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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

Online feedback is great. It helps provide validation for the work we do, it helps us to course correct in areas where we can improve, and it gives us a general idea of how we are doing in the market. It’s direct feedback from the client base that has valuable applications as we run and grow our businesses.

The problem is that sometimes online feedback isn’t great. Negative feedback, while helpful in the right context, can damage a business’s reputation, it can harm relationships that the business has cultivated with the public, and sometimes, it is just unpleasant in general. According to ZenDesk, 90% of consumers’ buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. Fortunately, there are several ways businesses can take negative online reviews, social media comments, or negative articles and mitigate the damage. It’s even possible to turn the situation into a net positive.

Not all types of negative feedback are equal. Some negative comments are genuine and well-deserved, while others are intentionally destructive. Learn to distinguish between the types before you move forward:

1 – Actual Problems and Constructive Criticism

Some feedback addresses an actual problem that a customer, patient, or user has found with your product or service, and often meant merely to bring it to your attention. While a public comment exposing a weakness in your organization does not paint you in an ideal light, these reviews and comments can be genuine opportunities for your organization to improve and to engage with the public. Some users may even include potential solutions to the problems themselves. Take these suggestions with a grain of salt, because often, the public is missing key information about the industry. Still, listen to each suggestion and consider whether or not in can work. Often, this kind of feedback can provide effective solutions.

Sometimes, if a customer’s experience is not ideal, they will respond in anger, actively attacking the organization. While the attack itself may not be merited, the issue that upset them in the first place could be very real. If there is a problem that can be solved, take the message to heart without taking the criticism personally. Situations of this sort can go very poorly, but if handled properly, they can also do a lot to build goodwill.

As the saying goes, “Some people just want to watch the world burn.” Some people have no valid reason to be upset, but they will attack an organization just because they get a kick out of stirring the pot. In fact, 28% of Americans have admitted to trolling. In a similar category, some unethical companies will post negative feedback about a competitor, even if it’s untrue, as an opportunity to build public opinion on their own product or service as a competitor.

After determining what sort of negative feedback you’re dealing with, it’s easier to determine the best course of action. If the negative comment or review was merited, always make sure to respond—but be careful how you do. Make sure that you respond in a positive, constructive fashion, and never in anger. Keep the conversation polite, and if the situation warrants it, offer to take the conversation offline. This way, you can delve deeper into the issue without allowing things to escalate online, as well as preserving the customer’s privacy.

When you respond, keep your response brief but personal. In the case of a negative review, acknowledge any mistakes you have made, and if there is a reasonable way to make things right with the customer, attempt to do so. While a business shouldn’t feel obligated to apologize, a polite response and a willingness to go the extra mile can turn an upset customer into a loyal one who may even become an advocate for your organization. Once the situation has been resolved, indicate so on the site where the review was made in a comment.

In the case of trolling, on the other hand, the situation changes. Usually, a troll is trying to bait you into a conflict, which never helps your image. They generally don’t care about fighting fair or even being honest. One more time, do not engage with a troll. Ignore this sort of feedback and, if necessary and possible, simply remove this sort of comment as soon as possible. If the comment or review is on a third-party site, contact the site owners and present your case. Just know that sometimes, sites will refuse to remove content, in which circumstance, the best option is to just ignore it and move on.

Whatever the reason for the feedback, keep one thing in mind: the Internet is fairly permanent. Make sure that your responses are rational, polite, and diplomatic. If you keep your interactions with the public as positive as possible, you can turn the negative reviews around and build strong relationships and a loyal customer base.

This article was written by Robert Cordray from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

How to Appropriately Respond to Negative Reviews Online

My first PR job came in the form of an internship in the University Affairs office. I was beyond excited on my first day; here I was, a student, and I was getting paid (a very small amount) to work in PR – an incredibly awesome achievement! And it was, at first. I quickly learned that some tasks, like sorting hard-copy press clippings, were dreadfully boring and highly inefficient. I dreamt of a day that the process could be automated, I had no idea how robust and customizable monitoring would become 20 years later - in a world of social media and living online. So much so that today’s technology leads to better public relations, and takes the grunt-work out of simple tasks, when used properly.

