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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

Wondering how the 2023 March Madness hype played out online? As the college basketball tournament gains more fans each year, the digital conversations surrounding it hold a lot of insights for sports industry brands. We used our social listening solution to look at what NCAA Division I basketball tournament topics got everyone’s keyboards clattering. 

Tip: Read our social listening analysis of the 2024 tournament.

March Madness is the annual championship basketball tournament for teams in the top competitive tier of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the main governing body of college sports in the United States, as well as some schools in Canada. 

Happening primarily during (you guessed it) March, the games draw millions of television viewers every year. This year’s women’s Final Four was ESPN’s most-watched ever, drawing 4.5 million viewers per game and rocketing to 9.9 million viewers for the final. On the men’s side, about 9.4 million people watched each of the semi-final games. (Final numbers for the men’s final were not yet released as of this writing.)

Here’s some of what our social and media intelligence analysis found about the online conversation about March Madness this year. 

From when the women’s and men’s tournaments began in mid-March through the finals on April 3 and 4, there were nearly 4 million mentions of March Madness-related keywords, phrases, and hashtags. About 170,000 of those came from Texas (where the finals took place), which racked up more mentions during the tournament than any other state. It was followed by California — home to the second-place men’s team, San Diego State — and Florida — which had two teams in the men’s Final Four, Florida Atlantic University and the University of Miami.

Interestingly, Ontario had the 23rd-most March Madness mentions, ahead of Alabama and New Jersey, which both had teams that advanced to the men’s Sweet 16 round. This may be because, according to the CBC, more Canadian athletes competed in March Madness this year than ever before. Laeticia Amihere, who hails from Mississauga, Ontario, even made it to the Final Four with the South Carolina Gamecocks. 

Learn more about the rise of satellite fan bases in our 2023 Industry Snapshot: Sports.

Following the trend of television viewership, there were more online mentions of the men’s tournament than the women’s. However, as the series advanced into its final games, there were three days on which the conversation about the women’s tournament surpassed the men’s, including during the women’s final game on April 2. 

Interestingly, though the conversation of the women’s tournament was smaller, it included more mentions of the words “assists” and “rebounds”. This could suggest that people are more likely to talk about specific plays and teamwork in women’s college games, while conversations about men’s college games are more likely to mention shots and points.

Though the men’s tournament generated more mentions than the women’s, Iowa Hawkeyes point guard Caitlin Clark was mentioned 93,000 times during March Madness, more than any other player, man or woman. On the day of and after the women’s final game, conversations about Angel Reese, point guard on the LSU Tigers winning team, began to catch up with 31,000 mentions compared to 36,000 of Caitlin Clark, whose team came in second. 

When it comes to schools, the home of the champion men’s team came out on top. There were 180,000 mentions of UConn (University of Connecticut) and another 35,000 of Huskies, the school’s mascot and team name. 

Learn more about the top athletic entities in our sports industry report.

Often the top sponsor of March Madness teams, Nike and its brand Jordan sponsored 40 men’s teams and 44 women’s teams this year, according to the Sports Business Journal. That spread paid off in the highly-watched final games, with both women’s teams and the champion UConn men’s team sporting the famous swoosh on their jerseys. Meanwhile, UConn’s opponents, the San Diego State men’s team, displayed the arguably just as famous Jumpman logo. By comparison, Under Armour sponsored nine women’s teams and 11 men’s teams, while Adidas sponsored 17 men’s teams and 15 women’s teams. 

With so much visual representation on the court, it’s safe to say that Nike was the brand that won March Madness. Our logo detection comparison analysis shows just how large that win was. Throughout the tournament, Nike’s logo was featured more than those of the other sponsors in images across news, blogs, and Reddit. 

Without a doubt, March Madness 2023 shows just how much attention and interest college sports draw in North America. With Meltwater's social intelligence solutions,  marketers and brands are better able to get in on the conversation.

Interested in learning more about rising sports industry trends across the world? Download our 2023 Industry Snapshot: Sports to get the latest data and insights.

March Madness 2023: Top Conversation Topics and Trends

You have customers to keep, competitors to crush, and stakeholders to please. One way to satisfy all of the above is to develop a customer experience strategy that keeps customers coming back.

