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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

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

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

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

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

Influencer marketing is not a strategy that’s going to go away anytime soon. As companies and brands have realized the challenging reality of marketing to young demographics like Gen Z, it’s become clearer that traditional advertising just doesn’t cut it. They’ve had to switch gears to see what works best.

Many brands are now tapping into the people that these younger demographics trust: influencers. Influencers are changing the face of marketing as we know it – including affiliate marketing. But does it mean affiliate marketing is no longer relevant with the rise of social media influencers, who seem to operate on a “pay me, get a shoutout” model?

In this post, we take a look at exactly how influencers can actually give your affiliate marketing strategy the boost it needs. Then we’ll walk you through a few steps to keep in mind when you want to work with influencers as affiliates for your brand.

The New Influencer-Driven Way of Affiliate Marketing

Before we talk about exactly how affiliate marketing is changing in the era of social media influencers, let’s first look at the “old” way of affiliate marketing.

Most affiliates were traditional bloggers or publishers

Before social media became a huge force in our lives, many brand affiliates were traditional bloggers or media publishers who had their own websites to promote or review a brand. You could only find product demonstrations, walk-throughs, or reviews from these kinds of publishers.

Many affiliates wouldn’t champion one specific brand

Because a lot of these bloggers and media publishers were trying to monetize their own content, they often focused on broadening their membership to multiple affiliate programs in order to increase their chances of getting referral fees from a broader set of readers with varying preferences.

So these content producers often joined all the popular affiliate programs – often for competing brands – and didn’t champion one specific brand over others. This makes it harder for a brand to be seen as a “top choice.”

The “old” way of doing affiliate marketing is still alive and well. And many publishers make a significant income by being part of multiple affiliate programs. But the problem is this: the old way of doing affiliate marketing doesn’t always highlight the unique strengths that influencers bring to the table, especially for brands.

So how are influencers changing the affiliate marketing game – and how is that actually a good thing? Let’s take a look at the two major shifts.

Built on trust between influencer, brand, and followers 

You’ve probably already read the report that said 92% of people trust influencers more than they trust traditional celebrity endorsements or ads. And that’s because, if you tap the right influencer, you’ll know they’ve fostered an engaged community based on trust.

Real, high-quality influencers don’t recommend products they don’t use or trust themselves, and their vast audiences are often aware of that. So this makes influencers one of the best brand ambassadors you can have for your brand. As true fans of your brand, they’ll champion your products and recommend you more times than the average consumer or traditional publisher.

Source: Influencers Are The New Brands, Forbes

Influencers give testimonials, demonstrations, and calls-to-action all at once

Relating to the previous point, one reason influencers can make such compelling affiliates is because of the way they actually promote your brand.

Influencers are content creators, so they focus on delivering quality content for their followers. You’ll find that many influencers use a combination of giving a personal testimonial, demonstration, and call-to-action to talk about your brand.

Followers of these influencers can see how products are used, how it might benefit them, and what the influencer – already seen as a trusted individual in the industry – thinks about the product overall.

What this means is that influencers are helping their audiences go through the typical sales funnel, from brand awareness down to consideration and even purchase. But the difference is that they do this in a very personal, authentic way that their followers trust.

Ready to start getting influencers on board as affiliates for your brand? Here are 4 steps you should follow.

1. Make sure they aren’t already promoting your competitor

First of all, make sure these potential influencer-affiliates aren’t already big promoters of your competitor. While some brands in certain industries can work with the same influencer – such as beauty and fashion brands, for example – you’ll generally want your influencer-affiliate to solely champion your brand.

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

If you find that your potential influencer might already be talking about your competitor, you can offer either a free trial or sample of your product, just to see if they’d make the switch. 

Also be sure to take note of how your influencer talks about any competition. Do they have a referral code or affiliate link to those brands? If not, you might be in a great position to offer them their first affiliate opportunity that’s exclusive to your brand.

Moving on from this tip, be sure to keep a lookout for fake influencers, who usually have plenty of “ghost” followers or promote brands as if they were partnered with them.

2. Offer to launch co-branded landing pages with the influencer

One way to really personalize your experience with your influencer-affiliates is giving them a dedicated landing page just for their followers. You can create a co-branded page that mentions the influencer or their brand to give it an exclusive feel.