PR software offers highly customizable editorial and social media monitoring that makes it possible to think beyond monitoring as a scorecard to measure campaign success.  Monitoring your brand’s media exposure is imperative, but if you’re only looking at your own clips and metrics you’re missing out on an opportunity to better understand your brand’s perception in the market, what your competition is up to and your place in your industry. Media monitoring can even be a powerful asset as you plan strategy and it’s an amazing ad hoc research tool.

As I explored this concept I talked with a few agency friends about how they see companies use media monitoring today. From what I gather, many companies simply don’t know about the media monitoring available today, don’t know much about their customizable power and some get too comfortable with the “we’ve always done it this way, why change?” mentality.

“While several companies have invested in technologies and services that provide deeper analysis of their media coverage, some are still relying on simple Excel trackers,” comments Jenna Martin, Account Director for Kaplow PR. “I think it ultimately comes down to available funds and executives’ preferences for receiving measurement information.”

With that, five less conventional yet HIGHLY USEFUL uses of media monitoring:

1. Understand Your Brand’s Perception and Exposure

Using online monitoring to understanding your brand’s exposure in online media allows PR to step beyond simply grading PR efforts; and to rather offer its organization useful business intelligence. With today’s software and a few minutes of work you can access the basics (e.g. recent articles, clip counts, media reach/circulation) and dig deeper to compare your results to your competition, gauge the sentiment reflected in your media coverage, understand where you’re being covered geographically. Sharing this type of brand information is appreciated by virtually every department of a company, offering PR a way to contribute in new ways.

2. Let Editorial and Social Media Monitoring Tools Aid Strategy

If your life in this industry is anything like mine you often find yourself preparing to promote products or services that you wouldn’t have expected. Sometimes you might be pitching a product or service you know little about, which can be a problem. In these cases media monitoring tools are your best friend. Before you can think about campaign strategy you must understand the product/service you’re promoting and a quick look at related media can be a lifesaver.

“Many use monitoring ‘during’ [a campaign] to see the success in real time. However, the more experience I have under my belt, I see the need to begin monitoring as early as possible in the planning process,” adds Michael Goon, Senior Account Executive at FleishmanHillard. “It allows us to gain insight on a topic/industry, provides opinions and view points of influencers, and most importantly – it allows you to predict what will and won’t work, or improve an idea/concept.”

What Michael says is spot on. For example, if your new product is “Widget ABC” you can use your media monitoring tools to search for media about similar products. The articles you find will help you better understand how the media perceives similar products and what media is covering similar items; which will help shape your messaging and outreach strategy.

Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us can get a bit obsessive about our competition, even though we know it should not be a distraction to our daily work. Watching your competition is a good thing, it can inspire great ideas, encourage you and your team to work harder and sometimes even gives you a good chuckle when they stumble. But a healthy dose of watching the competition should not take significant time out of your day. If you think about all of the people across an organization that spend time looking at competition is begins to make sense for PR to proactively deliver competitive reports to those interested.

 Rather than doing daily searches or setting up media alerts through online browsers for each competitor in your space, PR can easily configure its media monitoring software to do the work for the organization; right down to delivering tidy reports. Technology today easily automates the process, and best part of all, you can avoid per-clip fees with some products on the market so you’re not paying extra money to watch the competition.

Similar to watching the competition, it is important to understand your industry. Watching industry developments not only helps an organization understand your brand’s place, it can help inform product development, media campaigns, acquisitions, finance, and more. For instance, if your in the SAAS business you can easily customize a media monitoring search that will deliver all news relevant to the industry to sales, legal, your CEO, CFO and CMO. This is another example of where PR can step in and offer valuable information and data that is not easily accessed by the teams who don’t have the proper media monitoring tools.

