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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Guide

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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?

Most communications and marketing teams already work inside an AI assistant every day. The open question is no longer whether your team can use AI. It's whether the AI is working from data that matters.

For a lot of organizations, the answer is "not yet." Generic assistants like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot answer from whatever they can crawl on the open web. They're fluent and fast, but they're missing the data and signals that actually drive decisions: your brand, your market, the competitor who moved this morning, and the judgment your team has spent years building around which sources matter and how to cut out the noise.

The Meltwater MCP closes that gap. It brings trusted, real-time Meltwater intelligence into the AI tools your team already uses, so the answer you get is grounded in coverage you can stand behind. This is what we built, and below is what we've learned watching customers put it to work over the last year.

Why organizations want Meltwater data inside AI workflows

How customers are using the Meltwater MCP today

What we've learned from early implementations

Frequently asked questions about the Meltwater MCP

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open industry standard for connecting AI tools to data and to other tools. Think of it as shared plumbing the industry is adopting, not a product of ours. A standard like this matters because it gives AI assistants one consistent way to reach trusted business data, instead of a one-off integration for every source which breaks as soon as anything changes.

The Meltwater MCP is how your trusted Meltwater intelligence connects directly into the AI assistants your team already uses, like Claude and ChatGPT. You ask a question in plain language inside the assistant, and Meltwater answers with real-time, cited intelligence, scoped to the products in your plan.

Access grows with the Meltwater products you subscribe to. Your existing Meltwater searches and assets aren't left behind. They come with you, and anyone with the right permissions can keep building on them right inside Claude or ChatGPT. The better that foundation, the better the answers it returns.

This isn't new ground for us. Meltwater has supported MCP since 2025, when many teams were still hearing the term for the first time. Everything in this release is built on what we've learned running it with customers in the year since.

There's a workaround teams use today, and for the power users who know exactly what they need, it works. Someone logs in to Meltwater, runs the workflow, exports the data, and rebuilds the report by hand before AI ever sees it. 

The trouble is what that manual step costs. It's brittle: each export is a snapshot, static to the moment it's pulled, and in communications the story almost never sits still. A new outlet picks it up, the narrative shifts overnight, a competitor responds, and the report is already stale, so the work starts again. 

It's also risky and slow. Rebuilding intelligence by hand invites errors into something leadership is about to read, and it spends senior comms time on assembly and proofreading instead of the judgment, narrative, and timing only your team can bring. 

Your team already holds the most valuable part of the context: the category knowledge, the relationships, the instinct for tone and timing. What's been missing is a clean way to bring trusted, current intelligence into the tools where that expertise already lives. That's the value of the MCP: your people stay the experts, and the data meets them where they work. 

Conversational media monitoring. Brand and topic tracking asked the way you'd ask a colleague, grounded in current news and social coverage.

Sentiment and narrative reads on demand. A quick overview of how a story is landing, with the coverage cited behind it.

First-pass executive briefings. A leadership-ready overview built from what's being said about you right now, ready for a human to refine.

Early-issue awareness. Spotting an emerging issue as it develops, so the team has more time to decide how to respond.

Reporting that stays current. Coverage and share-of-voice updates assembled with far less manual work.

In every one of these, a person still drives and edits. The MCP takes the repetitive assembly off their plate; the judgment stays with the team.

Reading tips: Meltwater MCP prompts you can use, 10 real-world ways, comms teams are using the Meltwater MCP

This is the part worth reading twice, because it's where a year of real use shows. The best use cases start with a business problem, not the technology. 
The teams that get value name a specific job first: cut reporting time, improve executive visibility, move faster on competitive intelligence. "AI for AI's sake" creates more noise. Better inputs lead to better answers. The MCP doesn't replace good search hygiene and governance. It rewards them. Clean, well-maintained searches produce sharper answers.

The biggest wins come from workflow integration. Value shows up when intelligence appears where teams already work, in the assistant they have open, rather than in a new tool they have to remember to visit. 

Human expertise stays essential. One early customer, a global consumer goods company, put it plainly: "We're not software experts. We sell ice cream." They were right, and they shouldn't have to be experts to get a trusted answer. The MCP accelerates the analysis. It doesn't replace the strategic call. 

Governance matters more as usage scales. It's one governed connection across the Meltwater portfolio, with authentication and permissions built in, so teams gain reach while the organization keeps control. 

What makes these answers dependable is the content underneath them. Meltwater ingests more than 1.5 billion documents a day across news, social, and web, in more than 240 languages, with the structure and historical depth behind it. The MCP grounds every answer in that licensed coverage and scopes it to what each customer subscribes to. Narrative answers cite their sources, so your team can verify what they share and stand behind it at the leadership level. Learn more about Meltwater MCP. 

