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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

Now that it’s over, we can safely say that summer 2023 was the season of blockbuster pop culture events. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, two of the biggest stars in the world, embarked on their respective world tours. Meanwhile, the highly-anticipated Barbie movie hit theaters worldwide. No matter your interests, you couldn’t go anywhere this summer without seeing or hearing talk about these three influential women (yes, even the fictional one) and their events. 

Using our social listening suite and media intelligence suite, we set out to understand which one had the biggest impact on global, digital conversations. To do so, we looked at relevant keyword, hashtag, and social media handle mentions of each event worldwide from June 1 through August 31 across blogs, broadcast media, comments, forums, news, podcasts, and 12 different social media platforms. 

But before we get to the results, let’s get on the same page. In case you somehow escaped the Barbie, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift crazes, here’s a quick rundown:

The Barbie movie — starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, directed by Greta Gerwig — premiered in theaters on July 21, making $162 million its opening weekend. Ticket sales were driven not only by the film’s star power but also by an impressive, much-talked-about marketing campaign. Relatedly, Barbie premiered the same weekend as Oppenheimer, another highly anticipated summer movie. 

Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour — supporting her hit album Renaissance — kicked off in Stockholm on May 10. Between June 1 and August 31, it traveled through major cities across Europe and the U.S., including stops in London, Toronto, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — a show highlighting all of her 10 original and three re-recorded albums — began in Glendale, AZ on March 17. Its summer tour included dates in major U.S. cities as well as four nights in Mexico City.

To discover which blockbuster captured audiences' attention the most on social media, check out our blogs on the conversation around #barbenheimer, Beyoncé and the Impact of Cowboy Carter, and The Oscars 2024: A Social Listening Analysis.

Which event generated more positive conversations?

By share of voice, the Barbie movie was the most-talked-about event worldwide, especially around its July 21 release. If you felt surrounded by Barbie chatter during that time, it’s easy to understand why by looking at how the movie’s share of voice evolved over time. 

Overall, Barbie generated more than 6 million mentions over those three months compared to Taylor Swift/Eras Tour’s 3.86 million and Beyoncé/Renaissance Tour’s 1.4 million.

Between the two biggest concert tours of the year, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour had a higher global share of voice than Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour this summer. But when you break down their shares of voice by location, a slightly different picture emerges.

The Renaissance Tour had the highest share of voice in Brazil. There, it generated a significantly higher volume of mentions than Barbie and slightly more than the Eras Tour did. 

Neither tour has visited Brazil — Eras will arrive there in November, while Renaissance is rumored to be hitting Brazil sometime in 2024 — but they are both hot topics of conversation in a country well-known for fans demanding their favorite artists tour there. Though the anti-scalping “Taylor Swift Law” was proposed in the country in June, the buzz around Beyoncé, and whether or not she will bring her tour there, won out.

Speaking of scalping, ticket sales and resales were a major topic of discussion in the global Eras Tour conversation, as shown by our platform’s Trending Themes widget.

“Tickets” was the largest trending theme, while “sale” was also significant. 

By comparison, the Renaissance tour’s biggest trending themes related to the show experience itself with keywords like “show”, “stage”, and “singer”.

Finally, Barbie’s trending themes included the opening weekend and “kids”, related to whether or not the movie appealed to children.

The Renaissance Tour may have had the lowest share of voice, but it generated the highest proportion of positive mentions. 

Meanwhile, of the three events, the Barbie movie conversation had the most mixed sentiment. Much of the negative sentiment regarded the film’s content, including conservative backlash to the movie’s feminist and LGBTQ+-inclusive themes and perspectives about gender and sexuality. Notably, the movie was banned for those reasons in Algeria, Kuwait, and Oman, and was pulled from theaters in Algeria.

There was also negative sentiment regarding feminist critiques of the movie’s portrayal of women’s lives. Finally, some of that negative sentiment was in regards to “Barbenheimer” memes that made light of the United States’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, provoking backlash in Japan.

To round up our analysis, let’s take a look at the top emojis for each event’s conversations on Twitter.

Barbie’s top emojis were, predictably, mostly pink. 

The most popular emoji, a sobbing face used to convey being overwhelmed with joy or emotion, was joined by pink hearts and the nail painting emoji, as well as two emojis not often used elsewhere, the pink bow and pink flower.

