United States

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

We've made the case before that your employees make some of the best brand advocates. And what better employee is there to rep your brand than its leader, the CEO? To help the C-suite get inspired to jump on social, we've assembled some of the best CEO social feeds we keep track of. Interested in taking your influencer marketing to the next level? Contact us to schedule a demo of our influencer management platform.

According to current research, only a mere 40% of CEOs are active on social media.

Of the 40% that leverage social media, 70% use LinkedIn only. However, this number is expected to grow significantly in 2019 as people turn to authentic sources of information.

In an era of misinformation and fake news in the media, CEOs and other top business executives have a unique opportunity to be more vocal on social. This can help boost your brand’s reputation and build trust among your users. That’s why we put together a list of 5 top CEOs on social media that are making a splash for themselves and their company.

One CEO that accounted for an incredible 33 of the top 500 Facebook posts of 2018, according to BuzzSumo, is evidence of the power of a CEO’s voice and leadership on social media.

It’s the Founder of the global enterprise Econet Group, Strive Masiyiwa.

Masiyiwa has racked up more than 3.5 million fans to his Page, ranks 437 among all Public Figures in the world, and generated 108+ million engagements to his posts in 2018.

Strive Masiyiwa - Learn to use the law to protect you and...

And the most interesting part is that he’s done all of this through images and captions (not videos). A lot of his high ranking posts are more like micro-blogs, averaging well-over 300 words per caption.

Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors (GM) was the first female CEO of a major global automaker. And that’s just one of many impressive facts about Barra.

GM ranked No. 1 on the 2018 Global Report on Gender Equality – one of two global businesses that have no gender pay gap All thanks to the leadership of Barra as CEO.

Mary Barra on Twitter: "…Today, we have a plan for the majority of employees currently working at our impacted plants in Maryland, Michigan, Ohio and Oshawa, Canada that includes job opportunities at other GM facilities. We're committed to doing the right thing, for the future of GM and our people."

Frequently, Barra uses Twitter as a platform to champion social causes like empowering female leaders and emerging nonprofits such as GirlsWhoCode. She also demonstrates that even as the head of a Fortune 500 company, it doesn’t mean that you have to stick to a boring, media-friendly script.

She uses social media as a way to confront potential issues and negative press head on. Instead of hiding in the shadows, Barra steps into the spotlight and speaks transparently on behalf of GM.

In one of the bigger political brand moves of 2018, Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, made a pledge to support Prop C – A measure to tax the biggest businesses in San Francisco to raise as much as $300 million for homeless programs:

Marc Benioff on Twitter: "Homelessness is all of our responsibility which is why we are supporting Prop C @OurHomeSF. Together, as one San Francisco, we can take on our city’s most complex & difficult problems.  As SF’s largest employer we recognize we are part of the solution. https://t.co/TOVCC1zPZG"

What’s most interesting about this particular situation, is that Marc Benioff personally lead the charge on social media. Benioff was personally in for $2 million, while Salesforce reported nearly $5.9 million in contributions. 

As a CEO of a massive SaaS brand, this is a perfect example of how effective social media can be in gaining press attention for your business. Instead of framing it as a Salesforce initiative, the Salesforce PR team helped Benioff craft a compelling narrative that eventually lead back to the company.

Former CEO of Burberry and now Senior Vice President of Apple Retail, Angela Ahrendts is a master storyteller both in her personal life and for the major brands that she leads. 

Great brands and great businesses have to be great storytellers. We have to tell authentic, emotive, and compelling stories because we are building lifelong relationships with people. That relationship has to be built on trust.

Authentic Branding for a Global Audience: Angela Ahrendts (Future of StoryTelling 2013)

You can see and feel Angela’s storytelling ability in every one of her posts on social media. Even seemingly small Tweets come across as captivating: 

CEOs need to be great storytellers in order to amass and move a large audience online.

2018 wasn’t Facebook’s proudest year, in fact, Mark Zuckerberg probably wants to forget it ever happened. 

However, that doesn’t mean Zuckerberg is giving up. Quite the opposite – he’s showing CEOs everywhere that even in the hardest times you can still come out as a better person and business. 