The part we're most excited about is the loop this creates. Customers understand their business context better than anyone, and the more they bring it, the more we learn about the answers that matter. We've already seen the spread: at one early pilot customer, what began with a single analyst team grew across the company, with employees running their own internal hackathons on top of it. That feedback makes the Meltwater MCP better for every team that uses it. 

The Meltwater MCP connects your trusted Meltwater intelligence directly into AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT, so your team can ask questions in plain language and get real-time, cited answers, scoped to the products you subscribe to. 

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI tools connect to external data and tools through one consistent interface.

How is MCP different from a traditional integration?

A traditional integration connects one system to one other system. MCP gives AI assistants a standard way to reach trusted data, so the same connection works across the tools your team already uses.

What data can AI assistants access through the Meltwater MCP?

Depending on a customer's subscription and permissions, assistants can access Meltwater news and social coverage and the related analytics in their plan.

Yes. Access is signed in through your existing Meltwater subscription, and answers are scoped to the data each customer is authorized to use.

Most teams start with one high-value workflow, connect through the assistant they already use, and expand from there as they see results.

The benefits of bringing Meltwater data into AI workflows.

What Is the Meltwater MCP? Lessons From Real AI Workflows

Tom Roberts, Head of Digital Communications at Barratt Redrow, discusses how monitoring AI assistants reveals the sources shaping brand reputation, enables communicators to replace assumptions with actionable evidence, and shows why owned content, consumer platforms and forums may influence AI-generated answers more than earned media.

1. What was your personal PR highlight of 2026?

2. What might surprise comms leaders in the next two years?

3. What is something you believe about AI in the communications industry that some communication professionals probably would disagree with?

4. What is the biggest benefit of using the Meltwater platform for your team?

1. What was your personal PR highlight of 2026? 

My highlight this year was building something rather than launching something. Since the spring I have put together a monitoring programme that tracks how AI assistants describe our brands and our sector, running a large set of questions across ten of the main models on a repeating cycle. It now sits on tens of thousands of answers.

I expected a scoreboard. Are we visible, are we described fairly, how do we compare, and so on. What we got instead was a list of things I could go and fix, not in a quarter and not in a strategy paper, but that week. Some of the citations and patterns were uncomfortable. Some of it was just strange. There are sources shaping what people are told about us that I would never have thought to look at, and would not have found by any other route.

Half the value has been in learning how these systems respond to different questions. Ask something broad and you can receive a diplomatic answer that reveals very little. Put two options side by side, require a choice and then test the pattern across a large dataset, and you begin to see distinctions that a single open question can obscure. Working out how to get the best results turned out to be as useful as the answers.

The bigger prize has been internal. Communications and Corporate Affairs teams spend a lot of time arguing from judgement. Turning up with a dataset the business didn’t have, on a subject everyone is already curious about, changes that conversation. It has opened up conversations that were not happening before, and it means I have answers where I used to have a view.

For a fraction of the cost of a campaign, it has changed what I can see and what I can act on. I would not want to go back to assumptions.

That AI is not the rescue of earned media, however comforting that idea may be to those of us who have built our careers in PR.

The line I keep reading is that because assistants read the press, PR matters more than ever, local titles matter more than ever, and the press release is back. I would certainly like that to be true. I have spent my career in and around PR and I am a huge believer in its value. Quality coverage still does what it has always done. It shapes what people think and it sticks in the mind, and will continue to have a vital role to play.

This framing is just not what shows up in the data, however. When I look at what actually feeds the answers people are given about our sector, earned coverage is not the engine. In our sample, our own pages are cited more often than the national, regional and trade press put together, on six of the eight assistants that cite their sources at all. Ahead of both sit consumer advice sites and forums, with review platforms close behind along with a good deal of material nobody would ever think to monitor. Within our data there is a single post in a public online group, for example, that has been cited as a source by six different assistants, across nearly a hundred different questions, on nearly every day we have sampled. Previously I would have had no way of knowing or tracking that.

Looking at this from another perspective does reveal better news. There is far more you can do to improve the material these answers are built from than most communicators assume. What you publish, how you word it, where you host it and how it is structured can all affect whether it makes it into AI’s canon, by which I mean the pool of material these systems keep returning to when someone asks about you. I have watched our own wording travel into answers almost intact. This enables us to make sure the accurate, useful version of the information is there to be found.

So the opportunity is not more announcements. It is treating what you already control as source material for machines as well as copy for people.

