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Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

We all remember the story about House of Cards – the big gamble that launched what would become a new powerhouse at Netflix: Original Content. The streaming giant purchased 2 full seasons of House of Cards in 2012 – a whopping $100M spend – without seeing a single episode. Instead, they’d looked carefully at data to determine how significant the audience was likely to be.

The company saw that fans of the original UK House of Cards also watched movies that starred Kevin Spacey and were directed by David Fincher, one of the show’s executive producers. Combining these elements with a stellar writing and production team created a recipe for success. The show immediately took off, with some indicating they would maintain their Netflix subscription for the sole purpose of watching House of Cards.

Now a major arm of its business, Netflix Original Content is heavily informed not just by its own user data, but by trends the team sees on social media, viewership in competing markets and predictive algorithms that draw correlations between elements of high-performing content – looking at combinations of talent, storylines, themes and directors.

According to Recode, today Netflix is worth around $140B, following a glowing Q4 earnings report in January that sent the stock soaring 42%. It’s now worth more than McDonald’s and GE, and is creeping in on competitors like Disney and Comcast.

The brand didn’t get here by accident. Every decision made at Netflix is deeply driven by data. According to a presentation by Jeff Magnusson, manager of data platform architecture at Netflix, and engineer Charles Smith, the brand’s data philosophy encompasses 3 key tenets:

1. Data should be accessible, easy to discover, and easy to process for everyone.

2. Whether your dataset is large or small, being able to visualize it makes it easier to explain.

3. The longer you take to find the data, the less valuable it becomes.

The team digs so far into personalized customer data that color breakdowns in cover designs for new original content are determined according to their impact on subscriber viewing habits, recommendations, ratings, and more. Everything is personalized, using their advanced machine learning to offer better recommendations and inform their own upcoming content.

With access to such in-depth data – both from existing customers and from reactions to what competitors are doing in the market – the Netflix team can ask better questions and make informed decisions, without using smaller focus groups and other previous forms of testing during the production stage. Instead they can rely on comprehensive data to inform every decision, large or small.

When they do user testing, the team goes big, often spending millions on a single experiment. According to Megan Imbres, Director/Product Creative at Netflix at the 4As 2017 Strategy Festival, CEO Reed Hastings encourages experimentation where everyone can learn something. “ If you think about it, all the time and energy you’re spending on testing – all the work that’s going into it with our data scientists – everyone is trying to read something. Something that I take to heart working at Netflix is really being able to take these big, aggressive testing swings in order to get that learning, get that hypothesis, and then taper back.”

Their first big original film, Bright, starring Will Smith, cost the company $90M and launched on the platform in December. The purchase of the film concept and subsequent marketing was completely informed by customer data.

Bright saw 11M viewers in its first 3 days, despite decidedly poor reviews from rating sites like Rotten Tomatoes. Ultimately, Netflix was able to rewrite the playbook for blockbuster filmmaking using data.

Netflix began subtly marketing the film to users in March, first categorizing and cataloguing it internally and then using carefully crafted algorithms to display tailored trailers, clips and visuals to individual users over time.

The platform’s internal marketing algorithms allow content like this to have a continual life cycle and reach new viewers over time, as opposed to trying to reach as many as possible on opening weekend as traditional box office premieres must do.

According to The Verge, “The company’s in-house tag phrase for the concept is ‘premiere night is every night.’ For users who don’t know Bright exists, its appearance in the browsing interface will be a moment of discovery, whether it’s December 22nd, 2017, or sometime in 2020.”

The Netflix team uses external data inputs like social media to inform where to focus marketing spend and attention. Imbres gave an example of the latest Gilmore Girls season that launched in 2016.

Testing the waters with a few tweets, they saw that anything posted about the show immediately took off virally like wildfire, indicating interest was strong. So they tapped into the excitement on this particular content, taking also to offline tactics like recreating the famous Luke’s Diner in select cities, to make the most out of the season’s release.

Their marketing strategy appears to be working. So much so, in fact, that in addition to increasing spend on content creation, Netflix is focusing dollars heavily on marketing. According to CFO David Wells in Variety, the company plans to increase marketing spending more than 50% in 2018, from $1.3 billion last year to $2 billion this year.

“We used to think every incremental dollar was best spent on content,” but it’s increasing spending on marketing because “we think marketing is a multiplier on the content spend,” Wells said.