The most popular emoji for the Eras Tour was also the sobbing emoji. However, it was also joined by the Mexican flag emoji, related to her highly-anticipated Mexico City dates. 

The Renaissance Tour’s top emojis stand apart with the bee, a reference to Beyoncé’s nickname, being the most popular. Though, the sobbing emoji was also well-represented. 

Overall, the winner of summer 2023 depends on which metrics you value most. Barbie generated the most mentions, but the Eras Tour was the most-mentioned concert. Finally, the Renaissance Tour was best received. 

In the end, the biggest winners of the summer were the consumers. Each of these giant events provided opportunities for the public to participate in global pop culture conversations on a scale rarely seen in our new era of infinite choice. With the help of our social listening and analytics and media intelligence platforms, we’re able to get a clearer picture of what matters most to these overlapping audiences.

Interested in getting a better understanding of your organization’s presence and audience? Learn how Meltwater can help with a tailored product demo.

Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift

While many people are excited by the possibilities offered by new generative AI technologies, some people have understandable concerns about what it all means for their career stability. 

After all, not so long ago, it seemed improbable that computers would be able to take on many of the creative tasks that are core to marketing, such as copywriting and graphic design. Yet today, we see tools like ChatGPT, Bard, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and others doing exactly that and improving all the time.

Beyond content creation, we also see AI getting better at performing analytical tasks, such as extracting insight from marketing data or summarizing the content of large documents and huge volumes of social media posts.

So let's analyze the question: Will ChatGPT take my job?

Is it time for marketers to worry about their jobs?

According to a recent survey by CNBC, workers in the marketing and advertising industry are amongst those most concerned about AI, with 51% worried that it will take their jobs. Is this really a valid concern? 

In its 2023 Employment Outlook report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts that rapid advances in AI are likely to have a significant impact on jobs that are considered highly skilled, such as law, medicine, and finance. But at present, this is only a speculative observation, and the organization points out that right now, AI is changing jobs rather than replacing them.

This seems to reflect the reality of AI in the marketing industry right now. What happens if you fire all of your marketers and spend $20 a month on a ChatGPT+ subscription? Nothing. Somebody still has to make it all happen, and ChatGPT isn’t capable of doing anything by itself because it’s just a tool, not a skilled and experienced professional. 

For example, Meltwater recently introduced an AI writing assistant in its social media management tool, Engage, which helps speed up the creation of posts. However this tool can only help a social media manager to produce content more quickly, and the process still needs a human to guide the AI and review its output, so it’s not a replacement for a professional.

Tip: Learn how to use ChatGPT for marketing and how to use ChatGPT for social media marketing. Also, take a look at the most helpful ChatGPT marketing prompts.

Why would you still need humans in marketing?

Humans are good at adapting to changing circumstances and solving novel problems, whereas ChatGPT and other AI tools can only take on a fairly narrow range of tasks and require human oversight to perform them satisfactorily. 

As Meltwater’s Guillaume Decugis, Head of Consumer Insights, explained in a webinar on the impact of generative AI in marketing earlier this year, “None of these things can be done by AI alone. All of these high tasks require human expertise to either guide the AI or be critical of what the AI suggests. The common theme is that AI can speed the work up, or identify things that a human may have missed, but human expertise is still required.”

So, for the foreseeable future, it’s unlikely that marketers will find themselves replaced by ChatGPT or other AIs. But does that mean the new technology is completely without risk?

What could be potential downsides of ChatGPT?

In the OECD report, the authors point out that a potential downside to tools like ChatGPT is that amidst all the talk of improved productivity, there’s a danger that too much pressure will be placed on workers to deliver more than they are capable of. So, as with any new technology, it’s important to thoroughly assess its capabilities and develop a realistic idea of how it can fit into your overall business as well as your individual role. 

While most agree that the potential of ChatGPT in marketing is huge, inflated expectations only ever lead to disappointment and disillusionment, which is counterproductive and makes it more difficult to reach a point where the technology is used most effectively. This is perfectly illustrated by Gartner’s well-known hype-cycle concept, which highlights how new technologies are often over-hyped, which results in a backlash when inflated expectations are not met. 

