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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

Over the past two months, the coronavirus pandemic has developed into what UN Secretary-General António Guterres described as the “greatest test”  the global community has faced since World War II. Indeed, news of the situation has largely been bleak: On Wednesday, April 15th, the total number of recorded Covid-19 cases has surpassed two million globally with over 130,000 deaths. Furthermore, recent statistics show that the virus has already spread to 210 states, while the UK, Brazil and Russia have become the latest countries facing major outbreaks.

Nevertheless, recent news also suggest glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel. Several countries that were hit hardest have now overcome the peak of the virus, while others show signs of success in ‘flattening the curve’ of new daily infections. In Asia, China and South Korea, and Taiwan have now been able to contain the spread of the virus and are getting busy restarting the economy. In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the country would cautiously start lifting the lockdown measures, with Spain and Italy announcing similar steps of allowing a fraction of non-essential workers to return to work and small businesses to reopen. The USA, which has been hit hardest by the pandemic, is also showing signs that social distancing and other measures have been successful in reducing new infections.

With these positive developments in mind, businesses are naturally looking forward to the prospects of reopening and returning to ‘normalcy’. This hope in a quick V-shaped snapback or recovery, however, may be wrongly placed.  Just like World War II reshuffled the global power-deck and ushered in major social change, many experts have warned that the coronavirus pandemic will similarly bring about a ‘new normal’ in which governments and businesses alike will be challenged to adapt to an unprecedented post-pandemic reality. As such it is vital for businesses and organizations to understand how the business landscape will change and consider various strategies in overcoming these challenges. 

By tracking relevant news and analysing key trends on social media, we can shed some light on critical forecasts for the near and long-term future and uncover key strategies that can help businesses overcome this crisis and adapt to imminent change.

Until Vaccines Are Developed, COVID-19 is Here to Stay.

To plan for the near future, it is important to understand how long the coronavirus will continue to pose a threat to society. One possible answer to this question can be found in the article “How the Pandemic Will End” written by Ed Yong, a science journalist at The Atlantic. Since its publication on March 25th, the article has been shared over one million times on Twitter and Facebook and received widespread praise by several high profile people, including former US President Barack Obama, who holds the most followed account on Twitter (115 Million Followers). Yong provides an overview of the likely scenarios the world will be facing in the coming months and argues that the only viable endgame to the pandemic is to “play whack-a-mole with the coronavirus” suppressing it until a vaccine can be produced”. This process, he believes, would be long and complicated and could take up to 18-24 months, during which new waves of outbreaks are likely to arise. In his most recent article “Our Pandemic Summer” which is also gaining significant media traction (Over fifty thousand shares since April 15th), Yong highlights several challenges to restarting businesses in the near future, including that rushing to reopen without proper measures could lead to a false sense of security in employers. As such it is imperative that businesses approach the reopening of their operations in a steady and methodical way. 

With strict quarantine and stay-at-home orders enacted by governments around the world, many companies have adopted remote-work policies to keep operations running. This has been particularly apparent within social media coverage: With over 220,000  combined mentions since the beginning of March, the hashtags #workfromhome and #workingfromhome have surged and are some of the most used keywords during the pandemic. With the development of a viable vaccine still many months away, it is unlikely that many big businesses are able to have their employees back in the office at full capacity soon and without strict measures. In fact, many experts and professionals believe that working from from home could remain even after the crisis has passed as many companies were pleasantly surprised to find that online-only operations have worked well. Global Workplace Analytics predicted that 30 percent of people will work from home multiple days per week within a couple of years, while research and advisory firm Gartner noted that there has been a surge in demand by companies asking to put remote work solutions in place. As one Gartner analyst summarised it: “It’s an old-school mentality to think you have to have a presence in an office and [...] once people adjust to working from home, they actually do more work”.

Reading Tip: Does Working From Home Work for PR and Marketing Agencies?