It used to be that your media monitoring company maintains a list of keywords, brands and people that they monitor for you, and you receive clips based on that set of criteria. Often times you pay-per-clip fee each time they send you a clip. In the good ‘ol days hard copies of these clips were sent and you manually filed them always as appropriate. PR software has changed the game as technology improved; with the right PR software you can eliminate the need to rely on your monitoring service sales rep to maintain a list, you can decide what you search for and alter searches on a whim. 

For instance, if your thinking of pitching your new Widget ABC you can set up a search for like widgets and instantly see coverage relevant coverage that helps you understand the media landscape you’re stepping into with your new product. Good media monitoring tools are DIY and allow you to customize of your searches as you please.

Mr. Goon sums it up nicely, he adds, “It’s important to know who’s talking about your brand? Who are the influencers and what are they saying? In addition, monitoring can show how to leverage an event, piece of news or insight to gain positive exposure for a client.”

The list doesn’t stop with my five examples, I’m sure you can think of other brilliant ways to use media monitoring and analytics that I haven’t thought of yet. Drop use a line, we love comments!

5 Ways to Turbocharge Your PR With Media Monitoring

PR metrics – like the metrics associated with other relationship marketing disciplines (events, social media) – have been traditionally hard to come by.  But in today’s communications landscape, it’s a lot easier than it used to be to set data-driven KPIs that upper management can understand and appreciate.

1) Understand that Engagement is the Goal of a Data-Driven PR Program

In the modern messaging landscape, success = engagement. Whether we engage a traditional journalist and receive placement in the “Wall Street Journal” or engage an influencer on Twitter and receive a RT, our payoff is the same: we are earning media, and as a result we garner the impressions that we’ve traditionally used to measure success.  (For more on that, check out this article on vanity metrics vs actionable metrics.)

The great thing about setting engagement as our primary goal in a socially-networked communications landscape from a PR metrics perspective is that – unlike “impressions” – it’s easy to prove: most engagement comes in the form of a click and can easily be monitored by standard social analytics.

2) Determine what Engagement Looks like on Each Channel

Engagement simply means that a consumer, or group of consumers, decided to share or interact with your messaging online.  With regards to traditional journalism, that’s media placement: how many articles or releases were picked up?  The social networks have their own metrics of engagement: a share on Twitter, a “like” or share on Facebook, or a favorite on Instagram, etc.  All of these channels work together, so understanding what engagement looks like per distribution channel is important, even if we’re just going for the traditional media placement.  The social engagement is what creates the message amplification we’re after, and as a result those are crucial PR metrics to track.

<div style="background-color: #c4f4f4; padding: 20px;">Tip: <a href="https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/instagram-analytics-insights-guide">Learn how to access your Instagram analytics and metrics</a>.</div>

3) Measure & Qualify PR Engagement & Reach

How many people took an action on behalf of our brand?  Now that we know what engagement looks like, measuring it is easy with the right PR analytics tools.  A good traditional and social media monitoring tool will identify and quantify that engagement for us, as part of a data-driven approach.  One important delineation to bear in mind is the tracking of social shares - both from both paid and owned channels where possible (i.e. the article was on the homepage of the New York Times, and was then shared to Facebook whereupon it took on a life of its own. It was also on our own Facebook page, which spurred engagement from that audience.  This type of channel-specific analysis will help us both measure and qualify our overall PR engagement.

Now, to answer the age-old communications question: is our message actually being heard?  The qualitative side of measurement is less linear, but still doable:  A good traditional media monitoring tool, in addition to a social listening tool, allows us to set up a variety of searches complete with threshold alerts that can tell us who’s saying what – and pinpointing the locations of these sources.  In this way, we can track whether or not the language and positioning we’re introducing into the market is being adopted.  If it’s not, by listening we’ve identified both what messages are out there, and where we might insert ourselves and/or engage in order to change that.  This makes for a modern communications program cycle that looks like this:

The dialogue marketing cycle starts and ends with listening.

With this in mind, our PR metrics might list a hard number of RTs, and we might then qualify our success by showing a few concrete examples (i.e. screenshots or report snippets). This will prove that  of our message is being organically shared, as other Twitter users endorse it and make it visible to their followers. Similarly, tweets that people favorite become visible to their communities as well. This is a fairly recent development but affects impressions drastically. 

