United States

AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

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?
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

The recent innovation in artificial intelligence will fundamentally change the PR pros’ toolbox. Here we discuss how predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, and reporting will soon get an even bigger boost, allowing PR to concentrate on the work they do best.

In reality, you don’t need to wait long to see how AI can improve your personal life. From calling a rideshare to arrive in minutes or getting an answer from Siri, AI is already saving us all time and money while making our days more convenient.

But what about when it comes to our work?

When it comes to transforming industries, AI has (so far) received a bad rap for its potential to replace humans and take away jobs. And in some industries, this may very well be the reality. But in public relations and communications, our prediction is that it will be actually the opposite—that AI will pair with you to make you far more data-driven, streamline your workflows so you can focus on what you do best, and help you amplify your message at a scale far beyond what is imaginable.

Let’s take a look at three ways AI will enhance public relations, with a few you can already start using to make your work faster and more effective:

1. More Targeted, Dynamic Journalist and Social Influencer Outreach

We all know that the way we currently reach out to influencers (both social and news media) en masse leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a two-sided problem: PR professionals don’t have enough time to curate hyper-relevant lists or tailor their messaging to each influencer directly, so influencers often get hit with a barrage of generic pitches that they end up just ignoring.

Imagine a world where using an AI technique called natural language processing, we can analyze the messaging of the PR professional’s pitch to find out that it is a new product launch about golfing targeted at millennials. In the meantime, we can also analyze previous articles written by social and news influencers to find those who write often about product launches, golf, or millennial consumer tastes. We can automatically curate a list of these specific influencers to coordinate a much more relevant match and, thus, a much higher likelihood that the influencer will be interested in covering this story. Over time, as you maintain relationships with these influencers, the AI can even sort out which influencers have higher open and response rates to your pitches and suggest them for future, even more effective campaigns.

For an overview of how you can already use natural language and pitch analytics to automate pitch personalization, watch our webinar on media outreach best practices.

It’s no secret that our information world is becoming more and more visual; it’s rare these days to find important news or social posts that don’t contain images or video. In fact, think about the number of times your brand, product, or service may appear in an online photo without the article or post explicitly tagging you!

Cutting-edge image recognition technology cannot only automatically detect objects, scenes, and faces in images, but actually name the people, brands, and products within. Take this photo, for example:

Image recognition can ensure that in addition to monitoring text mentions on social media and news, you are capturing visual conversations about your brand. This is particularly helpful for visual mediums like Instagram and Pinterest, where consumers may be posting photos about highly positive or negative experiences with your company that you currently may not be aware of!

3. Automated Reporting with Smarter, More Accurate Sentiment Analysis

Today more and more PR pros are looking to make data-driven decisions based on campaign performance, social listening, and competitive benchmarking. However, building reports on these activities can require wading through data from a variety of sources, building spreadsheets, and turning charts into easily digestible graphs. Media intelligence tools are already here to automate these process. But what about the analysis and lessons learned. By detecting patterns and changes over time, AI already lets us translate trends into words, as in Meltwater’s new Insight Reports Builder (in just 15 minutes, we can give you a personalised tour!)

Tip: Read our blog about Meltwater's AI Powered PR Assistant

A key tool for understanding brand perception in any modern PR report involves looking at audience sentiment. Sentiment analysis, already an important part of any PR professional’s media intelligence toolbox, lets you gauge how customers are feeling about your product, service, or brand as a whole. However, traditional methods of sentiment analysis either rely on a ton of tedious manual work or inaccurately gauge an article based on its cumulative sentiment (think of it as essentially summing up all the positive and negative words in a document).

Luckily, new advancements in natural language processing will make sentiment analysis more accurate and actionable. We can now drill down to each specific person, product, place, or company in an article and analyze the surrounding sentence for how this writer feels particularly about this entity.

“That Subway commercial was annoying and too long, but the Doritos ad was amazing.”

Older techniques would consider this sentence negative, as there is one positive word (“amazing”) and two negative phrases (“annoying” and “too long”). But if you managed communications at Doritos, a negative tag on this sentence (if buried within one of many long articles) would’ve made you potentially miss a great endorsement and throw off your reporting. The next generation of sentiment analysis would discern that this sentence is actually positive in relation to Doritos (and a win for your team!).

As you can see artificial intelligence is an extremely helpful enhancement, not a mysterious looming threat. When we let the machines do the heavy lifting—the counting, the categorizing, the detecting—it frees us up to do even more of the strategic and creative work we signed up to do in the first place. Let’s look forward to the amazing developments to come in this field in 2018 and beyond.