If working from home is to become a stable part of operations for businesses, employers will be forced to think about adopting new and innovative processes and technologies to try and make up for benefits of working in a shared office space. Social media coverage suggests that this is already happening: With over 20,000 mentions between 1 March to 15 April, the hashtag #futureofwork has been trending during the pandemic, with viral posts showing that several tech companies have focused on the development of innovative tools to be used for work, including Holographic teleconferencing to make up for the loss of face-to-face interactions when working remotely. While these technologies are still in development, companies, for now, are increasingly turning to video call services such as Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts for internal communication. 

In particular, Zoom has had a remarkable boost in popularity during the crisis. Since the beginning of March, Zoom has been mentioned in over 630,000 posts on Twitter and Facebook, which is significantly higher than Skype’s 200,000 and Google Hangouts’ 25,000 mentions. With the top hashtags including #workfromhome, #wfh and #webinar, it suggests that Zoom has become a stable part of work for many employees’. This surge in popularity however didn’t come without criticism, spikes in coverage at the beginning of April showed that social media users had picked up on news revealing serious security and privacy issues as Zoom didn’t use end-to-end encryption for its video calls, which resulted in numerous incidents where hackers and trolls were able to disrupt private video calls. In response, governments from India, Taiwan and Singapore as well as major companies like Tesla, Google, and Siemens have recently banned its employees from using Zoom. While Zoom itself has promised to fix the issues and even hired the ex-security chief of Facebook to help, this story suggests that privacy has become of increased importance for businesses in their quest to create and incorporate new technologies into their operations.  

During a pandemic, strong measures around safety are, of course, key for businesses to restart operations. Naturally, implementing social distancing in the office, conducting routine temperature checks, and providing disinfectants and facemasks are essential to keeping employees safe. But these measures alone will not be sufficient to overcome the new challenges of the post-pandemic world and businesses with more traditional business models will be forced to make more structural changes to stay afloat. Creating a more agile business model through digitization or pursuing strategies to cater to emerging demands will be key for future survival.

Several experts have argued that those companies that are fast-tracking digital transformation will be the ones staying ahead of the competition. Many recent events, such as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference going virtual, suggest that some companies are already moving in that direction. McDonald’s, for example, has been working on its digital transformation even before the Covid-19 Pandemic emerged. Its efforts to stay agile and integrate technology into daily business operations has paid off as it was particularly well prepared to weather and adapt to the coronavirus outbreak. During the height of the coronavirus outbreak in China, its food franchises have implemented no-contact delivery services to ensure the safety of both customers and employees. The installation of digital kiosks in its stores also helped to make ordering food more efficient and limit person-to-person interaction. It has also continued to develop and improve its mobile app to provide more customer-friendly services and is using big-data analysis to determine the peak business hours and learn customer habits.

2. Catering to New Demands - Uber’s move from ride-sharing to labour-sharing

The post-pandemic economy in many countries will likely look very different than before and certain industries will struggle and may not survive if they don’t cater their businesses model to new demands. Several studies are already predicting which sectors consumers will turn to. In Southeast Asia for example sectors expected to benefit from increased consumer spending are likely healthcare, pharmaceutical, consumer electronics, logistics, sports/body wellness and education. As such, brands may need to actively look how to tap into these sectors. 

A great example of a company catering to new demand has been Uber. With social distancing measures in place, sharing closed spaces such as cars with strangers is and will be avoided by many people around the world in the near and long-term future. Consequently, demand for ride-hailing companies like Uber has dived significantly, with reports showing that journeys managed by the Uber app in the US have fallen by 94%. However, the company has found a new way to adapt its operations to this new business environment. Earlier in April, it announced the launch of ‘Work Hub’, to help drivers find alternative gig work as demand for rides has plummeted. Through the Work Hub, Uber drivers can connect with three Uber platforms: Uber Eats (food deliveries), Uber Freight (trucking), and Uber Works (blue-collar temp shifts)”. Drivers are even allowed to respond to openings of several external companies looking to hire, including McDonald's, PepsiCo, UPS, and 7-Eleven. Forbes wrote that the move from ride-sharing to labour-sharing could mark the beginning of Uber’s long-term expansion into all kinds of work, which is likely to be in high demand in a post-COVID-19 economy: “By moving into general casual and temporary work with its Work Hub, Uber is signalling the direction that the rest of the gig economy is likely to travel in the medium- and long-term”. 