Framebridge has a dedicated landing page for listeners of Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier.

Depending on your agreement with the influencer, you can host the landing page on your website, or on their own site if they have one. 

3. Create collateral the influencer can use in their accounts

Do a thorough content audit of these potential influencer-affiliates to see what kind of media they post on their accounts. Some influencers have a variety of channels, such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

If you see an opportunity to supply any relevant content types – flatlays, short screen recordings of an app demo – send these to your influencers. They will most likely appreciate having a few done-for-you posts, so long as it fits their feed or content style and isn’t overly branded.

And of course, give your influencers room to inject their own brand when talking about your product. But having pre-made material that suits their style, just gives them an easier option.

Source: 9 Tips for taking beautiful flat lay photography, Little Coffee Fox

Done-for-you content like flatlays, screenshots, or demo recordings of apps are generally okay to supply to influencers, as long as they suit their brand or make it easier for them to post about your product authentically.

4. Consider offering an exclusive affiliate rate

For very high-quality influencers with huge followings, you can offer a special increased referral rate just for them. So if your usual referral rate for other affiliates is, say, 30%, you can offer a few key influencers a higher rate, say 35-40%.

You’ll definitely need to look into some factors that might merit an increased rate per successful referral.

And when you pitch this partnership to potential influencer-affiliates, be sure to let them know about the exclusive rate that's just for them. This lets them see that you’re very serious about your partnership offer and that you have full trust in their online brand.

Tip: Still didn't find the right influencer for your brand? Our influencer marketing platform will streamline the entire process and ensure you get maximum ROI from your influencer partnerships. Get a tour by filling out the form below.

How Influencers Are Changing The Affiliate Marketing Game

Most people in the West are unlikely to have heard of the Chinese website, Bilibili, but with around 300 million monthly active users, it’s a serious player in its home market.

While China’s online video market seems to be dominated by Youku (owned by Alibaba), iQiyi (owned by Baidu), and QQ Video (owned by Tencent), Bilibili is now becoming increasingly popular, as short-form video sees rapid growth and is now the most consumed type of video in China recent months.

Source: Statista - Average number of monthly users of Bilibili Inc

Bilibili is a video sharing platform which, as well as the basic functions of viewing and uploading videos, allows users to post different types of live comments over the videos, creating a kind of enriched real-time chat-room layer on top of the viewing experience.

The site hosts video on a wide range of popular entertainment and culture topics, and also provides a platform for streamers to live-stream content to their audiences.

It’s hugely popular with the Gen Z demographic, and as well as the primary Chinese language site it offers an international version available in English, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese.

While it’s free to use, Bilibili offers a premium tier which provides additional features such as access to higher resolution videos.

If your business operates in Asian markets, and particularly in China, Bilibili can be a powerful source of insight and intelligence for your marketing campaigns.

Better understand and engage Chinese Gen Z

What differentiates this platform from others is that there are a lot of engaged people, in particular young and dynamic China’s Gen Z.

For brands who want to deep dive Gen Z’s preferences and habits, and engage them, Bilibili is a great place to identify emerging youth culture trends.

Measuring the impact of marketing campaign

Brands can use the platform to upload and promote their video content, once they are certified.

Adding Bilibili to their marketing toolbox, they are able to track the performance of their campaigns using metrics such as the number of comments, engagement action score, impressions, and estimated reach.

As a platform favored by Gen Z in China, Bilibili is a great channel for businesses to identify new brand ambassadors from that cohort, and to start working with new Key Opinion Leaders who could also prove to be powerful influencers for that target audience.

Simply fill out the form below to get a free consultation and demo.

What is Bilibili and Why Should You Care?

Businesses turn to a variety of strategies to grow their bottom lines: search engine rankings, social media, pricing, digital presence, branding, and more.

Aside from mastering these for your own business, you’ll also need to track your competitors’ performance. Competitor monitoring lets you see how your own efforts compare, which can help you get ahead of the curve, reach more customers, and build a stronger business.

Let’s look at how to do competitive monitoring, make it a part of your competitive intelligence strategy, and use it to your advantage.