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

Content marketing combines the creation of valuable content with social media marketing and search engine optimization. It helps companies drive new leads, establish industry credibility, and stay top of mind with existing and potential clients. 

But how can you get more people to share more of your content on social media? Ironically, the answer lies in a 50-year-old psychological study. Fifty years before the iPhone and social media took over our lives, an Austrian-born psychologist and market researcher cracked the code on a marketing challenge every business faces today: How to encourage people to tell others about their products and services. Whether it’s called word-of-mouth or social sharing, getting consumers to share with others is the Holy Grail for any marketer.

In 1966, Ernest Dichter, who was trained by one of Sigmund Freud’s pupils, conducted research on what makes shoppers tick. His findings transformed the way the world looks at relationships between products and consumers. It was the first international and interdisciplinary study to reveal the hidden world of motivation research and insights into the way consumers think, feel and act. Since then, others (including The New York Times) have built on his findings.

What Dichter Discovered About Social Selling

Dichter discovered there are four motivations for consumer sharing, but they boil down to two primary reasons people share: You’ve blown them away with your product experience, or you’ve made them feel good in some way.

Dichter’s four motivations for social sharing include product involvement, self-involvement, other involvement and message involvement.

Product Involvement. 
About 33 percent of sharing is based on a good product experience. The customer found the experience to be so delightful or fulfilling they had to tell their friends - whether on social networks or offline. This is why some companies’ Facebook pages are filled with happy consumers. Take Starbucks, for instance, where people share pictures of their daily cups of coffee.


Self-Involvement. 
This comprises about 24 percent of shares. Users share the social media content that expresses their knowledge and opinions, and makes them feel smart — like breaking news and political issues.


Other Involvement. 
About 20 percent of sharing fits here. People want to help a friend by sharing, for example, coupons or product reviews.


Message Involvement. 
This makes up about 20 percent of shares. It’s triggered when someone finds a message so humorous or informative they want to share it. Cat videos and memes fall into this category.

In 2004, results from a study conducted by four researchers, published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, referenced Dichter’s research and others, and added an electronic component to the analysis. While the researchers found eight factors that contribute to word-of-mouth sharing, they all strongly correlate to Dichter’s original findings, with three new incentives for sharing — venting negative emotions, receiving a positive platform assistance and gaining economic incentives.

But what is most insightful about this study is the discovery of four primary segments of users who share online. This insight could be viewed as a precursor to today’s buyer persona creation.

Segment 1 — Self-Interested Helpers.
These social media content sharers appear to be strongly driven by both concern for others and economic incentives. This segment is the largest group, representing 34 percent of audiences sharing this content.


Segment 2 — True Altruists. 
These consumers appear to be both strongly motivated by helping other consumers as well as helping companies, because all other motives are less important. This is the second largest segment, representing 27 percent of the sharers.


Segment 3 — Multiple-Motive Consumers. 
They are motivated by all factors, except economic incentives. This segment includes 21 percent of all sharers.


Segment 4 — Consumer Advocates. 
They seem to be motivated primarily by a concern for other consumers. It is the smallest segment at 17 percent of all sharers.

One of the most frequently distributed recent studies on the topic of why people share social media content online is a report compiled by The New York Times. The Psychology of Sharing revealed people’s motivations for sharing, six sharing personas and best practices for encouraging users and consumers to share content.

Regarding sharing motivations, the study concluded that the primary reasons for sharing were linked to relationships—improving others’ lives, defining themselves to others, enriching relationships and gaining fulfillment. This aspect of the survey correlated strongly to Dichter’s original findings.

The study also cited several statistics on what inspires and motivates people to share links, videos, images and offers on social networks, including:

85 percent say reading other people’s responses helps them understand and process information and events

84 percent share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about

78 percent share information online because it lets them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with

73 percent share information because it helps them connect with others who share their interests

73 percent say they process information more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when they share it

69 percent share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world

68 percent share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about

49 percent say sharing allows them to inform others of products they care about and potentially change opinions or encourage action

A groundbreaking aspect of the New York Times study was that researchers could determine which areas of the brain were triggered during the sharing process. From this insight, they formulated six online sharer personas defined by emotional motivations, desired presentation of self, and role of sharing in life. Along with two more sharer types than the 2004 study, this study also revealed more sharer insights.

Altruists. 
These sharers are helpful and reliable. They are motivated to share by being seen as thoughtful and connected. Their primary sharing vehicle is email.


