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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

From an employee perspective, every company has two sides to its brand. There’s the side created by the employer, which is intentionally created by the company to retain talent, attract job seekers, and be seen as a great place to work. And then there’s the internal side, the one formed by the employees that experience your business in a different way than your customers. Together, these two sides can be summed up as employer branding and employee branding.

These two types of branding look and function very differently. However, they’re both equally important to the success of your company. Because of their shared role in shaping your company’s overall reputation, no business can afford to leave either type of branding to chance.

Here’s a comparison between employer branding and employee branding and how you can leverage both in your brand strategy.

What's the Difference between Employer and Employee Branding?

Employer Branding Strategy: Where to Start

Picture this: your company and another company are at a job fair interviewing potential candidates. Your company is a local household name. The one next to you is relatively small and unknown. There’s a long line at your recruitment table and lots of candidates seem to want to work for you. The company next to you is having a hard time getting candidates to apply. In this case, this could be because you have a stronger employer brand than your competitor.

Using this example, an employer branding definition can be summarized as the reputation an employer creates in the labor market. It’s the image you want an applicant and current employees to associate with you.

Your employment branding is something you can influence. For example, if you want to highlight the value you offer to employees, you can show off your workplace via social media marketing, ask for reviews on a career site like Glassdoor, or spice up your Careers page on your company website with content specifically geared toward your ideal candidate persona.

Just like your current employees are an extension of your corporate brand, they can also influence a good employer brand. Therefore, a good employee branding definition is the brand perception created by employees and potential employees about your company as a workplace.

For example, employees who are quick to talk about their employer to family members or friends are contributing to your employee brand. Employees might write reviews on job-seeking sites about your company without your knowledge, touting the company as a great or terrible place to work.

The workplace experience you create for your employees helps to shape the employee brand. For example, if you offer great benefits, plenty of time off, and opportunities for advancement, the employees who value those things are likely to generate a positive employee brand.

Whether you like it or not, your employees will talk about your company and management. Their opinions shape the employee brand. If you want this brand to be seen in a positive light, you’ll need to intentionally and proactively invest in employee branding.

Employer branding and employee branding have a bit of overlap, but a few distinct differences set them apart.

While company leaders can influence both brands, they’re ultimately created by different audiences. Your employer brand is largely driven by company leaders and HR. It’s the persona you want job seekers, stakeholders, and the community to associate with your company when it comes to offering a place to work.

To achieve this persona, you might infuse your company values in your job marketing, talk about your workplace values, and highlight what you can offer employees (e.g., benefits, perks, advancement opportunities, etc.). You might talk about company culture and give candidates and the community a sense of what it’s like to work for you.

Meltwater Culture

Employee branding works a little differently. Employers influence this brand through the internal communications and experience they provide to employees. But ultimately, it’s up to the employees to craft this brand.

Employee branding is the things they tell people about what it’s like to work for you. It’s whether they get other people excited to apply to your company. It’s whether they’re willing to go the extra mile for your company vs doing the minimal work required.

Being proactive in shaping the employee brand is imperative. Over half of respondents in the 2019 Mind the Workplace report said they would not recommend their workplace to others. Actions carry a lot more weight than words, so if your company culture and employee morale don’t align with your employer branding, your employee branding will reflect this.

Employer branding benefits make branding worthwhile, especially in tight job markets and talent shortages.

For starters, a strong employer brand can help you attract top-tier candidates and retain quality talent. Research shows that 95% of candidates care about a company’s reputation when vetting job opportunities.

When your company is seen as a great place to work, candidates will choose to apply at your company over one that might not have as much to offer. As with any business, people are your number one asset. The right ones will help your business grow and thrive.

In addition, good employer branding can help you minimize recruiting efforts. When people see you as a place they want to work, you can rely less on job postings, agencies, and extensive searches to keep your talent pool full. In turn, this can help you minimize hiring and recruiting costs, fill positions faster, and mitigate losses associated with vacancies.