This framing is just not what shows up in the data, however. When I look at what actually feeds the answers people are given about our sector, earned coverage is not the engine. Our own pages are cited more often than the national, regional and trade press put together. Ahead of both sit consumer advice sites, review platforms and forums, along with a good deal of material nobody would ever think to monitor. Within our data there is a single post in a public Facebook group, for example, that has been cited as a source by five different assistants, across nearly a hundred different questions, on every single day we have sampled. Previously I would have had no way of knowing or tracking that.

Looking at this from another perspective does reveal better news. This is far more influenceable than most communicators assume. What you publish, how you word it, where you host it and how it is structured all affect whether it makes it into AI’s canon, by which I mean the pool of material these systems keep returning to when someone asks about you. I have watched our own wording travel into answers almost intact.

I have been a Meltwater client for the best part of eight years, first for media monitoring and then also for social listening. The platform I use now is a long way from the one I started on.

GenAI Lens is the part that changed what I could do. The value is volume and frequency: a large question set across ten models, refreshed on a regular cycle, and exportable so I can interrogate it properly. Scale is what turns an interesting idea into evidence, and evidence is what gets you a hearing internally.

The biggest benefit is not any single view, it is being able to ask what AI assistants are saying about our brands and then, in the same place, ask why. When something moves, I can look across at what the press has been doing, or a spike on social, or a Reddit thread gathering pace, and see whether they line up.

If I had to quantify it, it would not be hours saved. It would be that I now have answers to questions I could previously only have an opinion about.

Tom Roberts is Head of Digital Communications at Barratt Redrow, with responsibility spanning digital communications strategy, corporate channels and online reputation. Before joining Redrow in 2017 as the first hire into its newly established communications team, he held marketing roles across the education, professional certification, sports and leisure sectors. Tom holds an MBA from Aston Business School, where his research examined how online reviews influence purchasing decisions in UK housebuilding. His current focus includes understanding how media, digital platforms and AI-generated answers shape corporate reputation and customer decision-making.

Conversations with Comms Leaders #8/9: Tom Roberts (Barratt Redrow)

Tom Hunt, Managing Director at Antidote, explains how client-facing AI tools, real-time measurement and Meltwater’s customisable analytics enable small communications teams to compete at scale, while strategic judgement, storytelling instinct and knowing when to stay quiet remain the true differentiators.

Getting our AI tool stack into the hands of clients rather than keeping it behind the scenes. We spent the year turning capabilities we'd built for internal use into things clients can actually see and use, including live dashboards that pull earned, social and search data into one place, accessible whenever they want rather than waiting for a monthly report. We closed the fiscal year with double-digit revenue growth on 24/25, which suggests the appetite for this approach is real. The best part has been how much sharper the conversations with clients have become when everyone is looking at the same data.

How much clients start expecting from a small team. The tooling that used to require scale is getting cheap enough that headcount is no longer a proxy for capability, and I think clients will work that out faster than the industry expects. What that rewards is the consultancy and the instinct. 

Knowing how to build a story and why, who will care, and when to stay quiet. Judgement has always been the hardest thing to put a price on, and I think clients are about to start paying for it directly rather than as something bundled into the hours.

I think AI's most valuable contribution to comms is measurement rather than content creation, and I don't think the industry behaves as though that's true despite everyone jumping on the GEO bandwagon. 

Attribution in PR is still difficult, and for some clients it doesn't work at all, because the audiences are so niche and the buying cycles run for months (or years). Thanks to AI, we have far more visibility. 

We can properly map the journey, understand who engaged with which piece of content and where they went next, and then test the arguments that landed against those that didn't. That analysis shapes the strategy, and the strategy then shapes everything we do externally (and so on and so forth). 

Most of the industry still treats measurement as the thing you present at the end of the month or during the quarterly in-person with the client. I'd rather it was informing where to go next. 

How customisable the platform has become. The ability to spin up live dashboards to share with clients from day dot, combined with new integrations like MCP that we're keen to build on, has changed what we can credibly offer. We're a six-person agency pitching against groups many times our size, and insights and analytics that would once have needed a dedicated resource now run continuously in the background. Having AI-powered analysis to riff with on top of that has made the whole platform genuinely powerful. What interests me most is where it goes next: the more open platforms like Meltwater become, the less our size has anything to do with what we can deliver.

I've spent the last fifteen years spearheading communications programmes for technology companies - from hyper-growth trailblazers like Unity and Quantinuum, to Silicon Valley behemoths like Google and Intel. I'm obsessed with the intersection between human ingenuity, data and technology.

I have been agency-side for my entire career - holding senior positions at We. Communications and most recently, Cognito where I was Director, Head of Fintech and Head of Insights & Analytics. 