Careerists. 
These sharers are valuable and networked. They are motivated to share by being seen as intelligent. Their primary sharing vehicle is LinkedIn.


Hipsters. 
These sharers are young and popular. They are motivated to share by being seen as cutting-edge and creative. You will find them using multiple social networks or sharing vehicles, but not email.


Collectors. 
These sharers are relaxed, thoughtful and always making plans. They are motivated to share by being seen as creative. Their primary sharing vehicles are email and Facebook.


Selectors. 
These sharers are resourceful and careful. They are motivated to share by being seen as thoughtful and informative. Their preferred sharing vehicle is email.


Boomerangs. 
These sharers respond to reaction, validation and empowerment. Their primary sharing vehicles are Twitter and Facebook.

The New York Times study also detailed seven best practices that contribute to encouraging more customers to share more content.

Sharing is how consumers connect with one another. Appeal to consumers’ motivation to connect with others, not just with your brand.

Trust is the cost of entry for getting shared. If consumers don’t see you as an authority they can trust, they won’t share your content.

Keep it simple. Publish content on a highly focused topic. This boosts your brand and helps you stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Appeal to their sense of humor. A little personality and humor can make a big difference.

Embrace a sense of urgency. If there’s an element of urgency in your content, it appears valuable. As a result, people are more likely to share it.

Getting content shared is just the beginning. One share is not the endgame. You need to continue to support sharing, and even reach out and say thank you now and then.

Email is still No. 1. In a world dominated by social media, don’t forget about email. It’s still the primary way people communicate. So consider making it easy for your readers to share your content via email with a click (unless they are hipsters, of course).

And finally, a study conducted by Ogilvy & Mather in 2014 condensed global insight on sharing into one primary takeaway—to encourage content sharing you must produce high-quality content.

The study also identified companies leading the way in producing shareable, quality content by country. In the United States, for example, companies taking the lead include: Huffington Post, Upworthy, Apple, NPR, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, Mother Jones, Humane Society, Amazon, Drudge Report, NPR, PBS, Kraft, ESPN and PETA.

While the world we live in today is very different than it was 50 years ago, a review of the research conducted since Dichter’s groundbreaking study shows that our motivations for sharing have stayed relatively the same. The biggest difference between the world then and now is how much content is created every day, how much content is shared and how frequently it’s shared.

To stand out in this crowded social world requires a strategy that takes into consideration the insight shared by leading voices on the subject. Understanding the motivational forces behind the act of sharing—and working with them in mind—is the best way to help your company get more of your content shared more often by more people.

How to Improve Social Media Shares of your Content

Social media plays a large role in content marketing as one of the key distribution vehicles for content. In addition to advertising and email marketing, social media shares of content via sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr and other platforms allows good content to spread: the modern version of word-of-mouth marketing.

With that said, the spread of content via social media doesn't have to be left to chance. There are specific things that companies and organizations can do to either encourage (or inadvertently discourage) the social sharing of content.

Not all topics are created equal, so you need to develop a sense for what your topics your audience really cares about. Some ways to do that include looking at search keyword volumes (e.g. via Google Adwords or various keyword tools), asking sales what customers always ask about, or seeing what consistently gets shared and commented on on your blog, competitor's blogs and in social media in general (see this deep dive about business blog topics).

I hate to say it but 99% of business blog post headlines are accurate but extremely dull. "Why Your Company Should Use Encrypted Storage Solutions" may describe what's in the post clearly, but is not that compelling. Here are a couple of twists on the same content, with new headlines to increase interest, curiosity and share-ability: "5 Reasons Hackers Love Current Data Storage Solutions" or "Traditional Data Storage + Your Corporate Secrets = Serious Risk". You may be able to come up with better, but the point is to intrigue the audience who sees this headline in social media or on your blog.

Many industry influencers stay top of mind with their social media followers by curating valuable, unique or interesting content. In fact, they often won't read whole posts before they share. If your post is not designed in a way that makes it easy to quickly grasp the key points, they won't bother to skim it or share it. In addition, many of your regular readers don't have time to dig into large blocks of text. Think bold headers and key points (2-3 sentences) for each versus dense paragraphs.

In addition to skimmable posts, pictures are a very important element for increasing social shares. Sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest usually feature the main picture from your post. The visual elements are critical to getting attention for your post in social media, to communicating the key message, and often can make or break the social sharing of a post. Don't spend time on a great post and take 2 seconds to pick a very boring and generic picture or graphic. Worse yet is to completely skip pictures. Take the extra time and find a unique style of graphics or pictures that works for your company and your social sharing will grow (and yes, you can use stock photography but don't always go for the obvious).

