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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

Since the introduction of the internet and the rise of social media, enhancing the digital customer experience (CX) has become a differentiating factor and source of competitive advantage for organizations. Customer experience plays a critical role in improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, and due to its positive influence on customer retention rates, CX is also credited for increasing profits by 25-95 percent (Harvard Business Review, 2014). 

Despite its importance, some organizations fail to remember that customer experience doesn’t end with the purchase. As you can see from the customer journey diagram below, loyalty and advocacy should follow when positive customer experiences are present. This then leads to new recommendations and additional purchases, making CX a worthy investment. 

The following blog is an adapted snippet from our latest whitepaper. Download "The Social Media ROI Playbook".

Tip: Read this blog to learn more about the following questions: What is Customer Experience? And How Can You Improve it?

6 Tactics For Optimizing Customer Experience

Proactively making the digital customer journey more convenient and simpler for consumers to perform desired actions on your site or application is the holy grail of optimizing the customer experience. This can be achieved through the following tactics.

How can we gauge how our customers feel if we don’t listen to what they’re saying? 

With more and more people turning to social media when they have a query or complaint, it’s essential that we’re monitoring our social media channels for reviews, complaints, and queries. Such conversations provide brands with the information needed to optimize customer experiences and meet growing consumer demands. In turn, consumers feel heard and businesses can also better minimize the risk of complaints escalating and reputational damage. 

By using a media monitoring tool like Meltwater, we can quickly sift through millions of news stories and social media posts and track what is being said about our brand, competitors, and industry in real-time. This is necessary for increasing customer satisfaction, for example, if we don’t know about a negative post or story until it goes viral, it may be too late to prevent a PR crisis. 

Analyzing data from client surveys and social media is a great way to keep your finger on customer satisfaction. Organizations often turn to metrics including Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a way of understanding how satisfied customers are. In addition to this, companies rely on media monitoring to understand: 

The sentiment towards their brand (and whether it has changed) 

How competitors are doing from a customer experience perspective 

Get in touch and learn more about how media monitoring can support your CX strategy.

Customers are becoming more demanding with regards to query/ complaints response times on social media, in fact, 66% of people now expect a brand to respond in less than 24 hours. 

A social media engagement tool helps brands keep on top of social media engagements and assign particular cases to relevant members of the team so that issues can swiftly be sorted. That being said, it's worth keeping in mind that not all customers complain directly to a brand...

To overcome this challenge, we developed listening capabilities that allow Meltwater clients to set geolocations as a metric to monitor conversations. This means that companies can see who has complained within a certain geofenced location. Say the queue at a fast-food restaurant is too long and customers begin to complain but don't @mention the restaurant, for example, the restaurant will still be able to spot and engage with negative feedback.

Tip: Check out more customer experience examples.

Being proactive with engagement is arguably an even more powerful way to boost customer experience. Community management often helps brands spot problems before customers complain. By searching through keywords related to competitors, we may spot an issue that could easily occur for our business too, and put plans in place to prevent this situation from occurring. We can also surprise and delight fans simply by replying to them and showing that we're listening. 

According to a McKinsey survey, personalization can increase company revenue by 5-15%, something that should motivate even the most cynical marketer. By prioritizing personalization, we’re bridging the gap between data, technological experiences, and consumer delight.

These days we have so much data on our customers that can be used to tailor our products and services. Ian Truscott, growth director at agency MRM Meteorite explains that ‘the consumer understands the data we’re collecting on them, and they are starting to expect a relationship with you that’s based on that data.”

Netflix is the ultimate example of a company whose obsessive pursuit of customer satisfaction is often credited to its success. With thousands of films, series, and documentaries to scroll through, finding something to watch on Netflix would be a headache if the tech giant hadn’t focused on removing friction for the customer by tailoring each touchpoint. Through the use of AI-driven personalization, Netflix’s algorithm helps viewers whittle down choices and find the content most relevant to them.

Whatever service we offer as a brand, there are ways to personalize the customer experience. Here are a few personalization ideas to consider split by industry:

Airline: food menu tailored to individuals likes/dislikes

Holiday provider: personalized itineraries

B2B company: personalized email campaigns

Streaming service: personalized song or movie recommendations

Social media sites: algorithm based on who the individual most interacts with

Customer-centric innovation is another great way to improve customer experience. 