Customer experience (CX) is the sum total of how customers engage with your brand and the impressions they receive from those interactions. CX has become a core focus for brands in recent years, and for good reason. Data shows that two-thirds of companies have made customer experience marketing (CXM) a competitive advantage, up from 36% in 2010. And those that do customer experience well tend to outperform those that haven’t made CX a priority.

To get your customer service goals in line, best-in-class brands should develop a customer experience strategy to serve as a guide. This process of customer experience design acts as a framework for designing intentional experiences to improve every interaction. 

Here’s how companies can develop their own customer experience strategy and turn CX into a competitive advantage.

How to Develop a Customer Experience Strategy: Framework

Enhancing Your Customer Experience Strategy with Meltwater

We define a customer experience strategy as an intentional roadmap leading to better customer experiences. It requires marketers and CX teams to think like a customer and carefully plan, design, and execute how a brand interacts with customers across all touchpoints. 

There's nothing like a bad experience to send your best customers packing. A good customer experience doesn't happen on its own. Rather, it's the byproduct of intentionality, customer engagement, and a customer experience vision. A positive customer experience requires a customer-first mindset and insight into what your customers need and want from you. These are the most basic building blocks of a winning CX.

The ultimate goal of a CX strategy is to enhance customer experience and perceptions in ways that matter to the customer. By creating this customer experience framework, brands can make better and more intentional decisions about how they present themselves during customer-facing interactions.

Think of all the ways a customer interacts with your brand. Maybe they find you via Google search or social media. They might read some online reviews before reaching out to you. Some might opt-in to receive your email newsletters or SMS text messages. Or maybe they find you in the real world by walking by your storefront or seeing your brand at an event.

All of these experiences take very different approaches, but you need each of them to support the brand image and outcomes you want others to have.

Sometimes, you have real-time involvement in shaping the experience because you’re face-to-face with the customers (in-store, in-person, live chat, etc.). Other times, customers are experiencing your brand in their own ways and on their own schedule. However your customer base discovers and engages with you, you need to present your brand in a way that’s consistent and sets the right expectations.

That’s where a customer experience framework is so valuable. It includes all of the different ways a customer might engage with your brand as well as the action steps you need to take to create meaningful experiences. 

Once you know where customers are experiencing your company and its products or services, you can decide how you want those experiences to look and function.

Your strategy should include customer-facing roles as well as roles outside of customer service. Everyone associated with the organization, from employees to vendors to influencers to the C-suite, is responsible for embodying and protecting the brand. When you collect feedback from other roles within the company, you’ll be able to create a more well-rounded CX framework.

Learning how to transform customer experience and brand perceptions can be game-changing for brands. Let’s explore what goes into the customer experience optimization process, step-by-step.

1. Review the Current Customer Service Landscape

To create a customer experience map based on your customer journey, you first need to know your starting point.

Conduct a customer experience analysis. Examine how customers are currently experiencing your company. Make a list of all the different touch-points, including those where you speak directly to customers and ones where customers “self-serve.”

You should also explore customer service KPIs that indicate success. For example, your Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer churn rate, online reviews and ratings, and similar metrics may reveal some clues about what you’re doing well and what you can improve.

Customers will experience different touchpoints with your company based on where they are in their journey. For example, a customer who isn’t familiar with your brand but needs what you offer is more likely to discover you via search. Someone who has already bought from you may go directly to your website or see you in their inbox.

Creating a customer journey roadmap will help you visualize all the different ways customers engage with you. This map should outline the different channels a customer is likely to use, along with their pain points at each stage.

Developing a customer journey roadmap makes it easier to identify potential areas of friction. Once you know where friction exists, you can find solutions to eliminate friction and create better experiences.

Using a customer experience journey template can make this process easier and more thorough. Here's a great customer experience map example to get you started:

3. Learn More about Your Customers’ Expectations

What your customers need and expect from you should play into your customer experience strategies. There’s nothing quite as impactful as giving the customer exactly what they want, and they’ll remember you for it — especially when they don’t get their expectations met by other brands.

All customers expect brands to be courteous and helpful and to provide the basic services for which they’re known. Beyond these, brands should dive deeper into what customers really want from the brands they do business with. Some customers expect fast service, while others expect high-quality materials.