To do so, Zuckerberg uses Facebook as a place to open up a conversation around change:

Zuckerberg publicly addresses many of the issues Facebook is up against in 2019 and explicitly states what he is going to do about them.

Social media is the perfect platform to enact change because it’s on public record and it’s a forum where CEOs can interact with key stakeholders – you and me.

These CEOs show that personal social media accounts can be a powerful force for good in customer service, brand building, PR, marketing, and sales.

However, CEOs can only accomplish these goals if they are active and consistent on social media. It’s hard to build an audience and community otherwise. 

Take a stand, confront your company’s biggest challenges, be an advocate for change, and leverage the power of social media as if you’re job depended on it.

Top CEO Social Feeds: How to Keep Your Brand on Top

Public relations is about communications: the message, the medium, and the content. However, the channels are changing and so is the technology. Today, communication is messy, splintered, and in real time. It’s amplified by the social web and has made everyone a publisher and a virtual reporter. Nonetheless, the message still needs to touch hearts and minds.

If you think it was hard to get your message out before the social web showed up, you were right. But now the challenge is even harder.

So how do companies, PR agencies and communications professionals transition from a world of the 7 o’clock news cycle and column inches to a noisy and distracted 24/7 digital world that never sleeps?

You need to be more creative with your communications. Let’s imagine a PR firm that specializes in beauty and personal care sends out multiple press releases for the same product over time. A media intelligence platform provides the tools needed to compare the performance of each release and benchmarking their impact on reach, share of voice, keyword themes associated with the brand. The company can now track impact and ROI by asking and answering questions like:

How did various releases compare in reaching our target audience?

Which releases succeeded in changing the conversation in the way we wanted?

The online influencer is now a credible and mainstream PR tactic, so when choosing an influencer or spokesperson to represent your brand, make sure to benchmark potential candidates by reach and media exposure. Media intelligence dashboards provide the tools to set up a separate search for each individual and then create a dashboard that aggregates and compares them all. The data doesn’t lie. It will show a clear frontrunner in terms of reach and exposure. Or maybe one top candidate has greater reach, while another one has more exposure. You can now figure out why… and make an informed decision.

Four influencers are benchmarked for their share of voice (SOV) on Twitter and in the traditional news media to help assess which ones have the strongest audience pull.

#3: Monitor News Media and Social Coverage

The social web has democratized communications. Comparing news coverage vs. social chatter on a specific topic can be especially useful for understanding the connection (or disconnect) between news and public opinion.

This company maps and compares brand sentiment on social channels and national news. They may want to look at their October coverage to see what caused an across the board dip.

#4: Use Data to Measure Product Performance

Social proof for brands is now about data and metrics. Imagine that an athletic shoe company is branching out to athletic wear. They have several lines of clothing they just launched (men’s, women’s, and various sports). Benchmarking for exposure, reach, and share of voice against the comparable lines by competitors wouldn’t make sense as those brands are already well-established. So the company poses a question: which of their new products is doing best? And they benchmark the different lines of clothing against each other. The data produces insights that are worth gold!

Because the company understands that a new line of business can take timeto make money, they will use this benchmarking (as opposed to simply sales figures) to help guide product decisions.

Adapting to new communication channels and media is critical. So is keeping on top of the revolution that is happening right in front of us in what is now a global village. The democratization of publishing and marketing is switching the power from the gatekeepers to the creators. The proverbial stoop where our newspapers used to be delivered to now takes many forms (smartphones, tablets, desktops, smart devices), and we must optimize the messages we deliver throughout.

Are you adapting, innovating, and embracing the change or are you hiding and avoiding it? Your attitude to change is maybe the biggest challenge you have. Over to you.

PR Tips: Taking Control of the Conversation in a Digital World

Once a concept of sci-fi movies, artificial intelligence (AI) has now become mainstream. Applications of this technology are ever-growing and affecting businesses in different and unexpected ways.

When it comes to Procurement & Supply Chain, for example, organizations are still struggling in embracing the full potential of AI.

How can this technology be used successfully then, without businesses being simply caught up in the ‘complexity’ of it all?

As we see from Deloitte’s CPO Survey in 2018, AI is only fully deployed in 2% of procurement organizations, and is far from making any real impact at scale within the digital ecosystems procurement teams are so eagerly trying to build. To top it off, there’s only 27% percent of procurement leaders considering AI/Cognitive technology, and 55% who haven’t considered it at all. 