4) Measure and Analyze Reach for PR Success

The reach and impression numbers that our channel partners give us are also an important part of our PR metrics – impressions are, after all, at the top of a purchase funnel, and we want to understand the opportunity there.  This is the PR metric we’re most used to using: in a time of offline communications, it was the best one available that demonstrated the value of media placement.

The power of message amplification via social sharing is that we can get significant impressions from earned media – and those impressions might be made on important influencers.  Today’s media platforms don’t operate in a silo: reporters use blogs and social and bloggers use social media, and social media influencers use journalism and blogs. Or, as we learned from PRSA: paid, earned and owned media service to amplify each other.  With that in mind, measuring our PR and general brand reach, in conjunction with both hard engagement metrics and qualitative messaging analysis, gives us a data-driven and holistic view as to the success of our messaging campaign.

A customer is so much more than just a consumer. They are a vehicle for helping your brand reach new audiences and potential new buyers. A well-thought-out PR campaign with enticing content such as infographics and short-form social posts can help you gain organic media coverage along with syndicated content like a press release. From here, you can use Google Analytics and social listening to hone in on key focus areas and prove and increase in ROI. 

Data-driven marketing is a key foundation of good public relations and an important part of your campaign evaluation and increasing revenue and exposure for your brand. Make sure you have the right tools to understand the impact of your messaging effort and to guide you in your journey towards content marketing mastery. 

Data-Driven PR Metrics in 4 Easy Steps

Is there any simpler pleasure than finding a forgotten $20 bill in the pocket of last winter’s coat? Although occasionally it may seem like there’s nothing to post, sometimes the perfect piece of social media content (like that cute sweater you packed away) is already in your collection.

Tip: We have written a full guide to repurposing content that will give you even more information on this topic.

Taking a look at your content with fresh eyes and dusting off previously produced content can help you reach new audiences while making the most of your efforts. So say, “As if!” to writer’s block and start dressing up previously produced content using these Clueless-inspired tips.

Just as students have learning styles, different platforms and users gravitate towards different mediums. Try transforming a written story into an infographic or audio story (and vice versa) until the possibilities are exhausted. Have a great how-to video? Write the instructions out and make that into an infographic, list, or deck. Have a fantastic SlideShare about a product? Use the language as a script for a Facebook Live video. Remember that great webinar you hosted? Even if registration was off the charts and the turnout successful, not all interested people will be able to attend or watch the replay. Write a quick recap that can double as a blog post. Repurpose content until it’s been optimized for every possible medium; refining language and tone as necessary.

 Think you should only post a story or blog post once on a social media? Think again. Why put so much time and energy into something you’ll only use once? Different times of day and different audiences open the door to totally different audiences. If you originally posted a story on Facebook in the morning, share it on Twitter in the evening, or LinkedIn at lunch. Be sure to distribute each post 2-3 times within the week of original publication (depending on the subject matter) to extend the lifespan of the piece. You can even use this to cross-promote your social channels by redirecting followers to the other posts (“Love our latest blog post? Head over to our Facebook page to check out the live video.”) To get it right, make sure that posts make sense and are appropriately targeting, so as to avoid alienating your audience.

Make statistics your content superstars. Did you know that more that 80% of marketers wish they could better evergreen their content? No, this is not a verified number, but it goes to show that nothing grabs a reader’s attention like a compelling statistic. Use media intelligence and social media analytics to conduct research, then comb through your results to find the most interesting numbers. Round up findings into an infographic and then break up data tidbits into individual social media posts, such as Twitter cards, Facebook images, a Pinterest board, or Instagram posts. Use the statistics as a jumping off-point or supporting data for a case study, whitepaper, or LinkedIn post.

Sometimes stories are hidden in plain sight. What is it that makes your company tick? Does your organization have a great origin story? What is your brand mission or philosophy? Are there interesting characters or even office dogs that contribute to the overall culture of your team? Take a look at the people you see every day but through a storytelling lens. Create an online archive by interviewing seasoned employees in a podcast, video, or blog post. Encourage coworkers to share photos of past events or current key moments and leverage that user-generated content for social media.