Supermarkets make it easy to buy impulse purchases like candy and magazines by positioning them strategically at the check-out line. If you want people to share your posts, you need to position social share buttons right where any reader (or skimmer) will find them. I typically like to put them at the top or on the side (scrolling with the content) so they're hard to miss.

This refers to the fact that many companies will create content, have share buttons visible (with counts of shares), and the posts will have a measly 0 or 1 shares. Are you telling me that you can't muster more than 1 share across your whole company for that content? Having only a couple of shares per post communicates a lack of interest from both the company and readers. Having at least a few shares per post shows that there's some interest and makes other people more likely to share it themselves. Encourage the authors and others in the company to prime the sharing pump.

In order to maximize sharing of your content, it helps if you have a large set of followers on one or more social platforms that make sense for your brand. Each real (not paid for) connection, follower or fan can have 10's, 100's, 1000's, 100,000's (you get the point) of followers themselves. With great content optimized for sharing, you can potentially reap 100's of shares of your content from your own social base and their connections.

Don't expect people to be jumping over each other to share your content if you've never lifted a finger (or clicked your trackpad) to comment on, like or share other people's content. By building up some online goodwill, you'll increase interaction with your content, including shares. Don't forget to help others spread their great content well before you ask people to share your content!

Connecting topics that your readers care about with current events is a great way to create a relevant and interesting post. People love to share a new angle on a current topic or a creative addition to recent Meme. See some examples here: Big Data and the Superbowl, Justin Bieber and South by Southwest (SXSW). To connect with current topics in your content, you have to move fast or plan ahead!

So you can see, growing the number of social shares is not something that will "just happen". Savvy digital marketers, business owners, PR professionals or social media managers (including you) can be strategic about the content they produce, how it appears, how it's introduced into the world and who sees it.

Research Reveals Secrets of Social Sharing

The majority of marketers have made content marketing a pillar of their marketing strategies, and for good reason. Brands can point to strong ROI after building their content strategies and many have been able to keep growing audiences engaged.

If you couldn’t sense it, there’s a “but” coming.

When everyone starts doing something, the game changes. Consumers are inundated with content everywhere they turn, and a lot of it contains cheap attempts to win page views or likes. In other words: it’s boring, it’s self-serving, it’s not thoughtful and it’s not helpful.

On the flip side, there are the brands that are getting content marketing right: they understand it’s a long-term game; they write for their audiences, not themselves; and they dedicate adequate resources; and they’re still seeing the results.

Here are some of the masters we can learn from when it comes to content marketing examples, and use as case studies to inform our campaigns going forward:

GE has emerged as a storytelling brand. The company is driven by all the possibilities afforded by its technology and the stories it has started to craft align perfectly with its “imagination at work” slogan. GE takes complicated, technical ideas and manages to tell cool stories (often through video, another win) that resonate with the nerdiest geek to the average viewer.

Its content ranges in form, publication channel and target audiences. Take its “Breakthrough” series with National Geographic and Hollywood stars, which shares scientific breakthroughs from GE’s labs and compare it to the “Fallonventions” series with youngest viewers of “The Tonight Show.” Meanwhile, GE’s “Unimpossible Missions” series is a great demonstration of creativity, debunking idioms like “a snowball’s chance in hell” and “like talking to a wall” using GE technology. Ad Age reports the video content is published to YouTube, Vimeo, GE’s owned and social channels, and in paid channels. GE also launched a live mission on Periscope.

Speaking at Inbound 2016, Ed Heil, president of video production agency StoryTeller, said videos – or any content on your YouTube channel – must be informative, helpful, entertaining or engaging to keep viewers’ attention. GE couldn’t do this better.

Created four years ago, iQ by Intel has quickly grown into a popular tech magazine. Luke Kintigh, global content and media strategist at Intel, says that success is owed to Intel’s focus on content distribution. He says, “It doesn’t matter how good your content is if you don’t have a strategy that’s distributing it to the right audience.” After the team refocused away from churning out more and more content to getting fewer quality pieces in front of their audience, it saw visitor growth, and step-by-step it became a leader in brand messaging. 

Kintigh stresses in many interviews he gives how important it is to build loyalty and give people a reason to come back. The only way to do that is carving out your own niche and telling unique stories. iQ by Intel nails this. The content is varied and interesting. On a recent visit, I was drawn into stories about bike tech gifts, pet prosthetics and IoT for winemakers. Intel’s writers not only describe the tech – it is a tech company after all – but, like GE, they know how to craft a larger story that draws readers in.