According to Wells, the brand is set to spend upwards of $8 billion on content in 2018, with 700 original TV shows and 80 original films set to release globally. At the close of 2017, they had 117.6 million streaming members.

Today, Netflix spends more on content than any other streaming provider, as well as most TV networks. And it’s only just getting started.

Netflix: Data-driven decision-making

If there is anything executives want more than customers, it’s publicity. That's why every public relations team needs a solid public relations strategy and tactics that align with the customer journey. During this article, we'll show you 6 proven examples of how to leverage your PR outreach to increase brand awareness and improve your reputation.

Nowadays, public relation teams usually have a set of publications they want to receive coverage in, but here’s the catch: a single media mention isn’t going to have as big of an effect on your PR as you might think. Sure, some people might visit your site off the back of seeing the PR hit, some might even remember your brand name, but this effect will wane, fast.

In the long run, building a PR strategy and focusing on tactics that are centred on chasing media mentions is probably one of the least effective public relations means for small and medium-sized companies. If you’re wondering what your public relations team should do instead, keep on reading our 6 strategies that will help you increase brand awareness beyond press releases.

Strategy 1: Leverage connections with industry influencers

Influencer marketing is a big thing among marketers these days - and rightly so. Customers are more likely to trust a new company if it was recommended by someone they know and respect. Thankfully, it's not just the marketing teams focusing on influencers, public relations teams are noticing the impact.

It's no surprise that influencer marketing tops the list of the most cost-effective customer acquisition channels, especially when its used in combination with social media. According to Tomoson, businesses are making up to $20 per each dollar spent on influencer marketing and 51% of companies admit to seeing better results from influencer marketing than other channels, including public relations.

And here lies your first PR opportunity: aligning yourself with influencers your audience follows and admirers. This is a surefire way to get your company noticed and improve the ROI of your communication plan.

We use this strategy all the time here at SEMrush. We connect and slowly develop deep relationships with influential figures and this later results in coverage and promotion we could have never dreamt of from only using PR. Our word of advice here? Instead of trying to get an influencer to take part in a major promotional campaign, start off with a smaller project.

Strategy 2: Promote your company at important industry events

Industry events are an amazing opportunity to learn something new, keep up with new trends, and get inspired by leading figures. But they also offer a chance to promote your company and boost PR.

Events give you a chance to meet your audience, users, and influencers in person, build connections, and develop relationships you could take advantage of from a PR perpective in the future.

Here are 5 tips how to use events for public relations:

Always create an attendee profile, if an event’s organisers offer that option.


Pick a couple of presentations that relate to your product or brand, research their topics, and prepare questions you could ask during a Q&A session. This will help get you noticed by the influencers and allow you to connect with them later on in the lobby.


Schedule meetings with interesting people prior to the event. Reach out to them and ask for a couple of minutes of their time. Give a reason for a meeting that will be beneficial for them as well and you should have no problems with booking some meetings.


Interview people. Many industry leaders will be happy to elaborate on the topic of their speech and more than willing to do it if their advice will be later published online.


And of course, speak at events. After all, nothing beats speaking as a publicity opportunity.

Bonus: if you don’t have the budget to attend big events (and let’s face, those can be costly), seek out online events you could speak at. These events often have more relaxed rules for whom they invite to participate. Oftentimes, you don’t need to be a big name to book yourself to speak at them.

I’m sure you have heard every possible argument in favour of having a business blog already. You know it could help raise your authority, brand awareness, and generate leads. But there is another reason why you should leverage your company’s blog.

You see, a growing number of journalists review blogs on daily basis to find interesting stories, angles, data and stats. They scout the web, searching for new and up-to-date information to enrich their editorial stories. By publishing newsworthy content, you can turn your blog into a great pipeline directly into interested media outlets. In turn, your brand will be credited, therefore boosting PR ROI.

It's important that PR teams work closely with the marketing department to carefully plan and craft content based on a deep understanding of the target audience’s needs. One of the best tools you can utilise for successful content creation is Google Analytics. And don’t forget to distribute your content through all marketing channels rather than solely thinking of content with a PR hat on! You can read more about content distribution strategies in this article.

Try as you might, you can’t make a journalist cover your brand or product. Gone are the days of wining and dining journalists with PR in mind, in this ever-competitive world you need to provide them with so much value that they will be compelled to do so.

