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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

Syndicated content travels fast. While cooped up only on your website, your content can only be viewed by your audience, but get your content reposted on other sites, and it can really take off.

Although getting your content syndicated by having it posted on other sites will help your own site’s traffic, the biggest benefit is getting your company’s name out on the internet. Your brand can be at the center of discussions on hundreds of websites, all of which will begin to associate your company with authority and relevance when it comes to your subject matter.

Syndicated content (work that’s properly attributed to you) should be sent out far and wide. After all, drawing in a big audience is the whole point of content marketing, and it doesn’t always matter if they’re not seeing your content on your own site initially.

Here are a few tips to developing a greater presence online through content syndication

There are a lot of platforms designed to help you get your content out onto as many sites as possible. The most powerful and effective networks offer a paid service: for a fee, you’re able to get your content onto a wide network of websites with ease.

You’ve seen a lot of ads that are created by these networks before. Any ‘recommended’ list of articles ‘from the web’ falls into this category. Typically these lists are paid for but designed to blend in seamlessly with the website they’re appearing on.

There are a lot of different services that all provide a slightly different distribution method. While some of them are more popular than others, which one you should use will depend on which service works best for you.

Some discovery networks that are worth checking out include:

Through using these sites, you can get your content out to the widest possible audience and get your content distributed as widely as possible. Bear in mind, though, that to get the maximum exposure from these services, you will have to pay for your success.

LinkedIn is first and foremost a social media designed for the development of career networks.

In addition to this, though, it’s also an excellent avenue for syndication, as it’s filled with regularly posted articles that are written by members of the community. In the past, gaining the opportunity to write or feature an article on LinkedIn was invite-only, but this rule has since been relaxed, meaning that anybody can submit content to the blog.

LinkedIn is particularly useful because its audience is very specific:

The site’s Sales Navigator/ Slideshare blog gets hundreds of thousands of hits regularly

The audience is highly focused on business, though, meaning that this is an excellent avenue in particular for B2B marketers.

The site generates a lot of long-tail traffic, with visitors coming to articles many months after they’ve been initially published.

The trick to getting syndicated content to succeed on LinkedIn’s publishing platform is the same as getting content to succeed anywhere. Make sure it’s high quality and people will be happy to read it, engage with it, and share it with their LinkedIn friends.

Posting content on LinkedIn will naturally lead readers back to your own site, and will help grow your authority in the area that you’re discussing.

There are a lot of communities online that focus on aggregating and collecting the best possible content.

Think of sites like Reddit or Digg as big publishing services for all types of content, carefully arranged by category. When working to syndicate your content, it’s helpful to use these communities to draw in audiences.

Try exploring the communities surrounding the big sites in order to get your content in front of as many people as possible:

Anybody can post content, but there are rules about how much you can post to avoid being accused of spamming.

There are a variety of communities (called ‘subreddits’ on Reddit) which discuss content on specific topics. Some of these are niche, but the more specific you go, the fewer people are regularly checking the sites. Check out our Reddit Marketing Guide for more information.

In order to avoid being accused of posting spam, it’s not enough to simply post up links to your content. These communities exist to discuss content rather than just consume it, so to become a respected part of the community you need to take the time to get involved, comment on other content, and share content from a variety of websites. As you build your reputation, though, these social sites are excellent avenues for syndicating your work as long as they’re used sparingly.

For syndication to work, you want as many people to reuse and repost your content as possible, as long as they’re rightfully attributing your content back to you. For this reason, it makes sense to make the process of syndicating your content as easy as possible.

Embed codes provide this simplicity: a small piece of code displayed in your content when posted on your site can be copied by a reader and pasted into their site to easily display your content on your site.

This is useful for several reasons. 1. It makes content syndication easy for your audience. 2. You can be sure that your content is appropriately attributed as it’ll appear on their site exactly as it does on your own.

Allowing the embedding of your content is particularly useful for visuals such as infographics which other sites might want to use to add flavour and imagery to their own posts.

It’s literally what RSS stands for – Really Simple Syndication: it’s a tool that’s designed to help syndicate your content for all those who want to get their hands on it, over a variety of convenient platforms.

In order to broaden your syndication opportunities, you can make your RSS feed available to a wider potential audience.

There are plenty of RSS aggregation sites online which are designed to combine and collect a wide range of RSS content to put it in front of the people who’ll want to see it.

Submitting your RSS feed to these sites means that your content will appear alongside other work on a wider range of collected RSS feeds.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a lot of extra traffic per RSS feed – your content will be mixed in with a lot of other work, so it won’t get a huge amount of attention

By submitting to as many RSS directories as possible, though, you’ll see your efforts add up to a solid increase in traffic.