Rollin’ with the Homies (and Trending Topics)

Always be on the lookout for topical opportunities to share content. Is it #NationalBossDay? Share that old profile of your CEO. Do you have a great infographic about how to select a Halloween costume? Be sure to schedule it around the last week of October. Although social media holidays may seem silly, they are an easy way to jog your memory and reshare content relevant to a trending conversation. Capitalize on opportunities to trendjack by monitoring hashtags and conversations important to your industry. 

So next time you think you have nothing to wear (or share), don’t pull a Cher Horwitz. Try mixing, matching, and repurposing content to outfit your communications with winning posts appropriate for every—and any–occasion.

But I Have Nothing to Share: The Clueless Marketer’s Guide to Repurposing Content

Content creates exposure, builds trust and captures leads. But what does the future hold in store?

All good content marketing campaigns begin with a strategy that’s planned well in advance. If you want to stay one step ahead of your rivals, now is the time to put together your content marketing editorial calendar for the new year.

Organic reach across most social media platforms is decreasing. It’s as low as 1% for some Facebook pages!  ….Scary stuff, but it just means you need to up your content creation game and find better points of contact with your customers.

So where are the content opportunities for the next few months? In this article, we’ll take a look at the content types you have to include in your next editorial calendar refresh, along with why and how to use each type.

Editorial Calendar Content Types Infographic

Long form content is any content that’s at least 1,200 words, and which offers in-depth analysis, answers and solutions.

Use it to boost rankings: According to research from SerpIQ Google prefers long-form content. Your audience prefers it, too, with data showing that shares of 1,000+ word content have increased by 11.3% since 2017.

Not just this, but Google has updated their algorithm (again). The result of this being that longer content is favourable to the algorithm. You should be writing longer content that offers more depth and value. The benefit of using long-form content is that it offers more value to the end-user, which as a result increases the chances that you’ll secure more backlinks (backlinks are awesome for SEO).

We get it, long-form content sounds tricky because, well, how do you come up with ideas for 2,000+ words topics?

If you’re stuck for an idea, and not sure how to create great content that works, the best thing to do is produce a skyscraper post. This is when you take an existing, well-performing piece of content in your niche – and do it better.

For example, you would start by finding popular articles in your niche and then work out how you could take these existing pieces of content and make them even better. What new angle can you come up with? What weakness does the existing article have? What has the author missed out?

Then, add more words, more data, more research, more answers – more value.

The next step is to then reach out to those who linked to the original piece of content (you can find these websites by using an SEO tool) and show them that you’ve got an even better piece of content.

This technique works because, unlike creating a long-form piece of content from scratch, you already know that a particular piece of content on a particular topic is performing well. The audience is there. Rather than waste all week creating a long-form article that no one wants to see, you know that you’re working on something that there is demand for.

Quizzes might not have come onto your radar yet, but get this: more and more businesses are exploring this rising content type.

The Elephant Pants were a totally unknown brand before they used their eye-catching quiz “Which Pair of Elephant Pants Are You?” to kickstart their launch. Just 5 short, easy-to-answer questions made up the quiz, and when the results came in, the quiz took the user back to their Kickstarter page. This is where the conversions would happen.

Then there was Cloud Sherpas, a software company that created a quiz called “How Mature Is Your ServiceNow Instance?” to generate more leads. The idea behind the quiz was to improve the way the user engaged with the brand’s offerings. Due to the way the questions were presented, Cloud Sherpas were able to separate higher quality leads from lower quality ones.

And let’s not forget Disney, a huge corporation that has made quizzes a key part of its site’s content. Quizzes such as “Could You Be a Mouseketeer” are massively popular with their target audience and help to keep engagement strong.

When you think about it, it’s very hard for a B2B business to produce content that jumps out at people. As a result, we often fall back on content that’s cliched, lifeless and disengaging.