Retail giant, Amazon, understands that customers are loyal right up until the second somebody offers them a better service, so they strive to be a forward-thinking innovative corporation. Amazon wins at CX as it invests in innovative solutions, enhances digital infrastructure based on customers' wants and needs, and keeps up with trends to ensure they remain number one.

Tip: Check out our retail customer experience guide.

Their profit goes directly back into R&D to help take Amazon even closer to its customers; they’ve invested over $100 billion in R&D since 2012. This allowed them to find ways to make a customer’s life easier or more convenient by tapping into the on-demand market and providing next and same-day delivery.

Speaking of Amazon’s approach to innovating, former Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos explained how their culture of starting with the customer and working backward puts them in a position to focus on real-world problems. He commented: 

Working backward from customer needs can be contrasted with a 'skills forward approach where existing skills and competencies are used to drive business opportunities. The skills-forward approach says, 'We are really good at X. What else can we do with X?' That’s a useful and rewarding business approach, however, if used exclusively, the company employing it will never be driven to develop fresh skills. Eventually, the existing skills will become outmoded. Working backward from customer needs often demands that we acquire new competencies and exercise new muscles, never mind how uncomfortable and awkward-feeling those first steps might be.

The customer journey can be defined as the consumer’s path through all brand touchpoints that lead to a decision, such as making a purchase. The model enables businesses to better understand how consumers view their products and services, what their intentions and values are, and how a consumer interacts with the brand at different touchpoints.

There are a ton of benefits to measuring and visually mapping your customer’s journey, including pinpointing crucial moments in the decision-making process, reducing friction, increasing lifetime value, and making your budget stretch further. It's therefore quite surprising to learn that many companies haven’t yet visualized their customer journey. Truth be told, executives tend to struggle with this as they make customer journey mapping more complex than it needs to be. In reality, it involves a series of logical steps based on collecting and visualizing relevant data. We're happy to run through those steps and relevant data types with you, fill out the form below and we'll be in touch. Alternatively, watch our on-demand webinar "How to Map & Visualise your Customer Journey" or read our in-depth customer journey guide.

When mapping customer journeys, keep user intent in mind 

In order to create and maximize digital touchpoints along the journey, the effectiveness of each channel consumers come in contact with needs to be considered individually. This is because motivating factors that influence decision making, behavior, and intent change throughout the customer journey, thus companies must position themselves within the realm of the user’s browsing mode by providing thoughtful content that matches the user’s expectations. For example, users don’t tend to look for transactional content on social media. Instead, you’ll find social media users typically in browsing mode or looking for new topics that entertain rather than hard-hitting content that covers difficult topics. 

So there you have it, our 6 top tactics for optimizing your customer experience. If you want to explore anything in more depth, fill out the form below and we'll be happy to discuss. Also, don't forget to read our new whitepaper, The Social Media ROI Playbook for more tips on growing your business with social media!

If you’re not prioritizing video in your content marketing strategy, you are missing out on a very fruitful engagement opportunity. There is ample research confirming the popularity of video content, from a viewer preference standpoint as well as a digital marketing stance. Here’s some stats for you numbers nerds:

Viewers claim they retain 95% of a message when obtained via video (social media week)

84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. (Wyzowl)

78% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales. (Wyzowl)

The benefits of video content are abundantly clear. But how do you get started? With so many channels and ever-increasing quality expectations from consumers, you’d be forgiven for being even a little intimidated about video content marketing, whether you’re just starting, or trying to get to the next level. 

Does your mouth go dry just thinking about standing in front of the camera? Or maybe you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by the pressure to “go viral”?

Hang in there. We've collected some of the best and most engaging video content marketing ideas for your creative marketing projects. If there’s a way to make video work for you, it’s on this list!

Metrics to Track for Video Content Marketing Success

Videos can help you lift your marketing strategy, but first, you need to outline and track some specific metrics to make sure you’re achieving your marketing goals. If one style of video is underperforming, take a look at if there are any common denominators. Are the scripts poorly written? Do they have sub-par lighting or sound? Is the content just not resonating? Maybe the style is lost on your target age group. Consider these factors and course correct.