Through getting your content syndicated in a variety of RSS directories, you’ll get an increase in traffic from putting your content in front of a lot of new viewers.

The more places your content is syndicated, the further it will travel.

This means that you shouldn’t overlook any place to post or mirror your content – especially high profile online communities filled with personal blogs. Sites like Hubpages, Scribd and Medium let anyone start their own blog on the site. You can create your own blog on these sites and repost all of your content from your site.

The communities surrounding these blogs are tight-knit and appreciate new content so long as you’re willing to engage with other community members.

Make sure you do engage, though – small blogging communities online are a great opportunity to develop a reputation as an expert in your field. It doesn’t take much extra energy to create a mirror site on open blog platforms, but it can provide a nice boost to traffic as you syndicate your content on other sites.

Social media is a natural choice for syndicating content, particularly anything visual. You can get your content in front of specifically targeted people by buying ads on social platforms. Good quality content will be shared by online communities, reaching further.

I’ve already spoken about the usefulness of LinkedIn for syndication, but there are ways of using many social sites for spreading your content. Visual or video content works particularly well as it can be shared widely with ease and catches the eye easily. Don’t use links – post your content directly into social media to help it become more accessible and sharable.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all welcoming of content in a variety of forms, and there are plenty of visual-only social media tools such as Instagram or Pinterest that will help your content travel further.

Don’t worry if you don’t see a huge boost in traffic: getting your brand’s persona out to audiences is the most useful thing you can achieve from these posts.

A lot of big, powerful sites are very happy to receive syndicated content.

They’re so happy, in fact, that sites like Mashable, Huffington Post and Business 2 Community all welcome content submissions. These sites and others like them are an excellent place to get your content syndicated: You’ll benefit from their very large readership and the exposure that comes along with that. Picking the right site can mean targeting a specific audience that’s going to be interested to hear what your business has to say.

Of course, considering the popularity of these websites, they receive a lot of submissions regularly. That means that they only choose the best content to syndicate, and you’re up against some stiff competition to gain their attention.

To make sure your content is exactly what they’re looking for:

Make sure your content is appropriate to the site you’re pitching to – if your work doesn’t match their tone, style, or focus, it’ll be rejected.

Submit only the highest quality content – they want to see your best work.

Don’t submit too much content – but be bold and try repeatedly if rejected to find the perfect piece of work for their site.

Through making use of popular outlets, you can make sure your syndicated content reaches the widest possible relevant audience.

Plenty of big websites readily and openly syndicated submissions to help supplement their regular content.

Just because a site doesn’t advertise a need for syndicated content, though, it doesn’t mean they aren’t willing to accept submissions.

For many sites, the idea of opening the floodgates to submissions would mean bringing huge waves of content upon themselves. Instead they choose a closed-door approach, reaching out to creators privately or only syndicating content when approached directly by creators.

To get your content on other sites, often all that’s needed is a friendly email. Send a message to the site’s content editor, explaining who you are, why you’re an authority on your subject, and offering your content for syndication. Alternatively, many sites have an email address you can contact to share story tips – wherever possible, though, try to talk directly to a person.

The syndication opportunities that come out of this will be rare but beautiful. You won’t be fighting any competition for attention, meaning your syndicated content will have a large audience’s full attention. You’ll also be able to build a useful relationship with the editor of a popular site, meaning that you’ll be developing ties with influencers in your industry.

Making more personal, private contact to ask sites to syndicate your content will provide fantastic results as long as you’re persistent and polite throughout.

Syndication is an incredibly useful arrow in your content marketing quiver.

Through using the tools at your disposal to get your content in front of a wide audience, you can develop your reputation, build a strong following, and increase the traffic to your site.

This article originally appeared in Louder Online. This article was written by Aaron Agius from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Content Syndication: 9 Tools and Strategies to Try

Sponsored content now dominates many of the major social media apps including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. So, how does a savvy PR pro know when it’s best to use paid content, and when to avoid it? First, it’s important to understand that sponsored content is a subset of native advertising. Unlike native advertising – actual ads that are designed to look like the places in which they appear – sponsored content is intended to bring value to the person reading or viewing it, in addition to being a type of long-form ad for a service or product. However, the “ad” aspect should take second fiddle to the “value” aspect of good sponsored content.

Why the stress on adding value? Thanks to over-use of native ads to spread questionable products and news stories, sponsored content has developed a bit of an audience trust problem. Since other marketer's slap-dash efforts might affect opinions of sponsored content, your brand will need to work a little harder to earn and keep the consumer’s trust.