Cut to 2019, Deloitte published its newest CPO Survey where they found that 81% of chief procurement officers with fully implemented solutions in the space of Supply Chain Risk & Compliance Management aren’t satisfied with their solutions. 

That’s a whole 25% higher than Donald Trump’s disapproval rate when it reached its peak.

Procurement teams are combating complexity in multiple dimensions, one of which is inherently digital. In other words, they are trying to figure out how in the world they’re going to leverage data, digital platforms, and emerging technologies to become more intelligent – more data-driven – in their strategies and operations. 

Expectations are that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning should be able to be applied in order to create more cognitive procurement organizations, but ask yourself: has my procurement team yet understood what AI is, or where it’s best applied?

Artificial Intelligence is intelligence displayed by machines, in which learning and action-based capabilities mimic autonomy rather than process-oriented intelligence. The simplest way to understand the potential application of AI is to clearly define its potential value-added.

Introduced by Gartner Analyst, Noha Tohamy, at Gartner’s Supply Chain Executive Conference, AI was broken down into two categories.

Augmentation: AI, which assists humans with their day-to-day tasks, personally or commercially without having complete control of the output. Such Artificial Intelligence is used in Virtual Assistant, Data analysis, software solutions; where they are mainly used to reduce errors due to human bias.

Automation: AI, which works completely autonomously in any field without the need for any human intervention. For example, robots performing key process steps in manufacturing plants”.

Artificial Intelligence is a rather cutting edge technology & is being used consistently within applications from some of the top-tier technology providers that we’re exposed to on a daily basis in our personal lives; Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, among others. Things have developed incredibly fast in the last few years of technological development, and they’re only going to speed up.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard once predicted in a Forbes Magazine article that “Humanity will change more in the next 20 years than the previous 300 years. It’s a big call, and I will happily admit that I’ve had some people snicker at this statement. ‘You’re grandstanding!’ they say, ‘That’s unbelievable!’

“And whilst it may feel like a dramatic statement, I stand by it,” Leonhard adds. “If anything, I consider it to be an understatement when you assess the reality of exponential and combinatorial technological change. When AI (artificial intelligence) meets HI (human intelligence), business, as usual, is dead.”

In reality, machine-kind is becoming smarter than mankind in certain instances, but not without Human Intelligence (HI) being applied in parallel, and certainly not without access to robust data sets. 

So, how can we take the stigma away from these two feared letters, and begin to find practical applications of artificial intelligence that can add real business value fast? Moreover, how can procurement teams do this without breaking the bank, or their brains from thinking too hard?

AI + Data = Supply Chain Risk Management 

Data is plentiful, and therefore content & information is plentiful. 

Forbes published an article back in 2018 that claimed that 90% of the world’s data had been created during the two years previous. 

This article itself will too create its own unique impression on the internet, once published. It will have specific attributes that render it searchable for a reader interested in learning more about the topic of focus; in this case AI, Data, and Supply Chain Risk Management.

Bots powered by search engine providers will scroll the internet, find this article, process the language in the article, recognize a thread of relevance, typify the content, fold it up and pop it into its respective filing cabinet in some corner of the internet’s vast warehouse. 

Information is more robust than ever before. As the amount of information and the accessibility to information increase exponentially, it is becoming equally simple and difficult to find things all at once. 

While this angry sea of content, data & insights may seem vast enough to drown one in its swells, artificial intelligence might just be able to throw us a life vest, so we can bear the storm and make it safely to shore. I promise, you’re not seeing a mirage, AI + Data can offer a real solution for Supply Chain Risk Management, fast. 

AI, when applied properly can quickly, and concisely, make sense of large data sets, organizing the bits and pieces that are most important to a procurement, sourcing or supply chain professional to manage supply chain risk. 

As we’ve pointed out, information is abundant, but it’s not always in our language, or easy to find, or necessarily searchable in a ‘normal database’. However, there are solution providers that are applying AI technology to social, news and search databases in order to put relevant supply chain signals in front of professionals that can utilize that data/information to manage risk.

AI-driven insights leverage already existing data and keep relevant information in one’s peripheral that can provide strong indications of brand health, customer perceptions, financial stability, and more. 