Tip: You can use customer experience software or consumer insights tools like Meltwater's consumer insights to learn more about customers’ pain points and expectations, including those they may not have shared directly with you.

4. Identify Potential Areas for Improvement

As you work through your customer experience roadmap, make notes of areas you’d like to improve. 

For example, your research might reveal that customers get frustrated with long hold times in your contact center. If this is the case, you might look at ways to streamline your call flows, such as offering different menu prompts to be served faster or using on-hold music and messages to shorten perceived wait times.

5. Create an Improved Customer Experience Plan

Knowing where you need to enhance customer experience will help you choose your next step. 

Consider a variety of solutions that will help you create a better customer experience. For example, customers looking for quick answers might benefit from self-service resources on your website instead of having to reach out to an agent. 

Start looking for ways to develop your digital customer experience strategy. Outline each problem you’re trying to solve, the proposed solutions, and why you chose those solutions. Then document it so you always have a guide to refer back to.

6. Invest in Staff Training to Deploy the Customer Experience Plan

Part of learning how to enhance customer experience and influence brand perceptions is to ensure everyone is on the same page. A customer experience management strategy is useless without execution, so take time to train employees on your strategy and its importance.

Share how you’re making improvements to your CX. Set expectations for employees to follow. Let them know about any new resources you’re implementing to support a better customer experience. You’ll have an easier time gaining buy-in when your team knows why you’re making these changes.

Enhancing customer experience serves a variety of purposes. It can increase customer loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, meet more customer needs, and even serve as a model for other brands to follow.

To achieve these and other business goals, though, your customer experience management framework needs staying power. Start building customer experience improvements that make an impact with these best practices:

Never fall into the trap of thinking your customer experience is “good enough.” While you might think you’re delivering on customer expectations, your customers and data may say otherwise. 

Try to approach your customer experience insights with an objective mindset. Be open to seeing new possibilities and improvements so you can continue meeting your customers’ needs. 

Developing a CX strategy isn’t a one-and-done activity. Be proactive about collecting customer feedback and using those insights to make impactful changes.

Building a customer experience program takes ongoing effort, especially as your company introduces new products, services, and ways of engaging your customers.

AI and automation technologies can do some of the heavy lifting in building a customer experience program. They allow you to serve more customers, increase responsiveness, and treat every customer as a priority.

You can use AI and automation across multiple touchpoints, such as chatbots on your website or scheduling email campaigns in advance. AI-driven tools like Meltwater Radarly can collect consumer insights across digital channels and track consumer sentiment about your brand’s experiences.

Data-driven tools help you keep a finger on the pulse of your CX efforts and know how and where you’re moving the needle (and where you’ve stalled).

Tip: Take a look at the top customer experience tools on the market.

Developing a customer experience strategy supports your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts. It helps to build loyalty by meeting customers where they are and giving them what they expect. And with Meltwater, you can measure the impact of your CX and know your efforts have been worthwhile.

Meltwater Radarly is a consumer insights platform that helps you get inside your customers’ minds. Learn how they talk and feel about your brand. Listen to conversations they’re having on social media and other channels to discover pain points and unmet needs. Then use these insights to chart your customer experience roadmap and show your customers you get them.

How To Develop A Customer Experience Strategy

For major brands, partnerships with celebrity influencers have become an indispensable part of their marketing strategy. As a result, thousands of influencers came forward to cash in on their visibility.

Recently, however, we’re seeing signs that influencers can’t influence anymore; that the world may be done with traditional top-down influencer marketing. In fact, recent studies have found only 3% of consumers are influenced by celebrity influencers to purchase specific products.

So, what’s driving this change? Why are so many people switching off on influencers?

At the heart of this pattern is a huge shift in the way consumers interact with brands. Now, the age of the passive audience is over. Instead, customers are actively engaging with each other (and brands), looking for authentic and meaningful engagement and forming their own communities based on shared interests and values, or what we like to call ‘tribes’.

In this article, we’ll explore the reasons why the age of traditional influencer marketing may be over. We’ll also outline some alternative ways brands can engage their valuable audiences.