Looking ahead: Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. It is difficult to determine exactly what the future holds and how the world will look like when we come out of this. No doubt many businesses and economies will struggle, already we are seeing record new unemployment claims in the USA, while China has reported its first GDP decline in Q1 since 1992. Nevertheless, what the crisis has shown is that governments which acted quickly and decisively and used innovative solutions to confront the threat were able to prevent the loss of countless lives and stop their economies from spiraling into disaster. It is imperative that businesses do the same by continuing to look ahead, adapt to new realities, and keep a can-do attitude. 

The Road to Recovery: Strategies for the Post-COVID 19 Era

Instagram is more than just a social network for beautiful photos and influencers. With more than one billion monthly active users, Instagram is the perfect place for brands to showcase their products, generate leads, and build their business.

The very first thing a person sees when visiting your profile is your Instagram bio. Writing a compelling Instagram bio that grabs your audience's attention should be a main focus when creating or updating your profile.

If you're looking to increase Instagram engagement and exponentially grow your Instagram followers, this guide is for you. 

At a high level, writing a good Instagram bio consists of your adding your brand's name, username, profile photo, bio, and Instagram Stories highlights. Each of these elements should verbally and visually communicate a compelling brand message.

I'll assume you have the basics of creating an Instagram business profile down, such as adding your brand's name and username. The real fun begins with the all of the other features that Instagram offers, which we'll cover below. 

With a perfectly crafted bio, you can target your ideal audience so any new visitors will be able to quickly understand what your brand does, the product you sell, and what you stand for—all in 150 characters or less.

4 Steps to Writing the Perfect Instagram Bio (with Examples)

There are unlimited possibilities when it comes to writing the perfect bio for your Instagram profile. That's why I've picked a few of my favorite brands to demonstrate several proven strategies.

This is the go-to Instagram bio strategy for millions of brands for good reason. The 150 characters provided in the Bio section is a chance to tell the world why they should care. Your mission statement is the why and it doesn't have to be over-complicated or wordy.

Fashion brand @buckmason uses 3 simple words in their Instagram bio, but it immediately highlights the products and why people should care.

The financial platform @robinhoodapp, on the other hand, uses the bio to communicate important information about their business that might be pertinent to investors (i.e., their target market). 

One practical way to use the Bio section is to include a branded hashtag. This allows your audience to discover more great branded content, while creating a strong community in the process.

Since attention, time, and space on Instagram are limited, this is a great strategy to implement while you are running a campaign or promotion using a specific hashtag. It also provides an opportunity to increase social proof by curating a collection of user-generated content for your audience to browse through.

@allmodern uses the space to promote usage of their branded hashtag #ItsAllModern while also offering the chance to be featured on their profile.

Emojis are a great way to engage with your audience using a social media publishing tool because they are visual, fun, and expressive. Using emoji in your Instagram bio helps to express a casual communication style that helps to connects with audiences of all types.

Added bonus that emoji take up less characters than words, enabling you to add extra info about your brand that the character count wouldn’t allow for with text. When using emoji, be sure to emphasize key points in your content, or use them as bullet points to break up the text. 

@alo features a few emojis that not only compliment the written text, but also their brand style and personality.

Including a simple call-to-action in your Instagram bio and inviting your audience to comment, engage, or click can have a big impact on the success of your Instagram marketing. For example, if you want profile visitors to click on a particular link, create a compelling offer in the "Bio" section and link to the offer in the "Website" URL section. 

This strategy is used by thousands of top brands every single day. And the best part is you can continue to update your "Bio" and "Website" sections to match whatever current campaign or promotion you are running.

At @meltwater, we use the Instagram "Bio" and "Website" sections to help raise awareness around product launches and important company initiatives, such as the latest Aurora Product Release.

Thoughts on the Perfect Professional Instagram Bio

As this article highlights, there are an infinite amount of creative ways to write an Instagram bio to drive results on Instagram. Each section of the bio comes together to create a fun, yet professional look and feel for your brand.