Some brands have a clear path to offering valuable information for their readers. For example, Consumer’s Credit Union placed several items of sponsored content into the Daily Herald, promoting credit unions by making their potential value clear, and by offering advice on common financial problems, such as the impact on your taxes of a home assessment. Good things happened with these articles. First, the host publication, the Daily Herald, made them clearly marked as sponsored content and took it a step further by making their sponsored content searchable. This presented the content in context – important for trust-building. Second, the pieces were simple blog posts – very attainable on a tight budget for most companies – and offer information that the reader could use. While the idea is to inspire the reader to reach out to the credit union for more information, the approach was “helpful first, sales second.”

What if you sell a service and not a product? Sponsored content works for that also. It’s not uncommon to see a business that offers a service, like a consulting, advertising or marketing agency, write a sponsored post on a site like Marketing Land to get in front of their readers. In keeping with our previous example, sticking to text and submitting long-form articles or blog posts with plenty of visuals is the most cost-effective way to get into sponsored content.

Some well-known examples of sponsored video marketing come from big brands like Budweiser, but small to medium-sized business aren’t priced out. The big Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are now the publishers of sponsored content, and you can get content like a sponsored video published in new places with a tight budget. In fact, it’s probably going to cost you more to have a good video made (unless you have a video wiz on your team) than it will to have it placed. However, our assessment is that words on a page with good images are still your best bet.

What are some guidelines for sponsored content?

Understand your target audience: For example, a recent study of global executives showed a surprising result: 84% of those surveyed are open to high-quality, clearly marked, helpful advertising from brands. Younger audiences and users of tools like Instagram, Imgur, and Facebook are also open to appropriate advertising as long as it's not pandering in tone, and readers of blogs like Buzzfeed and Bustle have come to expect sponsored content, making them more open to it (as long as it is well done – if it is not, they will let you know!). Great PR analytics can help you find where your audience is and if the sites and platforms are open to your content marketing or hosting sponsored posts.


 Assess multiple potential venues: Social media and news sites are usually the first to come to mind when marketers and PR's think of doing sponsored content, but much of the business world is still stuck using email marketing, for example. Partnering with a great email newsletter to reach their audience should not be overlooked. Other potential contenders include popular marketing podcasts, where you can create audio content that fits their consumer interests.


 Make sure your content is in a format that is welcome: Auto-play video and audio are seen as incredibly intrusive and are one of the top reasons people use adblocker and audio blocker plug-ins and extensions. Take a good look at the future host of your content to understand what their consumers want to see, then work hard to fit in.


 Utilising Influencer Marketing: As Marketer's and PR's, you should do a thorough assessment of cost and audience before partnering with an influencer for sponsored content. Influencer marketing is thriving right now. Instagram and Snapchat certainly have their share of influencers creating sponsored content but they are now required to clearly disclose if a post is an ad. There are few industry standards when it comes to compensation and contract, so you’ll have to set your own guardrails here, and work with your PR firm to evaluate fit before reaching out. 


Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure: The FTC is setting clear rules about disclosures these days, so make sure you understand them and comply. Being creative with images and hashtags can help with disclose requirements on sites that are tight for space, like Twitter. If you’re not comfortable disclosing that your ad is sponsored, an old school guest post swap might be a better way to go for your brand.

If you’re wondering if sponsored content is right for your Marketing/PR strategy, do your due diligence while setting up your communication plan.

When to Use Sponsored Content

Public relations is enjoying a bit of a resurgence these days as a method of raising a brand’s visibility.

75 percent of marketers say they plan to increase PR spending over the next five years, says a report conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the USC Center for Public Relations at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

In spite of this rise in popularity, PR isn’t nearly as effective when a client has misconceptions about how it works.

Here are a few common client misconceptions about PR:

Some companies believe they can hire a PR firm to come in and magically wave a wand to get them the visibility they so desperately want. We in PR know it doesn’t work that way. For the relationship to be most effective, the client needs to engage with the agency or consultant. Without input from the client, both proactive and reactive, the effort may not go very far. If you don’t have the time to engage with your PR team, now may not be the right time to engage in a public relations effort. It’s a two-way street – not a one-man show.

2) Results from a Dedicated PR Effort Happen Overnight

In reality, it takes a little longer. As with content marketing, SEO, or any marketing strategy, results from PR can take some time. If a client believes that one press release or campaign is going to blow up and go viral, you may want to direct them to another firm. It takes an ongoing, consistent effort to achieve the kind of results most clients want. Be sure to set expectations up front, so there are no misunderstandings later.