Quizzes are the perfect antidote. They generate more engagement, and people just love filling out short quizzes. Interactive content is the way to go.

Not just that, but quizzes can help you gather more leads by helping you learn more about your customers.

Each time someone signs up to do a quiz, make sure to grab their email address. Include a CTA at the end of your quiz, too.

There are a number of different types of online quizzes you can choose from, including outcome-based quizzes and trivia quizzes.

Quizzes can include images and videos, and often they can be about your brand or niche.

Simply use existing quiz creation software, such as TypeForm. Whatever quiz you make, always keep your audience in mind and make it as fun as you can.

Videos have been super popular for years, but they’re growing in popularity all the time. According to Cisco videos will make up over 80% of all online traffic by 2021. In 2018, the number of businesses using videos on their landing pages has risen by 49%, with videos increasing conversions by as much as 80%.

The landscape has changed slightly, however, as social videos – such as live streaming – begin to take precedence. Indeed, stats show that 77% of businesses now use videos on their social media channels, while more than 2 billion people have watched live videos on Facebook.

This means that you need to take to platforms like Facebook and Instagram and produce engaging video content.

A video can be an interactive live stream, but it can also be a video that explains what it is that your business does. It can also be a Q&A or an interview.

80% of social audiences would rather watch a live video than read a blog, while Q&A videos work because they’re interactive and help to position yourself as the expert in your niche.

Interviews, meanwhile, also help to position yourself in the market better, and because you’ll be interviewing an expert, you’ll also gain more exposure and traffic.

Then there are videos on Instagram Stories, which 1/3 people watch each day. Meanwhile, Instagram recently launched IGTV, which allows you to put content out on your very own channel. Here, you can create how-to videos, host interviews, and answer your customers’ most pressing questions. And now that Instagram has finally surpassed 1 billion users, this is a trend to jump on ASAP.

Facebook, of course, should still be the platform of choice for marketers. Over 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook each day.

Live streaming sounds easy enough – you just film yourself on your phone, right?

Most new smartphones have fantastic cameras and are made to film good quality videos, so, on the technical side, most of the people should be covered.

Then, just choose a topic you know people will engage with and focus on delivering as much value as possible. To do this, you can use your analytics – such as Facebook Insights or Google Analytics – to determine what content and topics your users prefer to see. What’s got the most engagement in the past? What questions are people asking on your page?

Interact with your audience throughout the video and give them a reason to keep watching to the end.

When you decide to produce video content other than live streams – such as a pre-recorded Q&A or an interview – it’s important that you add subtitles. This is because 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound, while only 12% of people who watch Instagram videos actually turn the sound on!

A podcast is a digital audio file that your audience can download and listen to when they want.

A podcast can be a bunch of episodes released as a series, and you can interview guests and offer a crazy amount of value to your audience.

In 2018, Apple confirmed that there are “over 525,000 active shows” available to download from iTunes. Meanwhile, a whopping 44% of the U.S. population claims to have listened to a podcast at least once, while 50% of all homes are “podcast fans.”

 Source: Nielsen Q3 2017 Podcast Insights

This means that podcasts are a great way to reach your audience with a different kind of content to what we’ve covered so far.

Podcasts help you reach new audiences because they’re a great alternative to videos when your followers can’t watch something visual (perhaps they’re driving!), and they help you to grab more leads via subscribers.

Plus, podcasts are a great way for you to engage with your audience, position yourself as the expert and build a proper relationship with them.

Podcasts are easy to create and don’t require a lot of cash. All you need to get started is a good pair of headphones and a good microphone.

Podcast editing software can be totally free and easy to use.

Once you’ve created your episode(s), you need to upload the files to your website and promote it. To promote it, put the word out on social media and make the most of the different distribution channels.

A contest is self-explanatory and you can host it anywhere on social media.

Facebook has primarily performed best for contests, but Instagram works amazingly well, too – according to research, Instagram contests can grow your following by as much as 70% – as does Twitter.