And speaking of cost savings, your employer brand can reduce turnover rates by 28% and cut the cost-per-hire in half. Happier employees are more engaged employees, which can also contribute to higher productivity and a better customer experience.

Last but not least, when employer branding and employee branding align, your employees become advocates for your company. This can affect everything from attracting and retaining the best talent to growing your reputation in the community, and even contributing to the brand you present to your customers and prospects.

Zappos is one of the best employer branding examples done right. The company is well-known for its superior customer service that goes the extra mile, and it extends that reputation to attracting and retaining staff. Outsiders can follow along on Twitter and Instagram via the @Zapposculture and #insidezappos handles to get a feel for what it’s like to work there. These channels offer authentic insights into a day in the life of a Zappos employee.

Why Company Culture Matters | Zappos Stories

Google has garnered a reputation for having one of the best employee work/life balances. The company heavily invests in its culture, ensuring employees have time to work on projects that mean something to them and will benefit the company, too.

General Electric is another company that’s not afraid to build its employer brand on social media. Its funny YouTube video series, What’s the Matter with Owen?, follows a young engineer who can’t explain to others what it is he does. The series was designed to highlight one of America’s oldest companies as a leader in industry and the digital space.

P.S. CEOs getting active on social media also doubles as employer branding examples. As the face of the company, CEOs are able to share their visions for the company, set the tone for the company’s culture, and give prospects a sense of what it’s like to work there.

While every organization will develop an employer brand with or without your help, it’s beneficial to create an employer branding strategy that shapes the image you want. Knowing where to start with employer branding can help you prioritize the right actions and activities to make a positive impact.

Here are some tips to ignite your employer branding strategy:

Competing for talent is starting to look a lot like competing for customers. Recruitment teams can learn a lot from marketing when it comes to employer branding and appealing to potential job seekers. One place to focus your employer branding strategy is LinkedIn, the professional’s network.

According to LinkedIn data, 55 job applications are submitted via the network every second. Job seekers are using the network to learn more about companies, what they do, and what it’s like to work there.

What’s more, 6 in 10 LinkedIn users are actively looking for industry insights on the network. This gives you a unique opportunity to expand your content marketing to your employer branding strategy. Encourage your employees to create and share industry-related content on their LinkedIn feeds to support your employer brand and expand your reach.

Content marketing for employment branding isn’t limited to LinkedIn. Whatever social networks you’re on to establish your company brand, you can also create a separate profile that focuses on your employer brand. On these channels, you can share behind-the-scenes looks at your company, day-in-the-life videos, job openings and hiring events, and employee spotlights.

You can also turn your happy employees into brand advocates on social media. Create content that highlights them in the workplace. Get them excited about your accomplishments as a company so they’ll know they’re working for a great company. Engaging them in your social branding efforts can make them want to share your content with their audience – or better yet, help you create content!

Spotify Employee Resource Groups: BLK@

Your job postings, application process, and interview process all contribute to your employer brand. Think about it: this might be the first few contacts job candidates have with your company. The more difficult it is for them to apply, the less favorably it reflects on you as an employer.

More than 90% of job seekers are using their mobile devices to search for jobs online, and many want the ability to apply on the spot. This underscores the fact that the average 3-4 hours spent filling out a single job application needs to be drastically reduced, especially since recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing each application.

To improve the job seeker experience, companies can place themselves behind the application wheel and walk in their candidates’ shoes. Look for inefficiencies that can deter candidates from completing applications. The best candidates have more opportunities and may be less likely to jump through too many hurdles during the application process.

There’s no doubt about it: employee referrals can result in some of the best hires. Referrals account for just 7% of applications but fill 40% of all hires. They can also help you fill positions faster and less expensively.

Build an employee brand ambassador program to encourage your employees to bring talented candidates on board. Employees who are willing to recommend their company to others support your brand and set the tone for a positive work experience.