Business Benefits of Competitor Monitoring

How to Use Competitor Monitoring Software

Competitor monitoring is the intentional and consistent process of evaluating essential aspects of your competitor’s performance.

This process has many moving parts, including but not limited to:

Checking a competitor’s content performance

Discovering keywords your competitors are ranking for

Gauging website traffic to specific content or campaigns

Staying alert when they publish new content

Seeing which sites are linking to your competitors

Learning which influencers they’re using 

Tracking how much engagement they receive on social media

Seeing how they promote, price, and discount their products or services

Ultimately, your goal is to get inside the business to see how they market themselves and how their marketing performs. Use these findings to review your own approach so that you can build on your strengths, improve any weaknesses, and create a stronger position in the market.

It is important to track your competition’s every move. Competitor monitoring helps you make informed decisions about your business’ marketing strategy. Performing a competitor analysis prevents you from repeating their mistakes and lets you improve on their successes by executing them better.

Competitive monitoring is a helpful exercise to improve your business. It allows you to see how you stack up against others in your industry and where you hold your competitive advantage.

No one likes a copycat. But seeing how your competitors are marketing themselves might inspire your next campaign. You might find opportunities they didn’t capitalize on or ways to put your unique spin on things.

2. Save time and money by avoiding ideas that won’t work

Pouring resources into channels and campaigns that don’t reach your audience can be downright discouraging. Plus, those resources could have been better spent on other initiatives that would drive better results.

Before moving forward with an idea, see if your competitors have done it first. Look into the results they received and whether you’ll be able to get the same or better results.

3. Learn what your competitors aren’t doing

When monitoring your competitors’ marketing, it’s important to look at what they’re not doing.

For example, do they not have a TikTok channel? Are they not investing in video marketing? Are they not posting new content every week? These could be golden opportunities for you to get ahead.

4. Gain actionable insights to drive your own marketing strategy

Data is a core component of competitive monitoring.

Armed with numbers, you can see the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and compare them against your own.

From keywords to traffic to engagement, data paints a compelling picture. Get better insights into what you should do next to match (or overtake) your competitors.

Doing competitor monitoring means figuring out who your competitors are. Sometimes, your competitors are obvious. But newcomers may enter the market, while mergers, acquisitions, and closures might remove some competition from the space.

Engaging in formal monitoring gives you an opportunity to re-evaluate who your competitors are and ensure you’re monitoring the right companies.

A basic Google search of your business or industry-specific keywords can show you who your top competitors are and what to pay attention to.

There are several ways to do competitor monitoring manually. Here are some options to get you started.

Tools like Spyfu and Ahrefs can show you which keywords your competitors are ranking for so you can go after those same terms. You can also see how high your competitors are ranking for those terms in organic search. (A tool like Accuranker is great for this).

The qualitative data that comes from online reviews and forum comments can be useful for seeing how others feel about your competitors. They might excel in getting new customers, but their products may have flaws, their service may be lacking, or their policies might not be customer-centric.

These nuggets of wisdom give you direct insight into the customer experience and can help you adjust your own policies, products, and processes to attract new customers.

You can set up alerts for the names of your competitors or keywords you want to rank for through Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a free and easy-to-use tool to help you track and stay informed of your competitors’ online presence.

The tool will send you notifications when it finds new matching content for the search term you set and is a great tool for monitoring your competitors’ backlinks.

By subscribing to your competitors’ newsletters and emails, you can monitor what they are sending their customers and learn information about new product launches, company news, the type of content they publish, and their marketing campaigns.

This can give you inside knowledge of what is working or not working for their business, which can help you outmatch their efforts.

Browsing your competitors’ websites can give you access to valuable information as well. For example, a brief glance at a competitor’s career page can tell you what jobs they are hiring for, which can tell you what areas they are planning growth. If they have listings for sales in a different city, you can gather that they might be looking to expand their reach, or listings for web developers could mean they are revamping their website or preparing for new campaigns.

This is also a good opportunity to check out your competitors’ pricing strategies. Beyond the price itself, do they follow a dynamic pricing model? Have they made price changes since your last competitive analysis? Are competitor prices higher or lower than yours?