This is a long post, so feel free to jump to sections that speak to you the most:

Why are people getting tired of influencers?

Re-engineer your influencer marketing strategy

Rethink what you mean by ‘influencers’

Get the help you need to identify your tribes

Ditch the big names, and go for authenticity

To kick things off, let’s dig a little deeper into what is driving people away from influencers.

Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook offer a tantalizing promise for users of all ages around the world: a welcoming place for self-expression, meaningful engagement, and a sense of community.

But increasingly, social media has become a dumping ground for sponsored posts and advertising, and social media users are quick to call influencers and brands out when they see a lack of authenticity.

Tip: How to Find Twitter Influencers to Grow Your Brand

1. A greater demand for authentic engagement - driven by millennials and Gen Z

Of all the reasons for the move away from influencers, the growing demand for authentic and meaningful engagement is the most significant.

People are sick of all the generic cookie-cutter posts showing celebrities posing with teeth-whitening kits, boutique clothing, or even appetite-suppressing lollipops. Instead, social media users are looking for real, unstaged content to engage with.

Kim Kardashian’s controversial appetite-suppressant lollipop promotion. Source: Insider

This is particularly the case for younger users, with millennials and younger users, with millennials and , with millennials and Gen Z demanding real, authentic content from brands and influencers.

This demand for authenticity also helps explain our fascination with stories like that of Instagram travel & lifestyle influencer Caroline Calloway and her ghostwriter Natalie Beach. Now people want to dig behind the online facade to see the real people behind the captions.

Tip: Learn more about influencer marketing to Gen Z

2. Fake influencers with fake followers, engagement, and likes

Then, there’s the problem of fake influencers with bought engagement on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Influencers face huge incentives to boost their numbers when it comes to followers, likes, and comments, and this has given rise to issues with bots, paid follows, and other shortcuts.

In fact, studies have found cases where the influencers engaged by major brands have follower bases that are estimated to be up to 70% fake. This isn’t just a massive headache for brands: it’s also another huge reason behind the disillusionment with influencers in general.

Tip: Take a look at real Instagram influencers to partner with.

3. Cliché and repetitive influencer content

On top of the demand for more authentic engagement, user fatigue with stereotypical influencer content is also driving people away.

Every day, social media users are subjected to an unending stream of influencers peddling their wares with the same aesthetic. If it isn’t someone selling a yoga mat with a sunrise beach yoga pose, it’s someone with a tastefully-framed shot of avocado toast, or a too-perfect gym selfie.

If you’ve found yourself feeling a little fed up with cliches like this, don’t worry - you’re not alone. 47% of consumers are fatigued by repetitive influencer content.

In fact, this collective frustration has led to some amazing parody accounts (like Insta Repeat) pointing out just how samey a lot of Instagram content can be.

This is a major reason behind Instagram users abandoning the platform’s classic aesthetic and looking for something more real.

Instead, a new generation of successful influencers like Emma Chamberlain or Joanna Ceddia has emerged. These young content creators are willing to engage their audience in unique ways - even if it means being a little dorky. And man, do people love it.

Another trend driving people away from online influencers is an over-reliance on the big names out there. After all, Kim Kardashian can’t sell everything!

When it comes to mega-celebrities, there’s only so much paid sponsorship an individual can take on before their audience gets tired of it. For major brands, this means there’s a limit on what can be achieved through partnering with well-known faces.

As blogger and all-round media wizard Seth Godin notes, one way to get around this is to take the opposite approach: instead of finding the largest audience out there, brands should look for ways to build meaningful communities around smaller audiences.

According to Seth Godin, larger audiences aren’t always better. Source: Social Media Week

“Instead of trying to reach everyone,” says Seth, “we should seek to reach the smallest viable audience and delight them so thoughtfully and fully that they tell others.”

5. Appropriating social causes for commercial gain

Finally, there’s the worrying trend of influencers or brands feigning dedication to important causes around the world, just to get a moment in the spotlight.

Whether it’s slacktivism campaigns like the Kony 2012 movement or greenwashing like DuPont and Exxon Mobil’s environmental initiatives, plenty of influencers, brands, and organizations are willing to appropriate meaningful causes in the interests of building their online audiences.