Remember, your Instagram bio shouldn't remain static. Shake it up. Experiment. Try out different emojis, formats, CTAs, links, promotions, and more.

Once your bio is in order, read up on Instagram marketing strategies in our comprehensive Instagram ebook. You'll get expert insight on how the algorithm works, how to use hashtags, and what it takes to create an Instagram-specific marketing strategy.

How to Write the Perfect Professional Instagram Bio

Classic demographics like age and gender – despite being tried and tested for years – appear to be losing their popularity among marketers as the most common form of segmentation. The shift in use of audience insights over more generic targeting options such as demographic information is happening as a result of the wealth of customer data now available.

During this article, I’ll cover the rise of audience data, why brands are ditching demographics, how they’re leveraging audience insights, and the results they’re reaping by doing so.

Demographics is the study of a population based on factors such as age, race, and sex, it also refers to socio-economic information such as employment, education, income, marriage rates, birth and death rates.

The challenge with classic demographics is they use broad characteristics to group people and such assumptions make them superficial.

Segmenting your audience based on their real (and not theoretical) behaviour is a much more precise way of targeting. Traditionally, tracking intent was difficult to do, which is why we’re used to leveraging demographics for lack of a better alternative. However, thanks to technology advancements such as the internet, social media, big data, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, marketers can now equip themselves with the intent tools needed to track such behaviours.

When we consider the fact that the average person shares around 9 pieces of content online each day, the digital breadcrumbs left behind are vast.

Savvy brands are looking towards social media to piece the breadcrumbs together and build more reliable profiles of their target market, better predict their next move and optimise the customer journey and targeting capabilities. Consumer Insights Tools like Meltwater's consumer insights solution provide you with such data.

Examples of audience insights you can track based on social media behaviour

Personality traits e.g. their tendency to be compassionate and cooperative towards others

Affiliated companies and media e.g. the TV channels and shows that your audience show interest in

Online conversations and opinion leaders that influence decision making

Purchase influence factors, e.g. whether they prefer using credit cards for shopping or are likely to respond to targeted advertising

When the audience is most active online e.g. days and times

2019 saw a number of large companies’ holt solely using demographics in a bid to move from “wasteful” mass marketing to mass one-to-one brand building by targeting people with similar characteristics. That’s not to say demographics are dead or that psychographics will eliminate them, rather, they complement one another to create a more robust picture of consumer types and behaviour intent.

I’ve included some of the leading brands championing audience insights below, as well as the results they’ve seen by doing so.

As part of a drive to modernise its marketing spend, this year P&G announced a shift in priority: moving away from traditional mass marketing methods towards smarter audience segmentation.

CEO, David Taylor, explained how the company is using the +1 billion consumer IDs they’ve amassed globally to build audience segments and serve messages to people who have similar characteristics such as behaviours, mindsets and P&G products. P&G’s data management platform contains anonymous audience data on 90% of the population. In an analytics learning lab, the company combines the audience data with purchase data to generate granular views of consumer habits. The database also enables advanced programmatic media buying that finds people with the highest propensity to buy.

Taylor comments: We are going from generic demographic targeting, like women aged 18 to 35, to more than 350 precise smart audiences, like first-time mums, millennial professionals or first-time washing machine owners… we will get more accomplished at performance marketing to serve people messages that meet their needs.

It has been reported that P&G owned skincare brand, Olay, used smart audiences to reach 65 million high potential users, more than the generic audience of “women ages 25-54,” and spent 10% less with 20% higher sales growth by doing so.

Taylor’s aim is to create campaigns that “clear the highest bar for creative brilliance, sparking conversations, changing behaviour and sometimes defining popular culture.” He believes understanding consumers is the key to making the smart audience approach, stating, “We start with understanding consumers then creating ads that make people think, talk, laugh, cry, smile, share and, of course, buy.”

In a bid to connect more meaningfully with their audience, we also saw Danone outline a plan to park demographics in favour of social data, analytics and technology to more sharply target marketing activities. 