The first thing I have to commend the Drift team on is that it runs a considerate marketing practice. By that, I mean the team respects its audience. It killed its content forms, any ask for an email sign-up is a polite one, and the team consistently puts out valuable, usable content and resources.

Drift uses a casual, relatable tone in everything it writes. The focus remains on building an audience and forming a relationship with that audience – the team writes as they would speak to a friend or colleague. Through all of this, Drift has established itself as a resource for marketers and other SaaS executives (for example, check out this post for bonus content marketing lessons).

I know when I get an email from First Round Review, I’m going to want to read the article it features. Every piece interviews a compelling person and the magazine features founders, executives and generally smart people from all facets of business. I know I’ll get an insightful piece that will inspire me or make me better at my job. When you hear someone say long-form content is what makes great content marketing, First Round is an exemplar of that success. Camille Ricketts manages the Review and her journalist background shines through.

She stresses the importance of knowing their audience as a key factor to success: “For us, that’s seed-stage entrepreneurs. So regardless of what we’re writing about or who we’re interviewing, we always ask ourselves whether the story would be enlightening for that group of people. Once you’ve nailed down your core reader, you’re much more likely to appeal to and reach adjacent audiences.”

Not to mention, First Round sets a beautiful example with its design – check out this year’s State of Startups report.

There are a few common themes between these brands:

They understand content marketing is not about them. No one cares about your brand until you give a valid reason to do so, and that spurs on organic traffic. You must understand your audience and create content specifically for them. They're also able to take content format and use it to play to their strengths, i.e. video or text, interactive or simple imagery.

Take a journalistic approach and learn the art storytelling. This is what will make your content hub interesting to people and keep your brand top-of-mind.

Find ways to draw people in and keep them coming back. Clickbait headlines annoy people for a reason. A good content marketer knows that you may get some extra clicks, but you’re not building a relationship with your audience. Is the traffic really going to improve your business and is brand awareness worth it at the cost of reputation?

Do you want to learn more about how Meltwater can help to understand your audience? Fill out this form and we will get in touch with you.

This article was written by Michael Becker and Rachel Sullivan from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

4 Brands Getting Content Marketing Right

When a customer opens your email, they usually skim it for relevant information. Subscribers typically read the first line, check out the picture and glance at your Call-to-Action (CTA). That’s why creating a compelling CTA is so important. It’s one of the few items within your email that can draw attention and encourage the reader to act.

What makes one CTA better than another when it comes to affecting your conversion rate? We’re glad you asked. To help distinguish between good and bad calls to action, we’ve created a list of CTAs that sell, and a list that repels. At the end of each list, we explain why they work, or don’t work.

We scoured inboxes and created a list of 50 CTAs that sell, and broke them up by category.

All of the calls to action are descriptive and provide enough information for subscribers to act. You don’t even need to read the entire email to understand its purpose.

Calls to action should encourage an instant reaction. All of the CTAs above use urgent language to do just that. Words like “now,” “today” and “limited time offer” show a need to act immediately.

There are a few traditional calls to action like “shop now” and “read this post,” but the list also has quite a few original ideas too. For example, “Love to share? Please do” isn’t a call to action that you see every day. It’s okay to think out-of-the-box and be creative when you write a call to action.

Now for the not-so-great calls to action. Here’s a list of 10 CTAs that could repel your customers.

Most of the calls to action on this list don’t provide any real information. For example, what does the CTA “continue” mean? Is it encouraging a customer to continue to a website? Is a customer supposed to continue shopping? Or should a subscriber continue on to a brand’s Facebook page? There just isn’t enough information to inspire a customer to act. CTAs play an important role in the UX sphere, helping drive people to their next action but they can't get there when a challenge or obstacle is in the way. In this instance it's a lack of clarity. 

The call to action “Get our custom report” focuses on the business, not the customer. A CTA should focus on the customer. In this case, it’s better to explain how the report helps a customer. For example, “Download now to increase your traffic” defines the value of the report to the customer. By getting specific about what you're offering them in exchange for their action, they can progress to the next stage and feel like they're important to your brand as opposed to another number, while you focus on your business. 

Some of the calls to action are just bad habits. You don’t need to tell customers to “click here” anymore; everyone understands the concept of clicking on a link.

You want customers to act quickly so why would you ever use a CTA that says “get it later?”