Conversations with Comms Leaders #7/9: Tom Hunt (Antidote)

Sara Palmbush, PR and Communications Manager at Fourthline, discusses the company’s planned merger with Veridas, the enduring power of earned media and human storytelling in the age of AI, and how Meltwater supports efficient brand measurement, media reporting, and journalist outreach.

This month was a major PR & Communications moment for Fourthline as we announced the signing of a merger agreement with another digital identity provider, Veridas. The KYC (Know-Your-Customer) and AML (Anti-Money-Laundering) technology space has been in demand because of the growing need both regulatory and social, to identify people as humans and to make sure those humans are who they say they are. You can imagine how valuable this is in a world of AI, bots and deepfakes.

We’ve been chipping away from a communications perspective on getting the word out about what Fourthline does, its role in creating trust in the digital world, and it’s always rewarding when there is a big PR moment that generates the kind of interest you’ve been working towards.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the way earned media and thought leadership have been validated by LLMs. As a former journalist and someone who has worked in the publishing industry, it was disheartening to see the way ‘content’ was taking the place of well-reported and researched stories. It’s also interesting to see how despite everything becoming digital, we have never collectively been communicating more. As new tools are invented, we will continue to use new ways of communicating, but like I always say, people aren’t interested in things. People are interested in people. That will never change. Prediction: People and their stories will still be here in the next two years.

I love using AI for research and reporting. However, I think it’s dangerous to use AI too often for writing content. I believe it comes at the cost of creativity. We will all sound polished, sure. But we will become less interesting. I got into the business of communicating because I like humans. Our task is to stay human.

We use it for our brand measurement and our media reporting, as well as media outreach. It definitely saves time for us in creating and sharing reports and insights and has been a great way to find the right reporters for pitching.

With more than 20 years of experience in public relations, communications strategy, and campaign execution, Sara Palmbush leads PR and Communications initiatives at Fourthline, one of Europe's leading KYC and AML technology providers, serving customers including Revolut, N26, Trade Republic, and Rabobank.

Drawing on deep expertise in thought leadership, corporate communications, and strategic storytelling, Sara develops impactful narratives that strengthen brand positioning and support broader business and marketing objectives.

Before moving into communications, Sara built a career as a technology journalist, providing a unique editorial perspective and an extensive network of media contacts across EMEA and North America. This background has enabled her to translate complex ideas into compelling stories that resonate with journalists, stakeholders, and customers alike.

Conversations with Comms Leaders #6/9: Sara Palmbush (Fourthline)

In the fifth edition of “Conversations with Comms Leaders,” Michael Scheuer, SVP Corporate Communications at the Freudenberg Group, discusses trust as the most important currency in a communications landscape shaped by AI, the rise of AI assistants as a new force in reputation management, the shift towards smaller communications teams with greater strategic influence, and the importance of global real time data for rapid decision making.

My highlight was not a specific project, but a realisation: Trust is once again the most important factor in communications. In 2026, almost anyone could suddenly use AI to produce an unlimited volume of content. As a result, credibility became the truly scarce resource. Organisations that communicated through authentic stories, genuine experts, and a clear point of view achieved far greater impact than those that simply produced more content. Communications is no longer about production. It is about trust.

The speed at which traditional search engines will lose relevance and be replaced by AI assistants. Until now, we have created content for two audiences: people and search engines. In the future, there will be a third audience: AI systems themselves. The key question will no longer be whether we appear on the first page of Google, but whether an AI assistant identifies our company as a relevant source at all. This will fundamentally change our work. Reputation will no longer be shaped solely by the media. It will increasingly be shaped by the training data and knowledge environments used by these assistants.

I believe that communications departments will become smaller, but significantly more influential. Those who use AI effectively will spend less time on production and have more time for their core leadership responsibilities: providing context and direction. AI will simply perform many tasks better than we can. Press releases, monitoring reports, translations, summaries, and speech drafts will increasingly be produced automatically.

At the same time, AI makes effective communications more important, not less important. Strategy, sound judgement, crisis awareness, cultural understanding, and the ability to build trust cannot be automated. In the future, our value will therefore be measured less by our output and more by the quality of our judgement.

For us, the greatest benefit is not monitoring itself, but the speed at which information can be turned into decisions. We have global media monitoring, social listening, alerts, and reporting within a single system.

The international perspective is particularly valuable to us. For a global company such as Freudenberg, it is no longer sufficient to focus solely on the German media landscape. We need to understand how topics are being discussed in North America, China, Europe, and Latin America, as close to real time as possible.

