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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

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 suite.

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

Mark Kilens, Vice President of Content and Community, Drift

Lilach Bullock, Content Marketing and Social Media Expert

Michelle Garrett, Founder of Garrett Public Relations

Let’s take a look at what they had to say...

Jenn Herman, Social Media and Instagram Marketing Expert, JennsTrends 

Q: Will brands need to re-adjust their marketing strategy over the long-term in addition to the short-term changes we’re currently seeing? 

Jenn Herman: Some brands may and others may not. What COVID has taught many companies is that you have to be online to have those communications with your audience. And the longer this stretches out, the more this online and virtual connection becomes a part of our normal means of communicating. We'll likely see more companies offering online tutorials or virtual trainings or saving money on expensive live events in lieu of an online broadcast. For those companies that were already using social media strategically and consistently to connect with their audiences, they won't have to evolve very much to meet this demand and shift. But, for those brands that weren't relying on social media as a consistent means of communication, they are definitely going to have to examine their social media strategies to determine how they can be more effective. 

Q: What does this pandemic mean for your social media strategy?   

Jenn Herman: If your strategy has been casual at best, or if you didn't even have one, you're definitely going to want to change that. You'll need to determine WHY you really want to use social media first of all. Are you looking for brand awareness? Are you looking to build relationships and conversations? Are you looking to increase sales? Your goals may be one or more of these but until you know what you want to achieve with social media efforts, nothing you do will get you there. Once you know your "why", you can start figuring out your "how". If your goal is to increase online sales, that's great. But that doesn't mean every post is a sales promotion. Far from it. You'll need a mix of content that offers value to the audience (tutorials and tips). You'll need some fun "fluff" content meant purely to keep engagement (likes, etc.) up. You'll need trust-building content with stories about your brand, your employees, your product choices, etc. And then you can throw in the sales pitch. But if you don't have all the different pieces of content that keep your engagement up and serve your audience, they'll never see nor take action on those promotional posts you keep forcing out there. 

Q: What does this mean for the marketing industry as a whole?  

Jenn Herman: Marketers have to stop "marketing" and start talking. We've all seen how every commercial on tv right now is a generic intro of soft music followed by "in these unprecedented times" and "we're here for you" in some slight variation. But they're all the same. And people are over it. The brands that come out on social media and talk real and honest are those that are most likely to survive. The ones celebrating moms who are doing everything they did before and now 10 times more work—they're content is getting praise and getting shared. The more that brands can embrace the reality of what their audience is experiencing and create content and ads that speak to that reality, the more success they'll have overall, especially on social media. 

Kate Adams, Vice President of Marketing, Drift 

Q: How has COVID-19 changed the future of events?

Kate Adams: One thing I am trying to do now is create a bulletproof plan so that we don’t have to go through a giant revision in the future. There won’t be any in-person events planned for the rest of the year and beyond. 

When talking about the number of events, it’s a paradigm of quality and quantity. Event exhaustion happens in these giant five-day webinars. You have to figure out how to make it different to get attention. Why do I have to be here or listen to the on-demand version? 

And it’s not going to be all COVID-19 related content! We are looking at this shift as our new normal; this is just how it will be. So, we will double down on the things that are definitely going to happen, and capitalize on the things that can happen, create and craft messaging around different buyers, and create a sense of urgency within our messaging.

Q: How has COVID-19 changed the way marketers work? 

Kate Adams: We are seeing people find new buyers for their solutions. For example, webinar solutions and platforms now have field marketers inquiring about their services. This probably would never have happened pre-COVID. 

People are also trying to figure out how to pivot according to this new buyer persona and understand all of the different new use cases for their solutions. This is because people are using their products, like webinar platforms, in ways we can’t imagine—and couldn't have a few months ago. 

Now the question is: Do we double down on these new personas or stay on the path we’ve always been on? You’ll also want to know if this is healthy, recurring revenue you see from these new buyer personas before making any type of decision. 

The stories marketers should be looking for are likely in your data, but if you aren't’ digging them up, you are missing out on an opportunity that will allow you to not only survive but also thrive. 

Q: Any examples of brands you have seen done a good job?

Kate Adams: Direct to consumer brand, Uber, had a commercial for not using their ride-sharing. That was an interesting play. There was no benefit for them to do that, and they used that as an opportunity to show empathy and show overall good in the world.

Amazon has shown how they care for their employees and how to keep them safe, by even showing the insides of their logistics facilities, which they wouldn’t probably do normally. From a brand perspective, it’s a different way of telling a story about how you are responding to COVID-19.

 Q: What effect do you believe COVID-19 will have on the marketing industry?

Connor Cirillo: While a lot of behavior will go back to normal at some point, content consumption likely won't go down. More people consuming more content over more time means more opportunity for brands. Prospects are hungry for helpful content that helps them be a better professional or person. 