At Meltwater we’ve been careful to integrate ChatGPT capabilities into our solutions in ways that make sense for our customers, to help make their jobs easier and more productive. We believe AI can be a force for good, and that it should be deployed with careful consideration for safety and ethics so that it helps our customers, rather than placing additional burdens on them. If we all share this approach, then nobody should have anything to fear from AI.

Will ChatGPT take my Marketing Job?

MarCom professionals have seen quite the evolution in their industry and the scope of their role over the past decade or so. On the one hand, reaching out to one’s audience has never been easier. But the complexity of the many media channels now available can make it difficult to roll out successful and cohesive marketing and communication campaigns. Understanding the definitions of paid, earned, owned, and shared media and their specific purposes is essential for modern marketing and communications teams.

In this blog post, we go over the concept of the PESO Model™ and explain how marketers can leverage the convergence of paid, earned, shared, and owned media to build integrated marketing campaigns. 

Gini Dietrich is the creator of the PESO Model™ concept, which we've outlined below. 

To learn how to leverage all four media channels, download the free Ultimate Guide to Owned, Earned, Paid & Shared Media. 

Owned, Earned, Paid & Shared Media Definitions

Leveraging Owned Media for Lead Generation

Leveraging Paid Media for Lead Generation

Leveraging Earned Media for Lead Generation

Combine All Four Media Channels For the Best Results

Integrating Earned, Owned, Shared, and Paid Media Into One Cohesive Lead-Generation Campaign

Let's start off with an overview of PESO definitions.

Owned media refers to any content that originates with you. 

Traditionally this has meant website content and newsletters, but the definition of owned media has expanded to include your brand social accounts as well.

Therefore you can split owned media into 2 categories: 

The content that you host (website and other resources such as in-app help articles)

The content that you share (newsletter & social media accounts)

Owned media is powerful because it allows brands to communicate controlled messages to their audience. The counterpart is that it is only targeting an audience who is already familiar with their company. Therefore, it is not the greatest source to acquire new customers and see their business thrive.- Angela Wiesenmüller, EMEA Marketing Director, Meltwater

For most business, your website is your most valuable owned media asset. It is where you house owned media such as blog articles designed for SEO, landing pages that illustrate who you are, and where you convert visitors into customers and clients. Your owned content strategy is a big part part of customer acquisition. 

A thorough content marketing strategy is one of the best ways to establish a long-term relationship with your audience through demonstrating thought-leadership, representing your brand values, and offering useful information on topics pertinent to your industry. 

Blogs, ebooks, and webinars are a direct extension of your brand and expertise. Other types of owned content include any in-app messaging you might offer, such as help articles.

See B2B content marketing tips and building a content marketing strategy to learn more!

If you don’t promote your content, the chances of it being seen are extremely minimal. Use your owned channels to get more eyes and interest on your brand.

Social media accounts: Social media is one of the best ways to promote content, and even though you don't have control over how content gets shared, you can control the message on your owned accounts.

Check out some of the best social media marketing examples from this year for inspiration! 

Your newsletter: Having a regular newsletter that you can send through email marketing is another extremely effective method for getting your content out into the world — while controlling the message.

Paid media refers to the media exposure you pay for on a platform or space owned by another business or brand. 

It’s a valuable way to widen your reach via print, TV, radio, and digital advertising on channels like podcasts or social.

The term "native advertising" refers to ads designed to look like regular content.

Here’s an example from Forbes, where readers can see a Paid Program tag to differentiate between regular content and sponsored content.

It is estimated that over 4 billion people are actively using social media platforms. 

This makes paid social media campaigns one of the best ways to increase your reach, generate new business opportunities, boost engagement with your brand, and drive more web traffic.

What’s more, social ads allow you to target users based on demographic criteria such as location, language, age, or even personal interests, thus making it easier for brands to only target the most relevant people.

On social media platforms, most social ads are designed to appear as native advertising and blend into the user experience. 

Paid search can help businesses to generate traffic based on what their target audience is looking for on search engines.

When targeting relevant keywords, paid search can bump your business ahead of the competition, if you’re ready to pay the price. The higher the demand on a keyword, the higher the price.

Although paid media is a fantastic way of getting your messages, products or services in front of the right audience, it is still a form of advertising, and your audience knows that it is biased.