In order to figure out what’s performing and what's not, the following video content marketing metrics are a good place to start:

Views - The number of views your video receives. Important to remember that 2 views don’t equal 2 people. It's more likely 1 person will view multiple times. Sorry!

Detail expands - If you’re sharing your video on Twitter, this engagement metric counts how many times somebody clicked on a tweet for more information or to expand media like a photo or video clip.

Drop off rate - For videos posted on YouTube, this is an important one to keep an eye on. The average drop-off is around 50-60% according to YouTube, so if you’re well outside that range, make sure you take steps to understand why.

Social shares - Your video will get exponentially more views if people decide they like it enough to share with their social networks. So if views is a top goal for the video, make sure it’s share-worthy.

Without further adieu, here are 50 video content marketing ideas to include in your marketing strategy:

You have a bunch of brilliant people on your team, so why not use that to your advantage? Of course, not everyone loves the spotlight…so you need to find a creative way to introduce both introverts and extroverts and let their personalities shine through on camera. You won't regret adding a bit of human charm to your website.

This type of video content is easy to repurpose as well. You could shoot a full video for YouTube, then cut up the employee highlights for short-form channels like Instagram Stories.

It’s a similar concept to team introductions, however, in this type of video, you should focus on the broader scope of the organization’s mission and vision, goals, and business philosophy. It’s a simple and easy way to give your prospective clients a great first impression. What makes your company unique? How are you better than your competitors? And why should they spend their money on you? Remember, authenticity always sells best.

Want to be recognized as an industry influencer? Then start building relationships with experts in your field. The interview format is a wonderful way to get unique, fresh angles and can top up your video library with valuable video content. Harnessing the potential of influencer marketing is a smart strategy for businesses that have ambitions to become industry thought leaders.

Repurpose these kinds of videos into a webinar or LinkedIn Live to keep your relationship with the influencer strong, and hopefully, you’ll be able to work with them again!

Watch out for bland customer testimonials – they can do more harm than good. The sole purpose of video testimonials is to showcase your relationship with customers in a believable and engaging format. Let them say what they want to say – using their own words and body language. 

A good video testimonial resembles a friendly conversation rather than a full-on serious interview. However, don’t be afraid to do a couple of takes, and work with the interviewee on ways to structure their answers for the strongest sound bites. 

Meltwater Customer Story: The Economist

Remember that your clients are a great source of content. Like you, they’re creating new projects, testing new marketing tactics, implementing new management methods. There are a lot of hard-won lessons to talk about! Find an angle that is most valuable to your audience and film a friendly tips & tricks interview that will help you nurture your relationship with the client as well as inject new content into your site as a customer story. This is also extremely valuable content for your sales team to leverage.

The power of case studies is indisputable. Combining both hard facts and client testimonials, you can win a lot of new business. As a medium, video is incredibly flexible – sprinkle it with elements of typography, design, photography, music, and special effects, and you have a strong, attention-grabbing piece of video content marketing. What’s more, it’s a convenient way to introduce your features and include screenshots of your product without coming off too salesy.

That said, case studies are a powerful sales tool, so make it easy for prospective clients to quickly browse a video library based on their needs. Use tags, clear titles, and obvious use case connections. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be for new business to get in the door!

You’re probably creating a lot of written content – everything from newsletters to eBooks to PDFs. Why not repurpose this content visually? Depending on the information, you may want to go for infographics or data visualization in a video format. One of the flashiest trends in the video content marketing world is something called video scribing or whiteboard animation. It’s a creative way to convey information using both text and images, but you may want to hire a professional to do it for you to avoid disappointment and a lot of frustration if you don’t have an in-house video editor.

How-tos are a pretty straightforward format that don’t require expensive props, acting talent, or complex scenarios to produce high-quality video content marketing material. They’re great for YouTube SEO (search engine optimization), as Google now favors video results for instructional queries - even going so far as to include the time-stamps of the video most relevant to your search:

How-to content can generate a lot of value for your company because there’s so much opportunity to represent your space. For example, say you’re a clothing manufacturer. Your products might not need an instruction manual, but you could shoot an entire series around how to accessorize a simple outfit. 