For help crafting your employer brand on social media, fill out the following form and reach out to Meltwater today!

Employer Branding vs. Employee Branding: Definition, Differences & Examples

It’s boom time for social media marketing!

Since the beginning of last year 43% of consumers say they are spending more time on social media. The amount of marketing budget brands allocate to social media activity rose sharply during the pandemic and, according to the 2021 CMO Survey, over the next five years senior marketers expect social to account for 24.5% of their budgets, compared to 15% today.

Brands need help from agencies like yours to plan and deliver all that social media marketing activity. Are you ready?

According to research carried out for Meltwater by Social Media Week, these are the top social media challenges for brands, and the biggest opportunities for agencies:

Content is the heart of modern marketing, and most businesses need external agencies to help them produce it. Whether it’s creating content to feed the brand’s owned social channels, or using social data and analytics to understand the audience better and find inspiration for multi-channel content ideas.

By using social analytics to research and segment online audiences, you can help clients give their content and campaigns a laser-focus and achieve better ROI, compared to taking a scattergun approach.

Social is evolving all the time, with new platforms, features, and consumer behaviors appearing every year. Even more so, during this period of historic change. It’s hard for in-house marketers to stay on top of it all when they’re focused on doing their day-jobs, so they often need a trusted agency partner who can provide this kind of insight, in a meaningful context that helps them understand what the trends mean for their brand and what action they should take.

It’s hard to justify allocating budget to social media if you can’t prove that there’s a good return on it. This is another area where clients look to external experts for help. Understanding how to measure the success of social media campaigns and map that against wider business objectives is a valuable skill.

In-house marketers are often do not have the breadth of experience that comes from working across a wide range of brands, and this is why they hire agencies, because you bring expertise that has been developed by working with a lot of different clients. Being able to advise on social strategies that you’ve seen working for other business will make you an essential partner for your clients.

6. Engaging and Growing Online Communities

For brands, one of the most powerful strands of social media marketing is the ability to build a community of engaged fans who have opted in to hear more on their owned social channels. But nurturing and growing those communities takes a lot of skill and sustained effort, and it can be hard for businesses to find that kind of specialism internally. Agencies which can offer proven community management capabilities will be at an advantage.

Running social media marketing activity for a single small brand can be challenging enough, but when you start to scale it up to multiple larger brands things can very quickly become a huge headache. Helping businesses manage social media at scale, including selecting the best tech stack for that, can move agencies beyond being seen primarily as a tactical execution team for the client and on to a more strategic, consultative partnership.

8. Limited Internal Resources and Expertise

There are a lot of different elements to social media marketing, including creative, copywriting, community management, analytics and more. It’s very difficult for many businesses to recruit and retain the right mix of people to do it all successfully, and that’s why agencies are so valuable. If you can assemble a team of social superstars that can do all this stuff across multiple clients, your agency is destined for greatness!

Whatever kind of agency you work in, there’s always room to add social media services to your portfolio. Doing so will enable you to become an even more valuable partner to your existing clients, and give you the edge when it comes to winning new business.

8 Social Media Challenges Clients Need Your Help With

There’s a lot that makes up a brand identity: logos, colors, typography, messaging, and packaging. Each of these plays a role in marketing, helping you differentiate your brand from another. But there’s another critical component of your brand that’s also used in marketing. It’s the single most powerful brand identity tool to make people advocate for and buy from you: reputation.

Your reputation is arguably your most valuable intangible asset. It helps you earn trust, increase your brand’s value, and even attract better job candidates. And just like you need to market your products and services to raise awareness and increase sales, you also need to market your reputation.

This type of “marketing” is called reputation PR. It allows you to take control of the narrative around your identity, help to shape people’s perceptions, and protect your image.

Here’s more on how reputation PR works and how you can put it to work for your brand.