PR value could take the form of offering an expert opinion on industry trends, sharing personal experience, providing proprietary data, or even, converting it into an infographic, if they need visual content to enrich the piece.

Journalists are constantly in search for credible PR sources, and if you engage them with your response, they’ll most likely reference your company in return.

When you think of Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you probably picture new product ideas entrepreneurs need help bring to the market. But crowdfunding social media sites could also help you gain publicity and improve journalist relations. How? By presenting your new product to thousands of potential customers. That’s what startups like Mailpilot or Roost did. They first launched their idea on Kickstarter and then used it to develop massive media coverage off the back of it.

Strategy 6: Submit guest posts to popular websites

I admit, guest posting is one of the oldest tricks in the PR handbook - but it works. And that’s partially because guest blogging is mutually beneficial for both the publication and the company. Here is an article on how to find guest blogging opportunities.

By syndicating your content or guest blogging, you get the opportunity to increase brand awareness while sharing some useful advice with people who potentially could become their users. The publication, on the other hand, gets quality content written from a new perspective, adding something new to their site.

That’s the reason why Entrepreneur.com, Harvard Business Review, Inc.com, Forbes, Fast Company and many others still accept authentic and engaging content from outside contributors. Review their submission guidelines and submit valuable content. In time, you will see your name appearing on the largest sites, building your authority and spreading information on your brand.

Building PR strategy should start with research. In my previous post, 5 Ways to Turbocharge PR with Media Monitoring, we explored how monitoring tools enable brand, competitive and industry research – this is a great place to start.

“When developing a PR strategy, I use competitive insights to ensure my team doesn’t replicate a similar idea, creates unique messaging and finds specific audiences that aren’t currently being targeted,” adds Tanya Rynders, PR consultant. “Keeping up with media outlets that typically write about your brand or product will help you stay on top of current discussions and trends in real time.”

As you approach a new PR campaign use your monitoring tools to understand the micro and macro media landscape related to your pitch. On the macro level, monitoring tools will help you to understand your overall brand perception, your competition, industry and customer. On a micro level, you’ll want to use your tools to research press and social media discussions about products or services similar to those you’re pitching. You need to know everything possible about the media environment you’re entering before you pick up a phone or send a single email pitch.

Strategy 8: Clearly Define Your Campaign Goal

Too often we pitch for the sake of pitching; this is not strategic. Perhaps this is because our boss’ demanded “a press release each week” or perhaps we just tried to keep an active pace, but we all know it’s useless to pitch without a clearly defined goal. All PR campaigns need a clear goal and answering these questions will help you put one together without too much pain:

What message(s) do you want to deliver to that customer?

With the answers to these questions you’ll be able to develop a clear, one sentence campaign goal, which will lead your messaging and outreach strategy. If you know why you’re pitching and what you are trying to achieve, the next steps to completing your PR strategy will be that much easier.

Strategy 9: Hone Pitch Messaging Based on Research

By now you’ve done your research in order to better understand your customer, competition and industry environment and you’ve set a clear goal. Those two steps set you up for shaping your message.

Using a combination of your research and goal begin writing pitch messaging that will feel newsworthy to your target journalists, resonate with your customer and match your business objectives.

Youngstrom sums up the correlation between research and messaging nicely; “At the end of the day, great insights provide opportunities to tell unique stories that resonate with target audiences.”

A well-crafted pitch should be concise and easily digestible.  It should move your customer towards action and, as Youngstom points out, it should resonate. Once you have a first draft spend time trying to poke holes in it and share it with a colleague or two for feedback. If needed, edit, and edit some more.  By using your research and being thoughtful you’ll move on to step four with solid pitch messaging.

Strategy 10: Identify and Understand Media Targets

With your pitch messaging completed its time to decide on a distribution channel and find the journalists that will help you to reach your customer.

Determining distribution is largely based on the messaging you’ve developed. The question you need to ask is whether your message is best suited for a broadcast approach (press release) or more personal approach (individual pitching).  Does your message have mass appeal or will it get better pick up if you pitch to a more narrow, targeted list of journalists? For example, if you represent a tech firm announcing a merger with another firm you have a mass-appeal message in which case a press release may be best.  If you are the same firm announcing an upgrade to a current product your message has a more narrow appeal in which case you should focus on select journalists and influencers.