Instead of demographics, Chief Strategy and Insights Officer, Elaine Rodrigo, explains how Danone now starts with a data-driven approach to understand people segments, or ‘tribes’ as they refer to them, which are identified and defined by their ‘passion points’, ie behaviours and interests. “These are people with meaningful similarities” explains Rodrigo. “You identify, you create content, you measure. It’s an iterative learning process which feeds back, and then you realise that some worked, and some didn't, so then we know which of the tribes actually means something to your brand and you keep them, keep learning and going deeper.”

Danone’s water brand, Volvic, saw great success from segmenting their audience into 16 different tribes. They used data to identify important micro-moments for each tribe and then created personalised messages that resonated with their intent.

Each micro audience had their own short-form bumper ad on YouTube communicating their ‘own personal volcano’, for example, music lovers might see a “Turn Up The Volume” creative, while highlights from the week’s Premier League games were prefaced with an “Until The Final Whistle” message for football fans. By avoiding mass blasting ad campaigns and opting for precision targeting, Volvic was able to increase brand recall by a staggering 40%, further cementing the critical role of the three Ts in terms of user data and storytelling: Trends, Tribes, and Tales.

Broadband and telecommunications provider, Telefónica, previously struggled to engage a relevant audience in the Spanish and Latin American market. To overcome this challenge, they built segments of relevant social media users and then divided them by location, level of activity, keywords and how they’re likely to respond to promoted Tweets.

As a result of the strategic insights found from segmenting, they successfully served them with paid personalised messages, helping to optimise the quality of followers, as well as reduce the cost per follower. In fact, they saw an increase of 30,000 new followers, who are more active, followed, and relevant than organically reached ones.

It’s refreshing to see that Fortune 500 brands are acknowledging that the generic, unsophisticated targeting practices of yesteryear are no longer fit for purpose in an age of big data. Interested in learning more about your tribes and the moments that matter to them? Meltwater has the data and insights. FIll out the form below and we'll show you!

Why Brands Are Ditching Demographics in Favour of Audience Insights

Passionate marketing and social media strategists often find creative ways to approach their particular discipline. But many of them are looking for insightful ways to face the daily challenge of collating useful data.  

Most companies still rely on basic demographic data from platforms such as Facebook, which can offer helpful starting points. But these initial data-sets aren’t enough to make a significant impact on the success of strategy and campaign roll-out. 

The challenge here is overcoming the tendency to rely on just demographic data, and drawing premature insights from this, instead of combining that data with sociographic dimensions. 

The graphs above are a familiar sight to every social media strategist by now. It’s a quick overview of content performance on Facebook, offering basic insight into community size and growth, content reach and engagement when compared to previous time periods. 

You would also have a view into the performance of the competitors you identify and set, based on a few limiting metrics. Many companies use the business tool and other social software to gain greater insights and to automate reporting – but is that really enough to achieve something remarkable with your strategies? 

At the end of that process, what do you really know about your audience(s)? 

How are you identifying key traits and behaviours, and creating content accordingly? 

Do you see the value in rich demographic analyses and, if so, are you gathering enough insight to actually do these?

For most marketing teams, these questions begin to show huge holes in audience insight strategies and how we target content, identify competitors, stay part of the conversations about our brand and align with the right influencers and consumers. 

With so much information available to us as a community, we need to harness this in order to improve every facet of our marketing plan. 

The simple is answer: create easy-to-consume but data-rich consumer insights reports and have the right mechanisms in place to achieve this.

There are different consumer insights tools and companies that you can choose from. For example, take a look at the Meltwater consumer insights tool as well as the Meltwater consumer intelligence platform.

Meltwater’s Audience Insight Reports go further in that they

Segment the total audience based on the communities who follow each other.

Pull up information about the parent companies.

Do comparative analyses, look at common personality traits, online habits, commonalities in interests and keywords. 

Identify the influencers who these different segments follow. 

Understand the content users are engaging with to help you resonate with different segments and advertising platforms and speak to the different segments. 