How Reputation PR Differs from Traditional PR

Reputation PR Strategies that Lead to Success

Reputation PR can be defined as proactively using public relations to protect or improve your online reputation. This is different from traditional PR in that it focuses solely on building a good reputation, not just getting your name mentioned in mainstream media.

Reputation management PR might include removing negative online articles about your brand, responding to online customer reviews, or using influencer marketing to build positive brand buzz, for example. Like corporate brand management, reputation PR requires ongoing proactivity and communication.

A natural part of managing your brand image includes keeping a finger on the pulse of your reputation. But, what is reputation, and what makes a good reputation?

Your reputation is a collection of other people’s opinions about the things you say, do, and sell. Your employees, products, services, and even your community presence all help to shape your reputation. Every interaction a customer has with your company is an opportunity for your reputation to change (for better or worse).

Reputation management has become an even greater concern in the current digital climate. Things like fake news, digital scams from seemingly legitimate companies, and a spike in product recalls have made it critical for companies to earn and keep consumer trust. What’s more, bad press no longer dies with yesterday’s news. Digital content can live (and rank in search results) for years, making it harder for brand wounds to heal.

The role of PR in reputation management is to leverage public relations outlets and techniques to improve your image in the eyes of others.

There’s a subtle yet important difference between traditional PR and reputation PR. Both are tools that can be used strategically to improve your reputation. But while traditional PR focuses largely on relationships with traditional media (think press release in The New York Times, etc.), reputation PR is all about online visibility.

The main goal with reputation PR is to reach as many people as possible with your message. You might launch a new marketing campaign with the goal of earning brownie points from your audience. Or, you might use search engine optimization strategies so that people see positive press when they Google your brand.

Reputation PR can also include traditional PR. For example, you might use your connections at a top publication to write a press release or hold a press conference.

Proactiveness is another difference between traditional PR and reputation PR. Brands that prioritize reputation PR are constantly monitoring the media so they can respond to any negativity almost as soon as it happens. Some companies even hire brand reputation managers to identify opportunities and prepare appropriate responses as they occur.

Knowing the difference between traditional PR and reputation PR is essential to your reputation management strategy. Because you’re not limited to traditional PR tactics, you have more opportunities to take control of your brand’s narrative.

Managing your reputation online can take many paths, depending on the catalysts driving your efforts. For example, you might take a different approach to crisis management than startups trying to earn consumer trust for the first time.

These reputation management strategies can help to guide your efforts:

You can’t control what others say about you. But you can take control over the conversation and get ahead of the situation.

This is exactly what KFC did when some of its restaurants experienced a chicken shortage. With no chicken to sell (unthinkable for a chicken-based restaurant), the company quickly released a “fowl-mouthed” apology with a full-page ad. The ad showed an image of its iconic striped bucket with the letters rearranged.

Understandably, customers were upset with the chain for having no chicken to sell. COVID supply chain disruptions created chicken shortages that affected the restaurant and many others. However, the brand's creative reputation PR plan helped to smooth things over by offering a humorous apology and taking ownership of the issue.

Effective reputation PR strategies are deeply rooted in authenticity. Brand trust has been on the decline for years, according to the Gustavson Brand Trust Survey. And in the wake of COVID, brand scores have recently reached an all-time low.

Social Media Today reports that 90% of consumers say authenticity is a key factor when choosing which brands to support. They want companies to use real people in their advertising, have real conversations with consumers, and make a real difference in the world.

Authenticity as one of your reputation management strategies means showing the real human side of your brand. It’s not about making a stand or sharing a belief for the sake of marketing. Rather, it should naturally integrate with your business’s values and commitments to your customers.

Influencer marketing continues to be highly effective for brands, but there’s a new side of influencer marketing that needs to be explored.

Internal influencers are starting to carry more credibility than hired celebrities and paid social media actors. Influencers are essentially a client of the sponsoring company. Because of this, they can sometimes be seen as artificial, promoting only the products they’re paid for rather than the brands they really relate to and advocate.