Receiving a quick-view of these kinds of risk-related insights, in real-time, is invaluable to make data-driven analysis & decisions based upon supply chain risks. In a world where 56% of consumers are willing to be lifelong loyal customers of ‘transparent brands’, supply chain risk management is becoming central to enhance market value, safeguard brand and increase competitive edge. 

If you're interested in learning more about how AI-driven insights can help your organisation to manage Supply Chain Risk, contact our team of specialists using the form below. 

How to Use AI and Data for Supply Chain Risk

Brand credibility can provide significant value to businesses, which is why it's a key component of overall brand management and brand equity. Credible brands can enjoy increased chances of building loyal relationships, bouncing back from a crisis, and benefitting from less price-sensitive customers thanks to their favourable brand perception. Sometimes, credibility comes from how long a brand has been around, but for brands who don’t have a century of experience under their belt, here are 4 tips to get started and build on your brand image.

Better Media Analysis Leads to Better Coverage

Positive media coverage in well-respected publications are endorsements for our brand – and as such, they are a sure way of improving brand credibility. Today’s communications programs are about getting the right coverage from the right person (whether that person is a journalist, a blogger or a social media influencer) – and that means that we need to find the folks talking about the right things to the right people. With that in mind, building a media list isn’t about beat or publication anymore, but rather about how that person’s influence can move our brand story forward and enhance our brand perception amongst desired consumers. Figuring that out requires big data media intelligence using media monitoring tools or consumer intelligence platforms that can steer us in the right direction. For example, finding a journalist who’s written positively about our industry is a lot more powerful than finding one that works for X publication but doesn't have an interest in topics relevant to our industry.

In addition to finding influencers that can elevate our brand, we should also look at our competition to see what’s working for them from an earned media standpoint.

Here is an example of a competitive benchmark search analysing mentions of River Island and Topshop in the media. Marketing teams can take the analysis a step further to improve brand credibility by zooming in on the differences in sentiment and key themes via a conversation cloud. We then know what to avoid/ improve on in order to receive positive press.

(You can try a competitive benchmark for yourself using the free search engine on our homepage.)

There are a number of ways in which creating content improves brand credibility and the overall effectiveness of our marketing strategy. For example, content marketing can help position our brand as a thought leader, attract interest from desired publications, improve SEO and offers marketing pros a means of telling their brand story. Because of this, marketing teams should be getting involved in the below forms of content to improve brand credibility:

Event speaking opportunities on topics relevant to the brand

Run a blog or become a guest blogger with a credible PR partner

Use brand advocates and benefit from positive word of mouth via client testimonials and case studies 

TIP: Marketing professionals should work with their corp comms and PR departments to make sure that everyone is aligned on strategy and tells the same brand story. Disjointed messages can do a lot of harm to brand equity as it confuses audiences, so it's wise to take a collaborative approach and build objectives that align.

Honesty really is the best policy, both in life and in marketing. Trust and transparency are critical drivers of brand credibility that we must nurture and respect. One way we can increase brand credibility is by working on consistency. A brand relationship is a promise, and once that promise is broken it’s hard to put right as brand perception is often tarnished forever.

The most obvious case for building trust is truth in advertising: if we guarantee 16 hours of battery life in our advert, well, our battery better deliver that! It's worth bearing in mind that brand trust goes both wider and deeper than doing what you said you'd do, other elements such as what a customer expects from our customer service departments, what array of merchandise we might carry in any given store, or what sort of articles our marketing department is writing on our company blog all play their part in deciding whether we trust a brand or not.

Listening is about inviting engagement – and to do that, our brand needs to be approachable and accessible. Building brand credibility via social media listening can be as simple as showing that we care by acknowledging and replying to comments, or taking feedback on board. All good conversations start with listening: just like in real life, we improve our relationships with consumers when we understand their point of view. Consumers will talk about our brand whether they believe they're being listened to by the company or not, simply people their peers are listening to them - so their post has influence regardless. Brands need to take consumer influencer seriously. If your brand receives a lot of social media engagement, it can be difficult to find relevant conversations. Social intelligence tools can help us make sense of engagement by finding vital conversations about our brand, competitors and industry.