Brands that are creating value up-front are building loyal audiences. That loyalty will pay off long-term, even if the audience isn't in a position to buy right now. In general, brands will need to rethink how they attract prospects. Helpful and human content will become a staple for that. It doesn't have to be studio-quality either, which is an interesting shift. We're now more forgiving and empathetic to "being human" than we used to be. When getting started, it can be as low-budget as a good webcam and hitting "record". Loom is a tool I use often to do this, but there are several other Loom alternatives as well that do the same thing.

This evolution will bleed into marketing as a whole. The great brands that emerge and take off in the next few years will do so because they're human. In this pandemic, we've come to value empathy and honesty. 

Look at the social media channels you're using and your tone there. Are you talking like your customer does? Do they know why they should build a relationship with your brand? To do that, brands will need a 360-degree view of their audience. There are a ton of CRMs — including HubSpot — to help see and orchestrate your channels together. 

Now is the time to figure out how you'll use emerging channels, too. People are using messaging channels (SMS, Messenger, and WhatsApp) more than ever before. If you can design great conversations and add value there, then your audience will want to hear from you. For this, I love a tool like Twilio.

Q: Q: What effect do you believe COVID-19 will have on the marketing industry? 

Joe Pulizzi: The most innovative brands will be focusing on building audiences for long-term success. So yes, brands must alter their strategies to focus on delivering valuable communications to their customers on a consistent basis (not just touting products). This could be a podcast, video series, blog, event series, etc.

Brands have learned the hard way during this pandemic that customer relationships matter. That means we communicate value consistently...we focus on helping customers first...whatever it takes. Hopefully, if done well, they'll buy what we have to offer.

Joe Pulizzi: Strategy means choosing. So, for social, a strategy means killing off channels that don't provide real value. It means choosing which channels we are best suited for and which channels we have no business being a part of. Just like our products, if they really aren't of value, we stop producing them. This is the same with social media.

I see more brands focusing on one or two channels they excel at and discarding the others or simply using them as customer service or feedback channels.

Joe Pulizzi: I believe we are about to see a movement toward marketing as a profit center. Instead of the traditional cost center that most organizations view marketing as the new marketing department will be in charge of creating and growing different audience segments. Those audiences will be able to generate many different kinds of revenue, from selling core products to increasing loyalty, to event sponsorship programs and paid subscriber relationships. Companies like Red Bull, Amazon, and Arrow Electronics are already doing this. More will follow.

Mark Kilens, Vice President of Content and Community, Drift 

Q: What effect do you believe COVID-19 will have on the marketing industry?

Mark Kilens: We are now seeing this movement into a knowledge-based economy. As a marketer, you have to make sure your website is recognized and maintained in a way that it is the most important asset that you own. How people pay attention and engage with websites is changing and it is critical to understand. 

Some important questions you should be asking yourself are: How do you attract someone to your business these days? How do you then build an ongoing relationship with online tools? My answer to these is building that one-to-one relationship, through real-time engagement, creating helpful content, and being empathic and genuine. As a brand, you need to go back to your personas and how they have changed. Re-do them. Do some persona research and the “who”, should be redone and updated. 

So how do you do it in a one-to-one way? Live chat, live video, and virtual events. Also partnerships with businesses in your space, community building. Long term community building in the digital world is super important. 

Q: What does this pandemic mean for a marketing team’s social media strategy?

Mark Kilens: On social media, your tone as a brand has shifted. Now it’s about knowing that everyone is going through something different and being respectful of that. You have to be compassionate these days. Not talking so much about you. It should be 50% about other people. 

Q: How does this change the marketing industry as a whole? 

Mark Kilens: Marketers need to be more selfless. Shifting marketing to be more of servant leadership. It's an opportunity to think about the “who” again and focusing less on you, and thinking more about the value. How do you as a marketer help someone see value with your solution or content? That's a marketing job. It’s much more about education and relationships.  

Lilach Bullock, Content Marketing and Social Media Expert, Speaker

Q: Will brands need to re-adjust their marketing strategy over the long-term in addition to the short-term changes we’re currently seeing?

Lilach Bullock: The COVID-19 crisis has such a huge and far-reaching impact worldwide that it’s not only going to influence marketing strategies right now—but for a long time coming. 

Considering the economic impact of this crisis—and the fact that we don’t know what the future will bring, more so than ever—businesses need to rethink their marketing strategies for the long term. 

This doesn’t mean that you should cut down too much on your marketing budget; rather, you should take a good look at your data and find out what your best channels are and focus your attention on those core channels. However, this depends largely on your industry—some could thrive even in a recession (in which case, they should even consider increasing their marketing budgets), while others will struggle greatly. 

It’s also important to understand that people’s buying habits and spending power have changed as well—and they could very well continue to change as the effects of COVID-19 on our health and the world economy spread now and in the future. This too should impact the way we market our products and services, placing a bigger focus on the products and services that people are likely to buy during these times.

Michelle Garrett, Founder of Garrett Public Relations 

Michelle Garrett: It seems as though COVID-19 is going to change marketing as we know it. The focus on digital must be there. As we’ve seen throughout this crisis, the only reliable way for consumers to shop has been online. So the focus on digital will continue to increase. 