Also, while monitoring competitor web pages, pay attention to the layout and flow, any website changes, and what is working and what is not to give you insight on some ways you can optimize your own website.

Reading tip: Learn how pricing fits into the marketing mix.

6. Follow competitors’ social media pages

Tracking your competition through social channels is another useful way to gain insights into your competitors and their marketing strategies.

You can see which social media platforms they are using and what type of content they post where. It can also tell you if a specific type of content is popular and if their social media strategies are effective or not.

Tip: A social media monitoring tool like Meltwater can help you automate that process. Here you find the best social media monitoring tools that are out there.

7. Monitor backlinks using Ahrefs or UberSuggest

SEO tools like Ahrefs or UberSuggest give you a wealth of information on your competitors’ website performance.

Backlinks are of particular importance, as these are signals of quality when it comes to SEO. You can discover which sites are linking to your competitors by plugging their URLs into a backlink tool.

Get a list of possible websites you can reach out to and see if they’ll link to you, too.

BuzzSumo is a great way to monitor your competitors’ share of voice on a particular topic.

You can set up alerts similar to Google Alerts and get a rundown of new content on a given topic or brand.

While monitoring your competitors manually is a great way to discover information, keeping track of all that data on your own can be very time-consuming and tedious. Instead, use a competitor monitoring tool, like Meltwater.

Softwares make it easy to track and analyze your competitors’ strategies, customers’ intent, and trends in your industry all in one place and at scale.

There are several types of competitor analysis tools that can help you monitor the data you are looking for. You want to make sure to choose the tool that is best for you or combines multiple monitoring tools into one. 

Some different ways you can conduct competitor monitoring:

Using social listening tools allows you to track and analyze specific content relevant to keywords, brands, and mentions across social media platforms.

These tools gather important information about your customers and help you understand more about what they are looking for. You will gain a more profound knowledge of your industry, its trends, and potential influencers.

Meltwater’s social listening tool can help you track brand reputation and create a powerful social media campaign with demographics, interests, and behavioral data.

Media monitoring automates the process of scanning various types of media, like online news, print, social media, etc., for mentions of your brand and competitors. Its analytics allow you to gain valuable insights into your industry and your competition.

Media monitoring helps you analyze content specific and relevant to the topics and keywords you choose. See what's working with your customers and decide how to adjust your campaigns.

Meltwater uses a comprehensive media analysis tool that allows you to track your own performance against competitors.

 Key features of media monitoring software

Unlimited keyword monitoring across all channels

The ability to build dashboards and share results with stakeholders

Tools that conduct sentiment analysis let you see whether customers are happy with your competitors. These findings indicate how likely customers might be to switch to a different brand or service provider. Their weaknesses in the eyes of their customers could become your new competitive advantages.

Meltwater measures customer sentiment to give you context behind what customers express online.﻿

A complete view of customer pain points and unmet needs

The Ultimate Guide to Competitor Monitoring

IDC predicts that global spending on customer experience (CX) technologies will reach $641 billion in 2022, and 95 % of senior marketing executives in leading companies believe that CX roles within their organizations are the most strategically important for growth, according to eConsultancy.

It is clear that customer experience is top of mind for organizations today, and rightly so. Customers hold the power to make or break brands, and providing a positive customer experience is a key differentiator for competitive advantage.

Measuring Customer Experience Requires a Holistic View

Social Listening Gains Importance for CX Measurement

Going Beyond Simple Social Listening for Deeper CX Insights

The Meltwater Blog

How Influencers Are Changing The Affiliate Marketing Game

What is Bilibili and Why Should You Care?

The Ultimate Guide to Competitor Monitoring

How To Measure Customer Experience — Metrics, KPIs, Analytics

How To Measure the Effectiveness of a Digital Marketing Campaign

How to Measure Email Campaign Performance [9+ Email Marketing KPIs]

Measuring Ad Campaign Effectiveness with Competitive Benchmarking Tools

Best B2B Instagram Profiles

How Coca-Cola Collects Consumer Insights

Influencer Marketing for Gen Z: 4 Keys to Success

How to Gain a Sustainable Competitive Advantage with Porter's 3 Strategies

Explained: The Unique Case of Korean Social Media