Hopefully, this blog has shed light on a few ways your brand can better engage consumers through enhancing its credibility. Brand perception is multifaceted and it's wise for your marketing team to first understand how your brand is perceived before setting out strategies that build on brand equity. We'd recommend taking both a qualitative and quantitative approach to find this research out.

4 Steps Towards Building Brand Credibility

Use Graph Search in order to find Pages that your brand can follow via Interest Lists.

When it comes to finding and targeting the right Facebook audience, the platform has a variety of tools to aid marketers. While quantity is nice, the quality is better: the end goal is to find an audience that finds your page, products and company interesting. An effective Facebook strategy is about identifying the right users and adding value so that these users then convert to customers and share your content with like-minded users.

Well, I’m a huge fan of Graph Search and Interest Lists. Interest lists are a great way for me to categorize different sorts of content on Facebook. I personally have lists that contain pages I like and lists of people that post about Social Media, music, Marketing, local news, sports and a bunch of other stuff that interests me.

Basically, Facebook Interest Lists are my map to the content I want to see on the platform. So, how do you build an effective Interest List? Well, it starts with Graph Search. With Facebook Graph Search it’s very easy to find new pages to follow, old and new friends, people with similar interests, new places to explore, and anything else that interests you.

Used together, Facebook Graph Search and Interest lists can help you find interesting content, engage with fans, find new fans and increase your reach. This is all done in three easy steps. Let’s hit it!

Let's start by searching for pages that you, your fans and your target customers are interested in. By searching for these pages we are aiming to understand what they’re posting, engage with their followers, and to expand our reach. Being a part of the Marketing team at Meltwater, I’m curious about what other pages our fans like. I start with a very simple search: “Pages liked by people who like Meltwater Group.” This search is a good place to start, but it’s quite broad. So, even though I find some pages that might be of interest to our audience, it’s time to narrow the search in order to find the gold.

Since we are a Saas company operating in the field of Online Marketing and Social Media Marketing, I’ll add an interest to the search. “Pages liked by people who like Meltwater Group and social media” is a better search. I found more relevant pages of interest to me, our fans and our target audience. This means I can now like these as the Meltwater page and increase brand visibility.

Here are some more examples of narrower searches that might be useful to you:

Pages that friends of your fans like -> Pages that friends of people that like <your brand> like.

Pages in a specific category -> Restaurants liked by people who like <your brand>.

Pages in a specific region -> Media/news/publishing pages liked by people who like <your brand> and who live in San Francisco, California.

Books that specific users like -> Books liked by people who like <your brand>.

Interesting Pages for your brand -> Pages that are of interest to <your brand> / <your competitor>.

Now that I’ve searched and found a couple of interesting pages, it’s time to add them to a Facebook Interest List.

First, I go to the page. The image on the right shows to click on the Gear Icon under their cover photo. Next, I click on 'Add to Interest Lists'. Here I can either choose to add the page to a specific List (if I have any set up) or I can choose to create a new one. For this example, I will choose 'New List' as this will be a separate one that I'll use to find relevant content, engage with users and identify users that have common interests that might be of importance to our brand.

In the pop-up box that follows, I’ll click on 'Next'. I will then give the Facebook List a fitting name and select whether I want it to be public, available to my friends or just available to me. By clicking on 'Done' I have now created my list and I can easily add more pages by visiting their Facebook page, clicking the gear icon and simply adding it.

Facebook Interest lists can easily be forgotten if you don’t get reminded to visit them on a daily basis. Therefore, by clicking the pencil icon I can choose to 'Add to Favourites' meaning I will see it to the left each time I log in on Facebook.

If you've followed the steps in this article, you now have a full Facebook Interest List that is full of insightful pages for you and your brand. So, what exactly can you do with it? To name a few: 

Be a part of the discussions that happen on posts by sending out valuable and engaging content as your company Facebook page. By showing your knowledge and adding value to the discussions, more potential customers will see your page, engage with your content and return to your page.

What is engaging your target audience? Are there any particular posts in your list that engage a lot of users? Do you have anything interesting to add on the subject? Post about the topic on your page, add interesting opinions and see how potential customers interact with the topic. This will allow for more informed and strategic Marketing and Facebook ads further down the line. 