Examples like these contribute to mistrust in social media, and give people an even bigger reason to be cynical about efforts to spread awareness concerning important global issues.

So, if the world is fed up with traditional influencer marketing, what does this mean for brands on social? How should you engage with your audience, and get your products in front of the right customers?

I might have painted a bleak picture for influencer marketing. But it doesn’t mean there’s no place for influencers - instead, brands simply need to adjust.

By dropping the focus on generic, big-name influencers with huge audiences, and by focusing instead on meaningful communities united around common passions and interests, brands can increase the visibility and relevance of their products.

Tribes are groups of consumers sharing common traits. These individuals identify with each other through their collective interests, which could be anything from gaming or eSports, veganism, sustainable fashion, or a love for chunky dad shoes.

Tip: Are you looking for fashion influencers? Here's our list of the top global fashion influencers and the top South African fashion influencers.

The internet is crawling with groups of people, subconsciously forming tribes around nearly every interest niche you can think of. 

Winning brands are those who understand how tribes get created, what defines them and how they evolve over time. This includes analyzing their language, choice of platforms, and preferred methods of communication, and matching their content, so you can position your brand as a genuine tribe leader.

This means rethinking what the term 'influencers' mean. 

Examples such as cosmetics brand Glossier illustrate another great strategy to cope with the shift away from celebrity influencers online: rethink what you mean by ‘influencers’.

By finding individuals with meaningful connections to other members of the tribe to promote your brand, you can build brand visibility and credibility.

A comparison of influencer Laila Loves vs. Kim Kardashian.

In fact, analysis shows that individuals working on a more contained scale are often perceived as having more of a legitimate voice than big-name celebrities, and can lead to a higher rate of conversion to sales.

So, when you’re thinking of your next influencer campaigns, don’t automatically jump to the biggest names out there. Instead, take a look at individuals with an authentic, well-established presence on their platform of choice, and a good connection to their tribe.

And that means bigger isn't better. You don’t have to shoot for the big numbers with your influencers. 

Given the disillusionment out there with celebrity influencers, you’ll be better off partnering with influencers working on a smaller, more meaningful scale with a dedicated audience.

If you can engage your tribe of brand customers and fans through respected and trusted individuals, you can reach new potential fans, and build real brand loyalty.

Tip: Learn how to run an influencer loyalty program

Partnering with influencers used to be simple.

Before, all brands had to do was to pull together a shortlist of celebrities and public figures with sizeable audiences, compare the reach and profile of each individual, and make a choice.

Now, consumers don't want to see the same influencer telling them which slimming teas to drink, which lipsticks to buy, and holiday resort they should go to.

With the tribe mindset, everybody has the potential to be an influencer (in their tribe), which makes the influencer pool much bigger. You need to take into account the influencer’s relevance, authenticity on the topic, analyze their content footprint, check if they have fake followers or engagement, out of hundreds and thousands of influencers on multiple platforms.

This analysis is impossible to do manually. You need to put big data and AI to work by identifying dedicated fans within millions of profiles. Then, you need to combine this analysis with human expertise to understand their values and match them with your brand. With powerful tools such as the Meltwater social influencer platform you’ll be ready to find the right influencer.

There’s a good reason why so many Instagram users are turning away from generic, big-name influencers on social media. The jig is up, and people are seeing through the façade of samey, calculated promotional content.

In an environment where authenticity is the greatest online currency, brands need to know everything they can about their audience, and understand how to find and engage their tribes of fans online.

With Meltwater, brands can find new ways to identify their tribes, and can communicate with these tribes in a way that is authentic and meaningful.

The Meltwater Blog

March Madness 2023: Top Conversation Topics and Trends

How To Develop A Customer Experience Strategy

Influencer Fatigue: Are We Done with Influencers?

The Ultimate Guide to Campaign Measurement: Measure Campaign Success

The Retail Customer Experience Guide

How Does AI Affect Customer Experience?

Customer Experience Statistics You Should Know About

The 11 Best Customer Experience Examples

Consumer Insights for Fashion: How Top Brands Keep up With Consumer Trends

What is Brand Asset Management and How to Leverage It?

What is Customer Experience? Definition, Challenges, Importance

How to Improve B2B Customer Experience [5 Steps]