I was talking with a colleague recently who said something along the lines of, “PR is a gamble.” There are PR pros who will tell clients this up front—and some who won’t. Clients need to understand that the results of a PR effort are NOT guaranteed. It’s not like buying an ad, which means you know what day it will appear and what it will say. Because earned media relies on journalists who are pulled in many directions, there’s no guarantee that a story will appear or what it will say. It’s a PR pro’s job to open the door of opportunity for the client. What happens after that is somewhat out of our hands.

“An interview is simply that – an interview. It’s not a promise of a published story,” said Teena Maddox, Senior Writer for TechRepublic,

4) PR Pros Control What Journalists Publish—and When

Yes, per #3, PR can open the door to opportunities—but what ends up in the finished story isn’t up to us. Sources can be cut as a story evolves. Stories can be killed due to breaking news. There are elements of the publishing process that are simply out of PR’s control.

Clients need to understand this, so they don’t enter a PR engagement believing that public relations pros have complete control. We’re on the media outlet’s timeline – not the other way around.

5) Clients Just Sign off on What PR Pros Provide

This goes back to engagement. If a PR pro sends a client a document, he or she expects feedback – not only approval with no comments. This happens far too often. It makes us wonder, “Did the client even read what we wrote?”

Clients need to invest the time to read what we send and provide input. Or sometimes, we may need to bounce ideas around. Or we may want the client to proactively send us an industry article they saw that might pertain to an angle we may be thinking of pitching.

The point is, a healthy relationship should go beyond rubberstamping what the PR team provides.

Before digital media, PR and marketing were classed as separate departments with their own goals and practices - but those days are over. The lines between PR and marketing are blurring and the departments are slowly becoming one. It makes sense, after all, PR and marketing are forms of brand awareness, as such, this is a goal that is shared by both teams. PR doesn't work in isolation, so neither should PR pros. In order for PR campaigns to be a success, they need to approach with omnichannel marketing in mind. 

Dispel Client Misconceptions About Public Relations with Education

PR can do wonders for a company that’s ready to engage and understands the value PR can provide. For the best success with your clients, be sure to have an open dialogue and educate them about what PR is—and what it isn’t.

Even if you can’t ensure clients have suitable expectations of what PR brings to the table, you can ensure that you’re up on industry expectations of a modern PR pro by downloading our ebook on the topic.

6 Common Client Misconceptions About Public Relations

We’ve previously covered how Instagram is quickly becoming the darling social media channel for the PR set. That’s why keeping up with the best way to create content for an engaged and savvy audience on this channel is more important than ever. Although this post is a roundup of Instagram for PR updates in 2018, we thought it would be useful to highlight some of the new content types from the past few years with tips on how to use these features. Read on to keep your Instagram strategy current.

In May 2018, Instagram announced they were once again changing the algorithm. This time they are prioritizing newer posts. They’re using the following criteria to determine the post order on a given user’s feed.

Timeliness: Newer posts are given priority on a feed.

Interest: Instagram predicts how much a user is likely to care about a post based on past behavior. For example, if a user regularly engages with makeup tutorials, these kinds of posts will be bumped up.

Relationship: Like Facebook, Instagram wants to prioritize content from our close friends and family. Beyond Facebook connections, those who users interact a lot with through comments and image tags will be shown first.

Instagram for PR: What does this mean for PR Pros?

Choosing the best time to post and especially the best time to post on Instagram is more important than before. Older posts may not show up at the top of a user’s feed. Therefore, knowing when your audience is active on the platform is essential.

Additionally, the relationship aspect of the Instagram algorithm means that we should work hard to build bridges with our social media community to encourage engagement. If our audience isn’t interacting with our content, it won’t be prioritized on their feeds.

2018 also saw Instagram launch an in-app shopping feature for business accounts. As we're sure you've now seen, brands can now direct shoppers to their e-commerce storefronts without compromising on the time users spend on the app itself.

According to Instagram, when someone taps a tag on your post, they’ll see:

A link that takes them directly to your website, where they can purchase the product

One caveat, your account needs to be approved for shopping to use this feature.

Instagram for PR: What does this mean for PR pros?

This is part of a larger strategy to keep business actions on the platform. It’s move from a platform strategy that initially relied on discovery to one that supports actions. Beyond the shopping buttons, consumers can now Reserve, Get Tickets, Start Order, or Book through third-party partners without having to leave Instagram. You’re now able to get those leggings you’ve been eyeing to wear to that yoga class you’ve booked that is next to that juice bar where you’ve ordered a to-go acai bowl. You’ll need to consider a posting strategy that highlights specific actions you’d like yMake sure to coordinate strategies with them so your brand messaging and look remains consistent and your timing syncs up.