By adding your opinions and comments on posts that your fans find interesting, you engage with your current fans and get the chance to find new followers. Be sure to use your opportunities wisely. Use this tool to understand current and potential audiences. Post smart and relevant content that is interesting to your current target demographic and analyse how they engage with it. 

So, there you have it: Facebook Interest Lists and Graph Search are two features that will help you find, engage and grow your target Facebook community. Looking for more audience targetting tools? In the last few years, Facebook has introduced capabilities in their ad manager to further aid marketers including: 

Do you use Facebook Interest Lists? What do you think of the steps given in this blog post?

Want more Facebook Marketing Strategy tips? Like us on Facebook!

3 Easy Steps to Using Facebook Interest Lists for Business

Digital footprints left behind on social are a hot topic of today. We’ve all heard horror stories about employers following our digital breadcrumbs to find out about the ‘real you’. While many wish for “world peace” on their job applications, photos of an applicant dancing on the bar looking more than worse for wear can communicate a different story. 

But is this the only impact social listening has had on HR?

Social Listening Offers Profiling Opportunities

Social Listening Facilitates Head Hunting

Social Listening Facilitates Employer Branding

Social Listening to Keep an Eye on Competition

When crafted appropriately, a candidate’s online presence can work in their favour. The HR departments are able to gain a more informed impression of a candidate before the interview stage, thus helping with the screening process. For the candidate, social listening and media monitoring provide customer profiling opportunities. For example, companies will be able to see if a candidate has shared industry news, engaged with industry influencers, or published blogs to demonstrate their enthusiasm and knowledge.

Social listening and media monitoring also deliver the added benefit of finding talent for a company. If we set up a keyword search for ‘graduates’, as an example, we can then discover new and fresh talent before our competitors in the industry. The early bird catches the worm, right? Inga Boesecke, Meltwater HR Director Europe explains, “Social listening and engagement allows us to identify potential recruits who are seeking employment but perhaps haven’t considered or heard of Meltwater. We are then able to connect with them directly and give real insight into Meltwater as an employer of choice”.

Now we come to the other side of the coin: not only do companies expect to see more of a candidate, candidates also expect to see more of a company. Social media offers a good opportunity for HR to increase employer branding. Online profiles can show how fun, challenging, and inspiring it is to work for a brand, as well as offering employees the chance to have their voices heard as advocates. By running a keyword such on a brand's name we are able to see both negative and positive comments from employees, thus helping to manage brand reputation. Check out our Meltwater recruitment video on Youtube!

Social listening and online media monitoring have also changed the way companies can keep an eye on the competition through competitor monitoring. A well-established social listening and media monitoring search can help an organisation keep ahead of the curve on developments in the industry and in particular the big players within it. Nowadays we can find all vacancies adverts online; a quick search on a competitor enables us to see:

Where our competitors are recruiting. 
This gives a good indication of their expansion plans

Roles our competitors are recruiting for. 
If we know they are recruiting for a number of R&D jobs we then know new product development is on the way so that we can prepare for this and adapt our strategy accordingly

Hopefully, by now you have a better understanding of how social listening can be used outside of the PR and marketing department. 

4 Ways Social Listening has Influenced HR

A PR team has insights into the trends that face their company's brand, this is no more evident when faced with a crisis. Suddenly, the daily work of brand monitoring and social listening becomes indispensable.

Your PR team will spend much of its time on social media monitoring your image and brand name. The average business will spend 11% of their budget on social media marketing alone this year. The power of PR has the potential to completely reinvent your brand image.

The Meltwater Blog

Top CEO Social Feeds: How to Keep Your Brand on Top

PR Tips: Taking Control of the Conversation in a Digital World

How to Use AI and Data for Supply Chain Risk

4 Steps Towards Building Brand Credibility

3 Easy Steps to Using Facebook Interest Lists for Business

4 Ways Social Listening has Influenced HR

5 Reasons Why Your PR Team Could Save Your Company’s Image

Are LinkedIn Groups Experiencing A Crisis?

Pro Marketing: 7 Tips for Managing a Corporate Twitter Account

When Brands Chat on Social Media

Making a Case for More PR Budget

Edgy Brands: How to Be Sassy, but Keep It Classy, on Social