Earned media describes the attention you receive from sources that you do not control. 

This includes websites, review sites, media outlets, podcasts, social posts, and blogs mentioning your brand.

Earned media happens when a third-party endorses your brand. And if you're doing your owned and paid media strategies right, then earned media should follow. 

Did you know 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends? In other words, organic reviews and testimonials are one of the best ways to gain credibility. 

Even if you can't pay influencers to promote your brand, they can still advocate for you and talk about your brand organically — simply because they like you. Un-prompted product reviews are one of the best examples of this.

Here’s an example that followed the release of popular video game "The Last of Us". Less than a month following the release, Google indicated over 300k results for the exact search terms “last of us part 2 review”.

YouTube as well also saw a surge in searches and video reviews.

Shared media encompasses any and all content posted to social media regarding your brand (that isn't posted by you — that of course would fall under owned media). Shared media includes posts to platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok.

These posts could come from brands, media outlets, or individuals.

Owned media is your PR paradise. You have complete control over how to create and use each piece of content you create. However, there has to be a method to the madness.

Tips to get your owned media strategy going in the right direction:

Have a clear goal for each piece of content. Are you trying to get new leads? Nurture existing leads? Increase brand awareness?

Include plenty of visual content. Videos, images, GIFs, and infographics go a long way to increasing engagement.

Write for both search engines and people. When you write a headline, ask yourself if you would click on it (and then ask if the content on the page matches what you would expect to see. No one likes click-bait and you will get penalized for it!). 

Track content performance. Attach metrics to each piece of content so you can gauge interest in the topic and make sure you're meeting your audiences expectations. See 50 content marketing metrics to get started!

Since paid media is advertising, it can be viewed with a certain amount of distrust on the part of the consumer. So it's best used as a way to increase brand awareness when expanding into new markets and getting in front of people who have never heard of you. 

Paid social media campaigns can reach those who are interested in your industry or product type.

Additionally, paying to have your blog posts distributed via sponsored posts on other sites allows your more though-leadership focused content to reach a wider audience.

Earned media can be one of the trickiest types to master. The reason is that you have far less control over this type of media. You can’t simply ask someone to plug your product or service. As the name suggests, you must earn it. But this doesn't mean you sit back and do nothing.

Achieving earned media takes masterful relationship building, and it helps if you can cultivate a large network. Start by reaching out to bloggers, journalists, podcasters, and influencers whose work you truly admire. You can connect with them on social media by commenting and sharing their posts, or simply shoot them an email to compliment an article or episode that struck you.

UGC is another form of earned media that requires great finesse and strategy on the part of your social marketing team. Encourage people to tag you, used a branded hashtag, and share their enthusiasm for your brand on social with their networks. You can do this ins several ways, but one of the most effective is a simple reshare when you've been tagged. It takes very little time or energy to let your followers know you appreciate when they give you a should-out.

Learn more about building and managing UGC as part of your marketing strategy and check out some great UGC examples!

You could also leave positive LinkedIn endorsements for those you’ve collaborated with on projects as a good tactic for keeping in touch with your network. The ol' tried and true "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" approach.

All four PESO channels aren’t only interconnected; they are interdependent.

Owned media won't get any traction unless you can leverage other distribution channels that you do not own.

Shared and earned media won’t work if you don’t have a robust owned media strategy that continues producing new content.

Paid media won’t deliver good results unless your owned media is strong and engaging.

Two examples of paid, earned, owned, and shared media working together

The interconnectivity of how these channels work together is important to appreciate for modern marketers and communications pros. Here are just a couple examples to illustrate:

Say you share center your next newsletter and social media posts around notifying your existing audience about your latest piece of content. If they like what they see, many will want to talk about it with friends and relatives (earned media) and they may share it on social media, or by forwarding your email on to people they think would also like it (shared media).

Now, let's say you share the news with thought leaders. If they find it valuable, they will likely share it with their audience. And if your message resonates, it has the potential to circulate virally through both earned and shared media channels. Here’s an example of this from LinkedIn:

A post is shared and receives a ton of engagement (15,000+ reactions and 800+ comments).

The post is then shared by another thought leader, who introduces it to a new audience who engages with the content (an additional 10,000+ reactions and 400+ comments).