Q: What does this mean for your social media strategy? 

Michelle Garrett: As people were quarantining at home, brands had a captive audience with more time on its hands, meaning that more people than ever have been using social media. I know I’ve seen an uptick in interest from clients when it comes to social—I’m sure that many brands are now understanding more clearly than ever that social is not a “nice to do” marketing element but a MUST. 

Q: What does this mean for the marketing industry as a whole?

Michelle Garrett: Marketers need to move away from “salesy” campaigns to more human, empathic messaging. Many wise marketers were already aware of this pre-COVID, but I think now we see that the old ways weren’t working—and they won’t work in our marketing future. It’s time to shift our thinking toward humans and remember that’s who’s buying our products and services. 

As our world continues to shift, innovation and community building will play an even more important role for marketers. Understanding the data, providing empathy, and listening will be our main objectives in our new online environment. 

As Kate Adams from Drift said, “We are looking at this shift as our new normal; this is just how it will be.”  Marketing teams should be evaluating the long-term implications of this crisis and what they can be doing to thrive in this type of environment. 

In the meantime, Adams also shared some inspiring words for marketers struggling to adapt: "Too many marketers say this pandemic is tough and make excuses for their efforts. In times of adversity, I have done some of my best work. In times of abundance, it doesn't force you out of your comfort zone. I think about this as an opportunity and a challenge. You want us to achieve this pipeline target? Sure thing, let's do it. It's our job as leaders to protect our team and grow our business."

To keep learning how brands are responding to COVID-19, read our most recent blog. Interested in how Meltwater can help your social media, PR or marketing efforts? We’d love to hear from you and learn how we can help.

As the world turns to conversing and engaging online, there are a select number of channels that consumers and businesses can turn to - social media platforms. Social media has been an incredible force for consumerism, news, and creative content that the apps accounted for 50% of the time we spent on our phones in 2019. This increase of usage over the years (more than 3.8B users today and growing) has made it increasingly important for brands to leverage the wide reach that these platforms can offer. As with any evolution of socially constructed systems and norms comes a profession. Introducing: social media manager. 

The role of a social media manager is integral to a company’s reputation, growth, and brand image. Not only are they keeping their eyes and ears attune to consumer conversations, but they are also creating and optimizing content that reinforces the consumer/brand relationship. A social media manager is responsible for sharing the right information to the world at the right time. Whether it’s a localized event, a product release, a partnership update; these announcements are done at the hands of the social media manager when given the proper information to strategically share the news in a digestible and well thought out way. 

These days, with more and more people spending time at home, social media platforms have seen more eyes on them than ever before - Facebook is up 27%, YouTube up 15%, TikTok up 15%. This means higher expectations for new and exciting content is inevitable. Many of these users admit this will continue after this pandemic era.

Below is an infographic that depicts a day in the life of a social media manager. Which parts of their day might surprise you? 

The Daily Life of a Social Media Manager

Traditional media monitoring is a long established PR and marketing practice, taking place in most organisations across the UK. In fact, the origins of media monitoring are considered to be as early as 1879, when an agency in Paris began supplying actors with clippings of their reviews across multiple publications, meaning they no longer had to buy multiple whole papers themselves.

This idea of selecting only relevant content and gathering it in one place used to be the soul purpose of media monitoring providers. However, with the invention of the internet, the rise of social media and the focus on analysis and data-driven decisions, times (and business) have changed.

Founded in 2001, ‘Magenta News’ was the first phase of Meltwater, as a traditional news clipping service. However our CEO, Jorn Lyseggen always had an eye on technology and the insights you can derive from the internet. In November 2016, Jorn published ‘Outside Insight’, his guide to breaking out of the ordinary and adopting an external data and analysis fuelled approach to decision making and strategising.

His idea focuses on the insights you can find in the data that consumers and companies leave behind online. Using this approach, you’re able to explore new avenues and get a richer picture of the audience, industry and competitor landscape you’re in. This hugely expands the traditional ‘brand mentions’ model of media monitoring, allowing Meltwater to use the vast amount of data produced across the globe to provide a fuller, rounder and more insightful picture for its clients.

In a previous article, we examined the impact social listening can have for any organisation: big, small, consumer-focused, B2B, nonprofit or government department. Building on this, however, is to use our software for research. Be it product, market, consumer, competitor, educational, or political, below are eight use cases which demonstrate Meltwater’s power as a research tool.

The Meltwater Blog

The Power of Audience Insights

Leveraging UGC In a Post-COVID World

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

The Daily Life of a Social Media Manager

How to Use Meltwater As a Research Tool

What Is Purpose-Driven Marketing?

5 Questions to Ask Before Your Brand Joins a Conversation

Transforming PR Campaign Management

How to Ensure You Never Miss a Media Mention

Artificial Intelligence in PR: Where We Are and Where We're Headed

Calls to Action: 50 That Sell and 10 That Repel

4 Brands Getting Content Marketing Right