Or perhaps you make skis & snowboards - you could shoot a beginner, intermediate, and advanced series about how to pull off a picture-perfect jump. That’s tons of content at your fingertips! A quick repurpose opportunity is to turn these videos into IGTV posts for your audience on Instagram.

Who doesn’t want a peek behind the curtain? Tap into people’s natural curiosity with some behind-the-scenes video content. This type of video is great for giving your audience a sense of authenticity, breaking down the fourth wall. Lean into the off-the-cuff nature of these videos and show your personality - use handheld phone recording for example, as you prepare for a big meeting or campaign. 

Or perhaps compile a couple of months or a year of behind-the-scenes content as your product team works toward a new feature launch. Don’t be afraid to talk about your failures and hurdles, and how you overcome them – it makes you and your business more human.

A distinct workplace culture is important to business success, according to 94 percent of executives and 88 percent of employees. (Deloitte)

The proof is in the numbers. Company culture is a center stage decision-making factor for job seekers and a powerful source of inspiration for employees. When it’s positive, culture keeps spirits high, helps drive sales and customer acquisition efforts, and other important business ventures. 

Capture the soul of your business through videos designed around employees embodying your company culture. Everyone wants to be part of something cool and special and it applies to your customers, too. They’ll pay not only for the quality of your product but also for that lifestyle and vision you’re selling indirectly.

Have a lot of video content sitting in your library? Make use of it by pulling together your best work into highlight reels. This is also a great format for end-of-year summaries or when you hit a major milestone. Think of it as a montage sequence in a movie - these scenes often inspire a strong emotional response when they are well-edited and put to motivating music. Remember this when planning the marketing for your highlights reel!

50 Delightfully Simple Video Content Ideas for Your Online Business

Journalists are always on the lookout for a good story. They are the modern-day storytellers, seeking factual information and relaying them to the public. The public counts on them to deliver the news on various aspects of our lives and the events that affect our decisions. The public consumes this information as part of our ongoing need for knowledge to facilitate our action moving forward. 

Recounting stories like the original storyteller Homer, journalists have the ability to weave facts and firsthand experiences into a narrative that informs the audience to make wise decisions. In the era of fake news and an audience that demands participatory experience, there is a greater impetus in storytelling to provide integrity with facts and data,

The Art of Data Storytelling in a Social Media World

6 Social Media Metrics For Journalists to Tell Stories

The Context of Social Media in Journalism

Facts need to be the crux of storytelling to maintain integrity and build trust with an audience. With the right facts, there is a salience developed between journalists and their audience, creating a greater connection when they search for information in the future. 

A compelling narrative is one that is able to persuade the reader. This appeal will boost the credibility of the publisher as well as attract more readership.  Through their storytelling, journalists have honed their craft to inform with a mix of moral objectivity, emotional connection and factual reportage. 

With social media being almost intrinsic in our daily lives, there is an infinite amount of stories and storytelling material available for journalists to tap into. From finding creative news beats to breaking news stories, there is always something for a journalist to write about and discover new angles. 

Journalists need statistical analysis and metrics that reflect the sentiments of the public on social media. Surveys and interviews are exceptional forms of qualitative data but the nature of newsjacking and breaking news cannot afford the time to carry out these forms of data analysis. 

This is why journalists require the real-time power of social media data and analytics. Gathering information, getting a sense of public opinion and tracking the progress of a story are integral in journalism in this new world of viral videos, shock content and shorter attention spans.

News organisations know the power of social media these days and understand the growing complexities of public opinion in the online space. Every organisation now has an online presence with corresponding social media presence — be it on Facebook, or Twitter. Editors and journalists are publishing their stories faster than ever before. At the same time, journalists are also multitasking to get on the latest event breaking at another location. 

So how do journalists stay on top of their beats? What can they do to gain that extra edge in their storytelling to the audience? These are the six metrics journalists can use to accentuate their stories.