Identify brands that can influence that segment and find partnership opportunities. Which brands have the closest affinities with certain segments? If, for example, you are the Manchester United Football Club and you’re starting a partnership with Adidas, you can see which of your players are most followed by people who also follow Adidas. 

Help you find a direct tie-in to these individuals on Twitter. Understand the content that’s resonating with these users.

Give you the chance to create tailored content for each segment.

Export all of these different segments and then use them in Sysomos to do some audience-centric social listening and understand them beyond keywords.

You can listen in on the conversation and get a sense of what they’re talking about and understand where you can contribute to the conversation. 

Essentially, audience profiling is crucial to the discovery process. By creating a socio-affinity “portrait” of your audiences you can begin to combine their socio-demographics behaviours, and gain insights from their interactions. While the science of segmenting an audience is never a perfect one, it can go a long way in expanding our understanding as marketers. In fact, 80% of marketing professionals say that audience profiling is a challenge, which shows that understanding consumers can be a stumbling block.

Profiling tools are crucial to the success of your campaigns

A profiling tool can help give you insight into various audience segments. With the Meltwater software, you can get an idea of how an audience is profiled.

From the example above, if we look at Spiderman fans worldwide, we can quickly establish where they are located, what languages they predominantly speak and what other interests, competencies and demographics they share, in a single view. There is also the opportunity to dive deeper into the data.

Looking at a more centralised dashboard, we can also see socio-graphic information, influencers and brands followed, interests, media preferences, content tracked and personality and behavioural traits.

We are also aware of more intricate details, like the type of device used, favourite social media platforms, publication preferences, days and hours of activity, types of content consumed, participation in events and more about the navigational behaviour of our audiences.

From a market research perspective, we can actually work with the target demographic and understand what those people are talking about. We can also understand the audiences of your competitors. Are they more successful than you at marketing to a certain gender or age range? You can find out where there are opportunities for competitive intrusion and take some of that market share back. 

So, Audience Insight Reports are crucial to any marketing discovery because you can easily see the reach of monthly publications as well as your social audience.

Collate audience insights and put them to good use

This is a particularly useful approach for those of us who have the room to create experimental marketing strategies and execute them on the data we collect. 

Each group is going to have a specific group of influencers who influence that segment

Find the influencers followed by the most people in that segment – “affinities”

Understand from a uniqueness standpoint (which are most unique to each segment). This can help you identify micro-influencers who might be more cost-effective but still powerful.

It’s also a perfect fit for search and paid media professionals who want to profile very specific users and target paid media and search campaigns to a very specific demographic or persona. 

There is a plugin that allows you to segment audiences and advertise directly to those people on Twitter with promoted tweets. This is a great way to cut through the noise and show them content that only they see. 

PR and communications professionals can use audience insights to find publications and personalities, and to create specific angles geared towards a target demographic. It’s also an important mechanism in terms of finding fitting influencers. 

Content curation is best when you can understand which content really resonates with people in different segments. See what people liked on Twitter, and get insights into the personality of these personas. You can even see purchasing habits and the social channels they are most active on. 

This allows you to craft a very tailored strategy, and allows you to identify all the people going after your brand so you can engage and respond to them.

Anyone who needs to understand the audiences who are talking about your brand and products should have some form of comprehensive audience insight. 

Most brands have multiple target segments. If, for example, you run basic insights on Budweiser Light, you will see three people who have mentioned the brand. One comes from the vantage point of the LGBTQ community, one association with Nascar and one with Game of Thrones. If you wanted to appeal to these three different people or connect with them, you’d need to identify these mentions and then speak to these individuals. 

It’s extremely time-consuming and labour intensive to manually connect with your audience. Go beyond the basics and really tap into the minds and behaviour of your consumers. Identify opportunities for better marketing strategies and empower your team to create more meaningful insight and data-driven campaigns, by prioritising insight.

Tip: Watch our free webinar about How to improve marketing with data-driven audience analysis to learn more.

Get in touch with us to learn more about gaining invaluable audience insights by filling out the form below! 