You don’t need to write out your entire website address. Instead, just create a CTA that says, “Learn more on our website" and link to it appropriately. This will help you in terms of search results, which factor in the words you hyperlink from various channels. 

Any sell sheet without an effective CTA is missing a huge opportunity. These simple yet targeted phrases or links are directly responsible for encouraging your audience to take the next step toward becoming a buyer of your product. Without a CTA, your sell sheet will amount to little more than an unprofitable writing exercise. Here are some tips that I have developed from my product marketing experiences that will help improve the response rate to your sell sheet:

Put your CTA in the appropriate place on your sell sheet. On a product’s sell sheet, the CTA will typically be included with the company’s information, and with the physical details of the product. It might be included in a list of items, or in a separate text box, or simply lined-up on the bottom of the page.

Keep CTA text short, simple, and actionable

It doesn’t need to be long or complicated. Keep it as simple and attention-grabbing as possible. Your buyers don’t have time to be wasting trying to figure our what to do to get more information about your product.

On the printed version of your sell sheet, make sure that the links are short and easy to follow, not long and complicated. On the PDF version of your sell sheet, make sure that all of the links are live and that readers can click-through. You can even incorporate CTA buttons on PDFs, pop-ups or opt-in pages. 

Don’t just send them to your landing page

On the sell sheets for my books, for example, I simply tell them that my books are available from “B&T” and “Ingram”. Every book buyer at every library, university book store and library, and every bookstore retailer knows exactly what this means, and within minutes can order my books. I also list “Amazon” so that the general public can get more information and buy my books.

I also offer an email address for more information, as well as my publisher’s website address. All very simple and effective. Your users don't have to be a website visitor of yours in order to acquire your products. Plus, it's easier for them to order your product from a third-party sometimes and that's okay. Website traffic isn't the be all and end all if it's not the best place for the user to go to. 

Calls to Action: 50 That Sell and 10 That Repel

Unfortunately, a pr crisis is something that can happen to any business. Sometimes it’s insignificant and doesn’t attract media attention, but that’s not to say that more serious crises do not develop frequently.

A crisis can take the form of a prominent employee scandal, a natural disaster, or even just a vicious rumour that catches the attention of the media. You can’t always avoid getting into hot water; the best thing you can do is prepare for possible consequences and eliminate sources of issues. For example, a CEO can create a dedicated team who constantly work on crisis monitoring and preventing dramatic events by planning out the different outcomes and their response situations.

Whatever the crisis, an official issued statement is something they all have in common. Stakeholders will be waiting for an explanation and some kind of update on the situation, and that’s where a holding statement distributed to stakeholders comes into action.

Remember these crisis statement tips in case the unthinkable happens to you:

1. Use Key Messages, Verified Information, and Don’t Get Defensive

The primary purpose of communications during a crisis is to inform about the 5Ws: “who, what, when, where, and why.” Use the 5Ws to guide the structure of your comms.

Sure, in many cases information is limited — that’s why you need to promise the audience that more information will be released as soon as you have it. Don’t make defensive remarks, as they can seriously ruin the credibility of your business, as can speaking prematurely before you know the full picture.

No one expects a disaster, so when it strikes it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and distracted. As a result, you might miss important information related to the actual issue or problem at hand. For example, if a company is facing an employee scandal, you need to investigate and identify whether it was caused by an inappropriate organisational policy, sexual harassment, human error, or something else.

At this point, you might also consider consulting with a legal professional who can identify potential implications of certain phrasing or words.

I want to inform you about an incident that occurred yesterday that affected all employees of the marketing department. Inappropriate conduct from one of the marketing analysts undermined the safety of the staff, which is the first concern of the organisation. We take all occurences of this nature very seriously.

Key messages will become the basis of the statement. Say you have limited details on an incident, you can build your  communication around the facts:

This afternoon, federal regulators have sent me an official statement notifying that the vice president of our company is suspected of insider trading.

The Meltwater Blog

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

Research Reveals Secrets of Social Sharing

4 Brands Getting Content Marketing Right

Calls to Action: 50 That Sell and 10 That Repel

6 Top Tips for Writing a Crisis Statement

How to Win Back Your Customers After a Bad Experience

How Brands Should Apologize

Boost your Media Coverage? Ideas for Creating News Stories Journalists Will Love

Optimize Supply Chain Risk Management with Media Intelligence

Toolbox Tips: Everything You Need to Avoid & Plan for a PR Crisis

Top 5 PR Campaigns of 2019

5 Reports Every PR Pro Needs to Prove PR ROI