Journalists always seek to understand their audience and how they are interacting with their stories. Before the advent of social media, news teams did not have a direct way of studying how their content is performing. However, audiences these days require a participatory experience with online content. Through social media, this is possible and news teams can gauge through its engagement rate. 

Engagement rate highlights the interactivity between the journalist’s stories and their audience. The number of likes, shares, and comments is a reflection of how much a piece of content is resonating with an audience. By looking through the posts with the highest engagement rates, a journalist can sieve through the comments to identify audience sentiment and common topical interests being discussed. 

These insights provides the news teams with valuable opinions from the audience they are engaging with. This online sensing can also be viewed as a new form of gathering public feedback. By using a social media analytics tool, journalists can quickly get a broad overview of public sentiment on a particular topic and identify the factors affecting public opinion. 

Journalists writing for print and online news are typically assigned to a news beat where they are expected to cover a wide array of related topics and events. They have to constantly find news stories or angles to write about. Keyword clouds are extremely handy in finding what the audience are discussing and designing a story to address it.

Take for example, a journalist who is assigned to cover news stories about transportation, there is a wide scope of topics to be covered. From private hire vehicles to road taxation hikes to a public transport mishap, all of these topics can happen at the same time. With a keyword cloud, the most discussed topics as well as buzzwords found in social media will appear more prominently and this may give an extra boost to journalists in finding their next news story. With keyword clouds, a journalist can react faster to cover the day's events and emergencies. 

Keyword clouds can also identify the top entities that are associated with a specific topic or event. To follow on the topic above, if there was a specific event such as a public transport mishap, the social media data can uncover the various entities which are mentioned the most. In this case, the officials who have made an announcement or the most vocal critic commenting on the catastrophe.

It is undeniable that social influencers  are playing a prominent role these days because of how embedded social media is in everyday life. The younger generations of Gen Zs and Millennials are living in the hyperconscious state of social media and influencers play an imperative role in deciding what is particularly interesting to talk about.

In this social media landscape, journalists are increasingly becoming influencers themselves too. Using platforms like Twitter, they can reach a wider audience and raise awareness on an issue as much as other influencers online. For every topic out there, there are particular influencers who populate that space and their opinions are highly sought after by their followers. For example, a sports writer will definitely benefit from gathering insights from sports personalities on social media. These high-profile influencers receive massive engagement rates with their followers and writers can get a new angle from this highly-opinionated pool of commenters.

Knowing what makes these influencers tick and the topics that their audiences are listening to may help journalists refine their stories while at the same time, locate the subject matter experts in the field they are covering. Finding these influencers and analysing their content can raise awareness on the various issues at hand. Meanwhile, they can also analyse their own profiles to see the key demographics of their audience based on the social media data.

Audience demographics are vital to news outlets. With print publications suffering from a decline of readership and more investments being pumped into developing their online presence, news outlets need to quickly grasp the demographics of their readership to fully understand their audience. 

Using an analytics tool to study social media data, news teams can learn which demographics are tuning in and interacting with their articles. Increasingly, readers are switching to social media to receive their news alerts as well as scouring for more information on a certain topic than ever before. 

For example, a quick search on Meltwater's platform revealed that almost 77% of the gaming audience in the Philippines were male. This insight is gained through social media data discussing the topic of gaming in the country. On the other hand, a scan of the influencer landscape showed that a predominantly female lineup led the social media conversations. Using a combination of these insights, journalists can connect better with the target audiences who are reading their stories.

Furthermore, a study on the Australian media landscape also showed that Australians are consuming news primarily online or through watching television while print has been declining in the past five years. With such high readership online, gaining access to audience demographics such as socioeconomic status, online habits, and personality profiles, is another tool in the journalist’s arsenal in developing stories which are more relevant to their focus groups.

A breaking story is always a boon for journalists. With the help of Twitter and the analytics within the social media platform, journalists can report almost instantaneously on an event. Using the various metrics above such as volume trends, engagement rate and keyword clouds, journalists can extrapolate a range of information which reflect the conversational beat of their audience online.

