending themes in your industry, which will not only help you be seen but also help boost your status as a thought leader. 

Make sure the subject of your post is clear and engaging. For example, the headline “10 easy tricks for irresistible headlines” is much more attention grabbing than “How to write a headline.” 

Keep this in mind when titling your content and drafting your captions. But don't get too “clickbaity” with your post copy! The caption you write must accurately describe the content your linking to; otherwise people will bounce off the page.

6. Incorporating important corporate initiatives 

Rather than leaving social media boosts for crucial promotions to the last minute, plan for their broadcast well in advance. When you schedule social media posts for your content, this allows you to plan for significant announcements, prepare appropriate images, create landing page URLs, etc. 

It’s not much of a vacation if you’re checking your cellphone every few minutes to monitor workplace social media accounts. But with a social media content calendar, your team has everything they need to keep the social content flowing in your absence. You can provide a detailed overview of the daily to do’s, write copy they can schedule, and ensure your team feels secure in knowing the status of social media programs, whether or not you’re there.

There are calendar, workflow, and strategy tools available for managing social media content calendars, including CoSchedule, Kapost, and Divvy HQ. However, you can get started by using a simple spreadsheet [Free Template]. 

The tool you use is less important than its ability to assist you in documenting social media activities in an easy-to-navigate manner. 

So what to include in a social media calendar? Here's some ideas:

This may seem a bit obvious, but the days of the week can also directly inspire your social media content calendar. Certain days of the week even inspired their own hashtags. Think about #TBT (Throwback Thursday), #WCW (Woman Crush Wednesday) and, of course, #TGIF!

When planning your content, organize it by date and time. This may seem intuitive, but many professionals forget to do this and lose sight of their weekly, monthly and daily routines. Planning your social content calendar chronologically ensures you can see the frequency of your posts at a glance, and identify the times that work best for your audience.

Each social media channel has its own characteristics, which is why some users favor one platform over another. For instance, on X, users log in to get real-time updates on the topics or events that they care about, whereas users on Facebook are engaging with content that tends to be more evergreen. 

Because of this, you need to adapt the copy of your posts to the different platforms. For example, a food brand would use Facebook to post a recipe, but turn to Twitter to make a PR crisis comms announcement.

Manually copying and pasting the hashtags for all of your posts can be a tedious task and you run the risk of getting lazy and using the same hashtags for all your posts. Creating a space in your social media calendar to save the hashtags you’d like to use for important subjects ensures consistent or varied use of hashtags and of course, saves you time!

To create your own social media posting schedule, you can start with a simple spreadsheet. However, using a community management tool will allow you to create a more visible, practical and actionable calendar through which you can plan, schedule and publish your posts. 

If you’re ready to get started with your own social media calendar and need a tool that you and your team can use to start implementing the tips above, get in touch with us using the form below for a free demo of our social media management platform. Plan, edit and publish your posts in a collaborative environment, and maintain an overview of your upcoming content. 

To read more about how to run a successful social media program, download our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Management today.

Access your free social content calendar template here!

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar

OK, let’s be real: “social media audit” doesn’t exactly sound like an enjoyable prospect in the field of social media management. In fact, it sounds a bit scary. Like someone knocking on your door with a menacing badge, here to audit your accounts and give you a laundry list of things you need to do to fix them.

So let’s call it something a wee bit more fun like social media spring cleaning! 🧹

A social media audit is a great opportunity to revisit the nuts and bolts of the social media machine that you’ve built for your brand and make sure everything is still shipshape.

Our Social Media Audit Checklist outlines the 10 steps required to conduct a thorough audit. Download the free template to check each step off as you make your way down the list.

Tip: Learn how to perform a full content audit.

A social media audit is a check-in opportunity for you to understand what’s happening on each of your social media channels. This is the time you set aside to:

Learn what’s working and what’s not about your current strategy

Use a social listening tool to check what your competitors are posting on social media

Refresh your profiles with new cover photos, descriptions, etc.

Analyze metrics and view the performance from the past weeks, months, or year

And, finally, update your governance structure and admin permissions  

One of the main goals of an audit is to determine what’s working and what’s not. (Note: your conclusions should be based on any previous social media KPIs you had in place. If they don’t fit anymore, use this audit to make updates). 

During the process, you’ll learn how you’re measuring up on social through analyzing engagement metrics like impressions, comments, and shares of your content. You may also want to take this time to set up a Google Analytics report to look at how much traffic or goal completions are being generated by visitors directed to your website from social.  

You can also use a social media audit to check who you’re following and do some spring cleaning there as well. The general rule is you want to be following fewer accounts than are following you. 

Maybe you’re still following an old partner that you’re no longer in business with. Or your boss's wife’s cousin's Instagram that is devoted entirely to her cat. 😳 Look, we know Snuggles is adorable, but does he fit with your brand? (If so, lucky you!).

A social audit is also good for refreshing your profile's look & feel, checking on your competitors, auditing permissions, setting up analytics reports, and more. 

The best place to start a social media audit is with the numbers. 

The Meltwater Blog

The Ultimate Crisis Monitoring Guide: Definition, Importance, and Methods

Brand Ambassadorship Lessons from Paris 2024

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar

How To Do a Social Media Audit in 10 Easy Steps

4 Insights from Our Healthcare Report

5 Brands Making Waves on Reddit

10 Important Guidelines for Employees on Social Media [Template]

Designing and Refining Your Brand Identity

Understanding Marketing ROI: Definition & Measurement

Making an Impact With Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Leveraging Social Media Insights

Social Media Research: A Comprehensive Guide