What’s more, fake influencers abound and can take advantage of willing brands. Without influence over a real audience, they can drain your marketing budget and even damage your brand reputation.

A better approach is to look within your organization to find brand advocates. Using employees as content creators gives consumers a real look behind the brand. No one knows you better than your own people. Look for internal influencers at all levels of your brand. Find ways they can help you improve your communication and internal and external reputation.

Reputation management can be as easy as handing off the responsibility to a specialist. A corporate communications expert can help with everything from developing reputation PR strategies to executing those strategies to monitoring results, and everything in between.

There are various PR techniques that a PR manager or a PR firm may deploy to help you manage your reputation, but one of them will likely be social and media monitoring. Companies like Meltwater that specialize in social listening and media monitoring already have the tools, resources, and (most importantly) the time needed to present your brand in the right light. Using a solution like Meltwater, corporate communications experts can gauge how certain brand management tactics might affect public perception. This eliminates some of the guesswork regarding how to best manage your brand image.

Now that you have a firm grip on what reputation PR is and why you need it, let’s look at examples of brands that got it right.

Part of a brand’s reputation isn’t just about the issues that customers experience. It's also how the brand is prepared to manage those issues.

To connect with users that reached out to Nike on Twitter, Nike created a separate Twitter handle for customer support (it’s @NikeService, by the way).

From a reputation PR perspective, this move is genius for two reasons:

First and foremost, it gives customers a direct way to contact Nike and ensure their request is seen by the right people. This can speed up resolution which, in turn, can create happy, loyal customers.

And second, it means that these customer-related issues aren’t seen on Nike’s main Twitter page. People that engage with Nike’s main Twitter aren’t inundated with bad impressions of the brand, even if they’re not the ones experiencing issues.

Other brands can put this strategy to work, too. If you don’t have one already, set up a separate customer service channel on your social media profiles and make it easy for customers to get in touch.

Remember the Tide Pod Challenge? What may have started as an online joke ultimately led to a PR nightmare for the laundry detergent brand. Teens filmed themselves eating the brightly colored Tide laundry pods, resulting in an average of one ER visit per day in 2012-2013.

In response, Tide partnered with the New England Patriot’s Rob Gronkowski to tweet a reminder that the pods were for laundry, not eating. Tide’s parent company, Procter and Gamble, also worked to have the Tide Pod Challenge videos removed from social media in an effort to stop the trend.

This was the very definition of public relations crisis management. The Tide Pod Challenge was an event that a brand could never have fathomed and was beyond its control. However, the company took ownership of the event by working to end it and prevent others from taking part. Quick communication was key and helped put Tide in a positive light.

Not all reputation PR takes place because of negative press. Take Aerie, for example. The accessories and intimates brand of American Eagle launched the AerieREAL campaign to promote body positivity and inclusivity among its target audience – teens and younger Millennials – because the brand knew those were issues its audience cared about.

The brand brought authenticity to the campaign by hiring models of all sizes and skin tones, including some with beauty marks and tattoos. Aerie upheld its beliefs by becoming the first major retailer to sponsor the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA).

NEDA Inspires Award 2015 - Aerie

The move has paid off in terms of financial performance. The company reported in March 2021 that sales had grown double digits for the 25th consecutive quarter.

Reputation PR takes focused, consistent effort. It requires becoming part of the conversation, good or bad, so that you can shape the perceptions of your audience.

Take ownership and respond in a timely manner when something negatively impacts your brand. But don’t only respond when things are going south. When you prioritize reputation PR when things are going really well, you can build equity in your reputation that will make future crises more manageable.

Reputation PR: Definition, Strategies & Examples

There is no doubt that social media has substantially, perhaps even irreversibly, impacted the way that we connect and communicate with one another. Social media platforms have become a source of news that people consume regularly. But how often is that news factually correct? The proliferation of fake news on social media has created a concerning climate for news outlets and various other organizations as they strive to combat this rapidly increasing phenomenon.