Michael Scheuer is SVP Corporate Communications at the Freudenberg Group. Born in Frankfurt, he began his career by completing vocational training in banking at Commerzbank. He subsequently studied communications, political science, sociology, and media law at the University of Munich. Rather than pursuing a traditional career in journalism, he chose corporate communications and gained experience in Germany and internationally at Siemens before joining Freudenberg in 2012. Today, he is responsible for the company’s global communications.

Conversations with Comms Leaders #5/9: Michael Scheuer (Freudenberg)

Lena Köhne, Head of Communications at Surventis, discusses the successful brand launch following the company's carve-out from BASF, the growing demand for fast, precise, and authentic communications, and how AI and data driven practices can enable communications teams to produce less content while achieving greater impact.

The carve-out of Surventis from BASF and its launch as an independent company was the most defining project of my career to date. Within eight months, we created and introduced an entirely new brand, rebuilt the website in three months, and elevated a corporate identity with more than 130 years of history to a new level.

Even we were surprised by the results from the first few weeks: a total media reach of more than one billion within the first seven days, a LinkedIn engagement rate 217% higher than that of our main competitors in the coatings market, and almost 5,500 colleagues participating in the launch events either in person or online. Within just a few months, a corporate division became an independent and highly visible brand. As a communications professional, this is the kind of project you live for. Seeing colleagues around the world embrace and celebrate the new brand makes us incredibly proud as a team.

Two things in particular. First, how quickly speed, precision, and authenticity will all become standard expectations. Response times are expected to decrease without compromising the depth of the content — and every piece of communication also needs a core, a heart that is genuine and distinctive, not just a generic patchwork of text fragments. This is exactly where it gets tight, because resources aren't growing at the same pace. Quite the opposite — we need smaller teams to develop significantly further so they're fit for these new ways of working.

Second, communications relating to change and restructuring will become part of everyday work for every team rather than an exceptional situation. Those who lack this capability will face significant challenges in the years ahead.

 AI will take over most writing tasks, and I see that as a positive development. I do not share the concern that this will result in organisations losing their voice. A distinctive voice comes from a clear position and consistent principles, not from typing every word manually.

I take a more critical view of how the time saved through AI is being used. Most teams are currently producing more content in less time. The real value lies in creating less but better content and working in a much more connected way. Strong writing skills alone are no longer sufficient. What communications professionals need above all is a mindset built around data sources and how to manage them: How do I feed AI the right background knowledge? What factual foundation do I need, and where do I source it? Without that, even the best AI stays mediocre.

This requires a very different range of capabilities. An excellent understanding of language and nuance remains essential, but it must be complemented by strong analytical and project management skills.

Naturally, we want to understand the impact of our work. Here too, the key benefits include connected collaboration across the team, access to data, targeted distribution, and the time saved through daily monitoring. This is vital not only during a year of significant change, such as a carve-out, but a compass for good work.

Lena Köhne is Head of Communications and a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Surventis, an international coatings technology company headquartered in Münster. In 2026, she was responsible for the complete brand and communications launch of Surventis following its carve-out from BASF. Previously, she led global communications at BASF Coatings and at SMS group, a global mechanical and plant engineering company.

Conversations with Comms Leaders #4/9: Lena Köhne (Surventis)

In this edition of “Conversations with Comms Leaders,” Julia Völzke, Head of Global Media Relations & Reputation Management at Rhenus Logistics, discusses the growing importance of trust and human judgement in an information landscape shaped by AI, the evolution of media relations at Rhenus, and the use of Meltwater to conduct research more efficiently.

2026 has been a challenging year due to geopolitical tensions, trade conflicts, and economic volatility, and it is likely to remain so. In this environment in particular, communications plays a vital role. We explain developments, provide context, and seek to offer guidance.

My personal highlight is therefore not a single campaign, but the evolution of our media relations at Rhenus. Over the past few years, we have deliberately adopted a more open approach to communications. In 2026, we have seen just how far we have already come. A few years ago, we still had to actively persuade journalists to speak with us. Today, many of them approach us directly to gain our perspective on developments in the logistics industry.

Seeing my colleagues engage with journalists every day, provide transparent context for complex developments in our industry, and give the company a strong and reliable voice is both rewarding and a source of great pride in the team.

What surprises me most is the speed at which AI is changing the rules of the game. It is no longer merely about creating content efficiently. It is also about how information is found and perceived.

The growing importance of trust is not a new insight for those of us working in communications. However, I believe that this issue will become even more relevant beyond our profession over the next few years. Unfortunately, today’s information landscape is often characterised by misinformation, polarisation, and a steadily increasing volume of content generated by AI.

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