For example, when there was an earthquake in the state of Victoria, Australia, many turned to social media to express their concern. Tweets of wreckage in the Melbourne metropolitan area suddenly became the hot topic of the day even before news outlets could start reporting them. In this instance, like many other events in our lives, social media has become part of what a news report entails. Undoubtedly, part of a journalist’s scope should include following a news lead by getting on social media and finding out what is trending. 

The Social Echo metric highlights the impact of news content on social channels based on the total number of interactions such as shares, reactions, and comments. Social Echo also highlights to news outlets the type of content that is most shared on social media. News teams can more tangibly identify the content with the best audience engagement via social channels. On an operational level, news editors can also use this helpful indicator to focus on stories and trends which have intrinsic value based on the rate of engagement with the audience and readers.

For example, in the week between 20-26 September, Singapore’s main broadsheet The Straits Times published an article about Panasonic’s retrenchment of its workers. This article was the news outlet’s most shared story with more than 10,300 interactions across social channels. This article resonated with Singapore readers as it highlighted the plight of the workers as well as the jobs market. Using this insight, the editorial team can further analyse the way their audience consume their content as well as hone their strategies moving forward.

Social media is part of news now and many online articles refer to social media for stories. These stories usually highlight the vanity metrics of likes and shares. To gain a deeper contextual understanding of what people are talking about in relation to the news beats, journalists need to quickly analyse and evaluate the currency of these trending topics. 

With social media data easily available on various platforms, editorial teams can gain interesting insights into the minds of the audience they are writing to. Being contextually synchronised with the audience will deliver better articles which are attuned to the reader. With social analytics, influencer reporting and audience demographics, journalists and editors can make better informed decisions in finding the niche beats which garner more readership numbers.

In a sphere of untethered public opinions, journalists need tools which can help pull in all these insights from various channels on social media. With the threat of fake news and misinformation, news outlets need the veracity of their information as well as the integrity of fact-checking procedures. In the realm of political reportage, journalists have near impossible deadlines to meet when a scandal breaks on social media. 

With these social media metrics (and many more others), journalists can add that extra layer in their stories and breaking news. If you ever wondered how you can make your article more impactful with data journalism and insights, do fill the form below and Meltwater can help you gain that extra edge in delivering audience-centric articles.

6 Metrics Journalists Need To Know For Data Storytelling

Co-branding is a common marketing strategy for brand extension in the field of brand management. A marketing partnership is made between two or more different companies to collaborate on a new product or offering.

What Are The Benefits of Co-Branding For Brands?

Things to Consider When Creating a Co-Branding Strategy

So, what is co-branding? One of many co-branding definitions is ‘a form of co-operation between two or more brands with significant consumer recognition, in which all the participants’ brand names are retained’ (Blackett & Russell, 1999).

As we'll see, co-branding can be an extremely beneficial strategy. Not to be confused with co-marketing, which, whilst similar, is two or more brands coming together to promote existing or mature products and services. The general rule is that if you’re collaborating on a new offering then you are co-branding.

This marketing tool is nothing new, in fact throughout history these brand collaborations have catapulted brand names into the hearts and minds of consumers otherwise out of their customer base. For example, in 1975 Dr Pepper teamed up with Bonne Belle (US make-up brand) to produce a Dr Pepper-flavoured lip balm, although considered a strange collaboration at the time, it was so successful that you can still buy the product today.

There are various co-branding types, but the most common ones are ingredient co-branding and composite co-branding. Let's take a closer look at those two forms of collaboration.

With this form of co-branding, advantages are created through partnering with companies whose products are used in your products. For example, Intel is the ingredient brand to Dell, a computer technology company that uses Intel’s core processors.

This involves a partnership between two or more companies to invent and produce a new product or service for their target audiences. For example, British Airways and Citibank partnered up to release a credit card that automatically registers members to the British Airways Executive Club.

If your small brand meets a popular, more well-known one, the audience is likely to trust you more due to the credibility of that bigger brand. It also raises your brand awareness which will help grow sales in the long-term as the audience will have you in mind if they look for a particular product or service category. 

Media monitoring tools can measure the sentiment of the buzz on social media and in news, giving insight into whether people trust the brand or not. We can dig deep into what people are saying about your brand, if they have positive associations or if they generally approve your marketing content.