If you play your cards right and use relevant hashtags to promote your content, or share it in relevant Facebook or LinkedIn groups, you can reach a much broader audience.

Example 2. You introduce a new product into the market

If you believe that your latest product is groundbreaking and deserving of press, you may choose to send a press release to industry journalists. If they are interested in the product, they'll cover your story and you'll receive earned media.

Owned, Earned, Paid & Shared Media Explained

It’s that time of year yet again. Summer is winding down, back-to-school shopping is wrapping up, and classes are going back into session. From parents to students to educators to retailers, the back-to-school season involves a wide range of audiences. We used the Meltwater Suite to learn more about what they and others were talking about most this time around. Our analysis looks at English-language back-to-school keyword mentions from June 1 through August 21, 2023. 

Mentions of “back to school”, “return to school”, and related hashtags and keywords began picking up in early July and spiked on August 21, which was the first day of school in many districts and regions. Over the entire 83 days we analyzed, back-to-school mentions increased by 114% compared to the previous period. And while that growth is significant, it is less dramatic than the growth we saw around this time last year. 

Want to know what last year’s back-to-school season looked like? Check out our 2022 back-to-school conversation blog all about it!

While many of the top keywords in this year’s conversation focus on school itself, two popular ones concern the times before and after the school day. “Morning” racked up more than 46,600 mentions, and “afternoon” reached almost 19,000 mentions. 

Top Content Cluster: Florida Bans AP Psychology

Meltwater’s AI-powered content clusters detection tool identified “Florida bans AP Psychology over gender identity, sexual orientation lessons” as the top story in this year’s back-to-school conversation. 

Advanced Placement, or AP, courses are a much-discussed, U.S. back-to-school topic this year due to the rise of proposed and passed anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-critical race theory legislation. In early August, The College Board, the non-profit that administers AP courses and exams, stated that its AP Psychology course was “effectively banned” in Florida, where teaching students about sexual orientation and gender identity has been illegal since 2022 under the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Looking beyond the back-to-school conversation to mentions of the AP Psych ban over the 83 days analyzed, they were overwhelmingly negative. 

The movement to censor books and curricula about American history, gender identity, race and racism, and LGBTQ+ communities and topics in schools will continue to be a dire issue in U.S. education. Learn more about this issue in PEN America’s report Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools.

Tip: Learn more about the Meltwater AI Spike Analysis feature!

Using Meltwater’s Author Segments tool, we zoomed in on the most common topics in the back-to-school conversation for more than 5,000 top Twitter authors of posts about education. 

The leading topic was graphic design platform Canva, which many educators use to make presentations, posters, handouts, and other materials for their classes. Several other software platforms used in education also made the top 30 list, including Adobe Photoshop Express (5th place), Edutopia (10th place), Pear Deck (12th place), Microsoft Teams (16th place), and Kahoot! (24th place). 

Of the more than 4,000 of these authors who share their occupations, nearly half are teachers, educators, lecturers, and professors. 

New hot topics and keywords arise online with each school year, but the top hashtags of the season have staying power. #Backtoschool, the top back-to-school hashtag of 2022, also tops the list this year. And #clearthelist, the third-most-popular hashtag last year, rose to the second spot for 2023. Its popularity suggests that online crowdfunding has remained a go-to for teachers needing support to stock their classrooms for the year.

This overview of the 2023 back-to-school conversation covered its biggest themes, but there are more insights to explore with each one. Interested in diving deeper into these and other topics as the school year progresses? Learn how the Meltwater Suite can help you break through the digital noise to understand what’s going on with a free demo.

The Meltwater Blog

Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift

Will ChatGPT take my Marketing Job?

Owned, Earned, Paid & Shared Media Explained

2023 Back-to-School Trending Topics

ChatGPT Social Media Marketing Life Hacks

What Is Data Mining? Meaning, Techniques, Examples & Tools

What Is a Single Source of Truth and Why Do You Need It?

9 Step Guide: How to Create & Implement a PR Campaign

Safety and Ethics in AI - Meltwater’s Approach

When Is The Best Time To Post on Instagram in The UK?

X: What Are Twitter Impressions & Reach?

The Best Press Release Distribution Services in the UK