When launched, Istagram's carousel ads got all the brand excited - and for good reasons. These ads allow companies to utilize the carousel feature within Instagram Story ads. This 'new' look gives brands the ability to better blend into a user’s feed when they’re looking at Stories rather than a seeming “commercial” interruption.

Carousel Ads are one of the most engaging ad formats. According to the AdRoll group, AdRoll advertisers running carousel ads on Facebook saw an average of 20 percent increase in click-through conversion (CTC) rates and a 40 percent decrease in cost per acquisition (CPA) compared to those who ran single image ads on Facebook. 250 million users now engage with Instagram Stories every day.

Carousel Ads + Instagram Stories … you could be on to a winner!

Paid social is an important part of the media mix for any brand trying to get noticed on social platforms. Combining brand storytelling and advertising together requires working across teams to ensure messaging is in synch, well time, and continually monitored to optimize engagement and spend.

On July 22nd 2018, Instagram launched interactive questions stickers within Stories. This was the first time audiences could submit questions for an account owner to answer. For brands, this feature can be used to encourage additional engagement from your audience!

Take a photo/video or select the picture or video you want to use as a backdrop.

Add the questions sticker, customize the text and background.

Await questions and respond when they come in

Beyond the general “ask us a question” prompt, why not profile an employee or have an influencer come in and have a live ‘Q&A’ story session?

One of the best things about social media is having two-way conversations, so regularly using this feature to more explicitly encourage your audience’s input on your features or products can show them how much you value them.

Beyond making Instagram better for comms pros to engage with our community, Instagram is making the platform increasingly delightful for users with features like music stickers. Add a soundtrack to your post by searching for music within the platform, then layer that over your images or video, and include a ready badge of the artist and song.

Instagram GIF Stickers and Music Stickers

Instagram Stories surpassed Snapchat in 2017 with 250 million daily users in comparison to Snapchats 166 million. The likely reason for this is that Instagram keeps rolling out new features.

Beyond business-oriented features, they’ve added enhancements that compete with Snapchat’s signature playful stance. This includes the ability to add GIF stickers or a song with a Music Sticker to any Instagram Story. To provide a large library of GIFs, Instagram has teamed up with Giphy.

Why should you use GIF or Music Stickers in Stories?

GIFs and Music Stickers are a great way to engage with our communities since they’re fun and expressive. The novelty factor of this latest update is likely to increase the engagement of posts in the short run. In the long run, GIFs are likely to appeal to Millennials and Gen Z, as is pairing music with a great Story. Similar to emojis, this casual communication style will bleed over to use in a business context and you’ll soon see brands adopting their use to connect with audiences.

Taking a photo/video or select the picture or video you want to upload.

Select the GIF or Music icon. Both GIFs and Music have an in-feature search function.

Add the GIF or Music Sticker to your Story.

After you add them, you’ll be able to move, rotate, and resize the GIFs or the Music Sticker on top of your Story.

If you want to pin GIF stickers, tap and hold them. This will pin the sticker to a fixed space in a video.

Making brand messages resonate on social involves visuals. Instagram is providing tools to create dynamic videos that are ripe for experimentation. By mixing content types and showing us how layered, colorful, and–dare we say–delightful their new content types are, Instagram is sending PR folks a clear message. They are putting in the work for brands to create dynamic and actionable content. Think of creative ways to add discreet GIFs and tasteful, on brand music, to your Stories to see how your audience reacts. Don’t be afraid layer other features at the same time as your GIFs and Music Badges, include a location, hashtags, and @mentions. Maybe the sky isn’t the limit, but the “cloud” might be.

One of the reasons Instagram is-by far-one the fastest growing social media platforms is because the mobile platform is invested in supporting business functionality for brands and are consistently iterating on the platform and adding features that keep users coming back.

Instagram for PR: Make the Most of the Platform Updates

Picture a world where everyone on your public relations team has the information they need to be successful. Everyone has clear PR goals—and set timeframes for achieving them. They all track key performance indicators (KPIs) to calculate, quantify and optimize their programs and measure PR to prove its ROI. Everyone knows exactly where their projects stand.

This world is no longer a fantasy. But taking advantage of this brave new data-fueled world requires identifying the right KPIs, using tools that measure PR performance, then presenting results in clear, convincing reports.

It can seem overwhelming to zero in the right KPIs, gather the data you need to track them and show how your PR activities are contributing toward the company’s goals. Start by looking at your business goals, and breaking down what you need to do to get there. As you progress and compare metric results over time, you’ll gain significant insights into what’s working and what needs refining.

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