A 2017 study found that consumers today believe that out of all the news, 40% of it is somewhat fake or made up. The amount of misinformation that exists is staggering, there are ways to fight back against fake news.

How to Fight Fake News and Misinformation

Misinformation is defined as "false information that is spread, regardless of intent to mislead." (Dictionary.com) 

Misinformation is spread on a daily basis, intentionally or not. (Disinformation on the other hand, is fake news that is intentionally spread on social media. We'll go into disinformation a bit later). 

For example, if you receive a meeting invitation for 10AM but you mistakenly misread it as 10PM and tell your colleagues about the the misread time you are, in effect, sharing misinformation. This may seem like a minor example, compared to what happens on social media, but the point is that you shared misinformation by mistake and with no intention to do so.

When it comes to social media misinformation spreads rapidly, largely due to social media users sharing posts and articles without checking to see if they're true. While the onus does fall somewhat on the user to do their own research before sharing a questionable post, the bigger conversation is what responsibility lies with tech companies to prevent the spread of misinformation and fake news on social media. 

Disinformation is "deliberately misleading or biased information." (Dictionary.com) 

If we go back to our above example, if you intentionally tell your colleagues that the meeting is at 10PM because you want to sabotage everyone else, this would be considered disinformation because you are spreading false information on purpose. 

Disinformation is powerful and can be extremely destructive, and is often what causes deep divisions on social media. For journalists in particular, it can be can be difficult to untangle a disinformation campaign — and they must remain vigilant in order to stay ethical. 

So, when distinguishing between misinformation and disinformation, intent is really what separates the two.

Types of Misinformation on Social Media 

Be on the lookout for these common types of fake news and misinformation that can spread quickly on social media.

Clickbait is a "a sensationalized headline that encourages you to click a link to an article, image, or video." From news stories and blog posts to videos and interviews, clickbait is presented in such a way as to attract as many clicks as possible on social media. 

While clickbait is great for increasing page views, driving traffic to your website or generating more social shares for your content, its misleading nature can tarnish the reputation of reputable news sources that share content with a misleading headline. 

When people click on a piece of content on social media, they are expecting to view content that matches the expectations set by the headline. If you don't deliver on this, people may begin to question the credibility of the content which can cause damage to your brand. 

Propaganda is the deliberate spread of information, ideas or rumors that help or harm an individual, a group of people, an institution or a country. 

According to NBC News, more governments are using social media to promote propaganda as this seems to work better than censorship. Research by the Oxford Internet Institute found that more governments and political parties are making use of social media algorithms, automation and big data to influence the vast majority of public opinion.

With the advent and sophistication of AI, images and videos depicting false events are all to easy to produce and share on social media. Some platforms have begun to add certain safeguards, such as a watermark or label that clearly indicates "AI-generated" however these tags are not perfect and won't catch every bit of AI media out there. So once again it falls on the consumer to be vigilant and pursue their own fact-checking if something seems fishy. 

In order to fight fake news and misinformation on social media, you need to be able to recognize it first. You will know that you are dealing with fake news when you can a clear bias is evident or if a piece of content is trying to invoke feelings of anger and mistrust in a particular person, group of people, or cause. Sometimes, this content may come from a news outlet that sounds unfamiliar, is unknown, or has no markers of credibility. 

In these cases, it is best to fact-check before you decide to share with your own followers. Are the author names real? Can you validate the sources mentioned in the article? Do the claims sound suspicious? If these are the questions you can't seem to find an accurate answer to, then chances are, you have a piece of false information in your hands. 

Things to look out for when identifying social media fake news include: 

if there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors

if there are no accurate sources being cited

Fake social media accounts have become increasingly common, and are a fairly standard tactic for those wishing to encourage the spread of fake news. 

Fake accounts, or bots, tend to spam legitimate social media users by posting inappropriate or irrelevant content. You can often spot a bot by: 

a default avatar or low-quality profile picture

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