There are numerous types of contests you can create

There are numerous success stories involving brands using content to generate more leads. Take KFC, for example. Back in 2010, the fast-food company held a Twitter contest centred around creative answers. It worked like this: Applicants had just 140 characters to explain why they deserved to win a $20,000 scholarship and had to include the #KFCscholar hashtag.

2,800 people took part, which means that KFC was effectively spending $7.14 to “buy” new leads who engaged with their brand. When you can get this kind of engagement from a contest, it’s nothing other than wildly successful.

And how about a branded contest? Eggo is one such brand who once held a two-part brand contest on Facebook called The Great Eggo Waffle Off with the aim of improving their brand exposure. The first part involved their followers submitting a tasty recipe for waffles, while the second part involved their followers voting for the best recipe. The winner received $5,000.

This is a type of brand-related contest because Eggo asked their fans for user-generated content centred on Eggo’s waffle product. As a result, they managed to generate a wealth of photos of their product on Facebook!

Contests are absolutely brilliant for engagement. They boost the awareness of your brand and you can even start to build a community around them.

Moreover, you can also collect more leads. Because who doesn’t like to win things?!

It’s pretty easy to run a contest. All you need to do is pick the contest you want to go with, decide a prize and choose a theme.

Before you run a contest on either Facebook or Instagram, you need to know the rules. For example, on Facebook, you need to make it absolutely clear that your content isn’t in any way sponsored, endorsed or administered by for associated with Facebook.

There are also rules for collecting entries. While it’s forbidden to ask entrants to share a post on their profile to enter your contest, you can collect entrants by asking your followers to like or comment on a specific post on your page, send you a DM or publish to your page.

If you’re planning a Facebook contest to get more traffic to your website, Facebook contest rules are the best source of information.

Instagram has rules that you need to follow, too, but there are also things that aren’t rules that you need to know in order to increase your chances of success. For example, if you make following your account necessary in order for someone to participate, you will noticeably boost the number of followers you have.

And while asking people to ‘tag a friend’ isn’t against the rules, it will annoy those who haven’t asked to be tagged. This can harm your brand.

What is against the rules is “inaccurately tagging content or encouraging users to inaccurately tag content.”

And like Facebook, you need to include the “acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated, with Instagram.”

These are the 5 content types you have to include in your editorial calendar. All 5 can boost engagement, leads, and conversions. Because there’s a lot to do, the time to start is now.

5 Editorial Calendar Content Types [infographic]

Businesses are racing to transform their customer experience (CX), with 80% of organizations expecting to compete mainly based on CX this year. 

This approach is taking hold in direct response to evolving customer desires, with 67% of customers saying that their standard for good experiences is higher than it has ever been, and 75% of customers expect that companies understand their needs and expectations. 

With our world more connected than it ever has been, businesses are in a prime position to understand their customers, their emotions, and the various touchpoints at play in any buying decision, also known as the customer journey, to then deliver on this ideal customer experience at each step of the journey through various sales or communications activities.

The problem, though, as recent CMSwire and Treasure Data research I collaborated on found, is that many companies are relying on the “easy” data to model their customer journey, and fewer than a third of companies are using a multi-touch attribution strategy. And, perhaps worse yet, nearly half of companies aren’t using any formal marketing attribution strategy.

Companies that are trying to cut corners—or those that lack the skills and resources to understand their audiences truly—are just gambling their marketing budget, hoping their activities may resonate with their buyers. While some of these attempts may succeed, your company is just falling further behind the pack without an accurate, data-driven customer journey map.

A customer journey is the accumulation of every step a customer has taken before purchasing from your company, and the various emotions they felt each step of the way. These steps are often signified by touchpoints, or moments where the customer interacted with your brand in some way. 

Customer journeys are relevant for any company, regardless of the product or service they sell. Two examples of what a customer journey could look like include:

B2C: You’ve moved cities and need new weather-appropriate clothes. You’re scrolling through Instagram and see an ad that you click on. You decide not to buy anything, but you sign up for that company’s email list. After you receive an email coupon, you go to the site to finally buy the item that initially caught your eye. 

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