The Power of Audience Insights

COVID-19 has catalyzed vast changes in how we do business. Today, consumer behavior and activity has shifted almost completely to the digital space. eCommerce is up over 100%, social media usage has increased from pre-COVID levels on average 20% across channels, and nearly half of consumers believe that the changes in how they shop will sustain into the future. 

While COVID-19 certainly accelerated this “new normal”, these changes had been coming upon us before 2020, which suggests to those watching the trends that the new normal is here to stay, even as the world begins to ease lockdown restrictions.  

While budgets have been either preemptively or reactively reduced, and worried consumer bases consciously slowing their spending, marketers have been forced to quickly adapt to an unprecedented challenge with fewer resources. Fortunately, as the above stats show, people are creating and sharing content across social platforms at record numbers, and it’s these candid and intimate brand experiences - commonly referred to as user-generated content (UGC) - that consumers want and trust.

The trust consumers place in UGC is considerable - 90% of consumers reported that UGC has more influence over their decision making process than other forms of marketing, including search engine results. 

Looking ahead to a post-COVID-19 world, brands will also need to work harder than ever to earn and fortify consumer trust and the number one way to generate trust with consumers is through common, real experiences. Most customers will need validation that a larger base has re-engaged with a brands’ products or services before they physically step back into stores themselves, whether that means traveling, dining out, or enrolling in Universities. Authentic UGC can be a sustainable, cost-effective, and persuasive source of content that brands will need to help build trust, increase revenue, and strengthen their relationships with existing and would-be customers.

At the very least, COVID has afforded us a glimpse into each other’s lives. We see news reporters speaking from their home offices, we take zoom meetings with VPs at their kitchen tables, and this frankness and candor has allowed us all to communicate more directly, honestly, and openly, with each other and with customers. Marketers, through UGC, can leverage this shift in perspective and online behaviour through the content that their customers are already generating (at historically higher rates). This will not only reduce marketing costs but can also help to facilitate human connection, and will measurably increase conversions.

Meltwater has recently partnered with TINT, a UGC Management Platform to help brands humanize their marketing to build trust and increase conversions along every step of the customer journey.  With this partnership, Meltwater can now offer clients the option to publish UGC into any channel including websites, apps, screens, emails, or ads. Brands can now combine owned and earned in a curated way to display publicly across social channels, ads and other media types. Meltwater clients can source authentic user generated content across social media to generate new commercial opportunities and seamlessly handle rights management. And with Meltwater’s award winning AI and social analytics tools, brands can eliminate guesswork and manual processes by using image recognition and audience insights to surface highly engaging content curated to your brand that is most meaningful to your audience. 

If you’d like to learn more about incentivizing your customer base to create UGC that you can leverage for your brand, you can register for our upcoming webinar here. 

Leveraging UGC In a Post-COVID World

How Has Covid-19 Changed the Future of Marketing? 7 Expert Opinions

It’s no secret that we live in an increasingly digital world, but the COIVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend exponentially. According to Social Media Today, people have spent 20% more time in apps during this pandemic than they did during the same time period last year.

A similar study by DataReportal revealed that 4.57 billion people now use the internet, a 7% YoY increase. 

In addition to spending more time online and in apps, consumers’ online attitudes, behaviors, and purchasing habits have changed. According to Accenture, one of the new buying behaviors that has developed during this  “new normal” is that people are spending more online. 

So, what do these shifts in consumer behavior and attention mean for us marketers? How do we adapt in the long term? What changes need to be made to marketing strategies in the short term? And, how do you join the online conversation in an appropriate way? 

In this blog, we will hear seven industry experts’ answers to these questions as we explore how this pandemic has affected the future of the marketing industry.

Jenn Herman, Social Media and Instagram Marketing Expert, JennsTrends

Kate Adams, Vice President of Marketing, Drift

Connor Cirillo, Head of Conversational Marketing, HubSpot

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Why Brands Are Ditching Demographics in Favour of Audience Insights

The Power of Audience Insights

Leveraging UGC In a Post-COVID World

How Has Covid-19 Changed the Future of Marketing? 7 Expert Opinions

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How to Use Meltwater As a Research Tool

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