If there is negative sentiment surrounding a particular brand, it would be better not to start a brand partnership as that negative buzz or press could reflect onto your brand. It also sets you apart from other competitors and makes you more memorable particularly if you are collaborating with another brand they already love!

A top benefit of co-branding is that there is more money available for marketing purposes. If both companies spend their usual marketing budget each on a joint campaign, then the campaign is likely to be much bigger and better than an independent campaign. However this is dependent on the agreement between the two businesses. Especially for new products or markets this cash injection can be rewarding strategy as you are able to unlock content seeding campaigns on a new scale.

Co-branding also increases reach. Two partnered brands advertise one product or service to both of their audiences, therefore increasing the number of people that the message is communicated to. It might be possible that you find completely new co-markets thanks to your strategic partner's outreach. In parallel, it's a great way to test out new markets and exposes you to these markets in an easier, faster way utilising the resources and assets of both companies. In any case, you should monitor your cooperation at anytime to spot potential growth for your branding as early as possible. 

Loyal consumers will be more engaged with the brand and excited to share new product updates particularly if the partnership is with another brand they love. A great example of this is Taco Bell teaming up with Doritos to create the Nacho Cheese Doritos Loco Taco, two powerful American institutions coming together to produce a product with worldwide acclaim, so much so it took YouTube by storm and even had its own fan pages.

There's more co-branding around than you would guess. We'll present two examples to point out the advantages of mutual branding.

The Apple Watch Nike is a good example of composite co-branding. Based on the Apple watch, Apple and Nike developed custom Nike-Apps that make the watch an exclusive gadget for athletes who want to track their exercising results. It's kind of rare that two world famous brands combine their corporate design to create something new. In this case, the partnership pays out. There are several types of Nike-designed wrist bands exclusively for the Apple Watch Nike and there are many more examples of how effective this co-branding of Apple's elegance and Nike's dedication to power and accomplishment is.

The fashion industry is especially famous for its co-branding partnerships. Usually it's about a branding between a well-known fast fashion company and an exclusive, luxury design brand. H&M kind of invented this strategy by introducing unique pieces of well-known designers in a limited store edition. Most customers bought them on the first day and emptied the stock immediately. This raises exclusiveness and brand awareness.

Large companies are better able to compete with small businesses as they can transfer their successful and popular brand names to their new products. However small businesses that haven’t fully established themselves in the market aren’t able to do this. Therefore it’s important for small businesses to partner with other small business, or focus on areas with little competition. We can use media monitoring tools for social listening to find which brand names of a particular product category are popular and have a positive buzz. If they’re being mentioned frequently and positively on social media and in the news, it gives us a good indication as to whether they’re recognised in the market and might be worth co-branding with.

2. As in real life, finding the right partner is tough

A customer will be put off buying if they are unaware of the company you’re partnered with. In order to create a product that will lift off, it is important to make sure that the two companies complement each other in terms of recognition, brand image, and values. Media monitoring tools such as Meltwater can be used to determine aspects such as the partner’s key messages, their brand perception, and if they are known in the geographic market where we want to set up shop. We can use this information to assess whether or not a partnership with that company would be advantageous.

Vague, undefined goals can cause conflict within a co-branding agreement. It is important to identify and define these from the beginning ensuring they suit both companies. Beware, this doesn’t happen overnight. It is also important to agree upon a resource split, not just budget but actual manpower, this is a great time to identify any skills gaps within either team or where marketing tools could help.

Media monitoring tools can support you throughout your co-branding journey, from measuring sentiment around your chosen brand partner, giving insight into whether people trust the brand or not. Also, measuring the impact of your co-branding marketing by digging deep into what people are saying about your brand collaboration gathering valuable feedback enables you to reflect on the success of your co-branding partnership. 

If you want more help, why not fill in the form below and let Meltwater help you discover your perfect co-branding partner. 

A Quick Dive into Co-Branding

External communication channels might take up most of your time, attention, and marketing resources. But it's important to find the best ways to share and engage with internal information too. In fact, good internal communication strategies are essential to your daily operations.

2020 Gallup research revealed that only 13% of employees strongly agree that the leadership of their organization communicates effectively with the rest of the organization.

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