You’ll want to build your media list based on the subjects journalists in your niche are already writing about.  With the right tools it should take minutes to determine which journalists have covered your competition, industry and subject matter regardless of beat. Combine that list with journalists with whom you’ve built relationships and you’re ready to go!

And as a conclusion, I would like to share some practical advice. Track who is mentioning your brand using a media intelligence tool so you can build relationships with journalists that already know who you are. It's also wise for public relations teams to keep an eye on competitor’s PR activities so you can poach journalists who are interested in what you have to say too. Competitive intelligence can also help public relations teams achieve better ideas by learning about their successful content from industry peers and then utilise them (or something similar) for their own PR campaigns.

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

PR Pros: 10 Strategies To Improve Your PR (Without Chasing Media Coverage)

More investors and major hedge funds are considered quants today – that is, they make decisions that are driven in part by insights discovered using AI and bots. As a result, more and more data from what is considered ‘alternative’ sources is needed to feed their algorithms and continue to give them a unique view of the market.

From news and social media data, to satellite imagery, to natural language, weather, credit card purchases, app installs and engagement, web traffic, patent filings and more, leading indicators contained within these external data points serve as forward-looking trading signals and are increasingly seen as a valuable commodity to help asset managers beat out the competition. According to alternativedata.org, more than 160 financial institutions now employ at least 340 full-time data analysts, scientists and engineers.

According to the Financial Times, “Money managers can use ‘natural language processing’ to unearth patterns in analyst earnings calls, TV interviews or central bank speeches; ‘deep learning’ on satellite images of car parks to guess footfall; or aggregate and analyse millions of emailed receipts and credit card swipes to get an edge on consumer spending trends.”

To mine this data, institutional investors are hiring analysts by the dozen, creating a scarcity in this niche talent pool and driving up salaries. The Financial Times reports that investment groups have more than quadrupled their number of “alternative data” analysts over the past five years.

As a result, a new class of data-driven startups has emerged to collect, enrich and package those alternative data sources in a way that’s easy for algorithms to process and analyze. Consulting firm Tabb Group reports that this “alternative data” market was worth about $200 million in the US in 2016 and is expected to double in four years.

Data-driven startups leverage alternative data types to inform financial firms

Hedge Funds have long been looking to breaking news and social media insights using tools like Meltwater to inform critical and timely decisions. Today about 75% of hedge funds already use social media and social-driven news feeds to inform investing decisions, according to Greenwich Associates.

Today we have access to a treasure trove of additional alternative data sources that can be combined with social and news media to offer traders real time, predictive insights. Through a number of partnerships, data companies like Quandl are looking to Outside Insight from new sources, like private aircraft flight paths, Tesla sales, credit card purchases, FX rates and more to help predict things like “potential M&A activity as well as corporate investments, partnerships and expansions.”

What else can these types of datasets help predict? According to a recent press release from the firm, in January 2017, for example, the Johnson & Johnson private jet stayed parked near Actelion HQ for five days, one week prior to announcing a $30 billion deal between the companies. This is all information that can give analysts a massive upper hand to help them make informed trading decisions.

While details like private jet flight paths, Tesla purchases and the movement of drill rigs are rather specific data points, there are a number of external data sources that can be leveraged to regularly benchmark a brand against competition, discover trends and patterns and predict what’s coming. Outside Insight is an AI-driven platform that aggregates these alternative sources and pulls out insights and patterns, making it easier for business leaders to determine where they need to investigate further, invest more resources and change their strategies.

The hunt for alternative data in the finance industry

Does your B2B public relations strategy include Facebook? Many B2B companies dismiss Facebook because of its simple beginnings as a friends and family network. Yet, Facebook has evolved to become a prime opportunity in the B2B space.

Facebook, when wielded correctly, can put a face to your B2B PR efforts and deliver results. It can be used to…

Would you like a piece of this action? Let’s look at how you can develop a strong Facebook presence that puts you in the driver’s seat of your PR.

Facebook has reached a point of name recognition, technological prowess, and user loyalty that rivals major tech players like Google and Apple. –Jayson DeMers

9 Elements to Help You Bring Your Facebook A-Game to Your B2B Public Relations

An effective PR strategy—on or off Facebook—requires clear goals. Before you go any further in your Facebook development, lay out what your goals are. I guarantee it will make the journey to successful B2B PR that much easier. Your goals might include:

Whatever your goals are, make sure your team is on the same page, everyone working toward the same end result.

2. Pick a Brand-Appropriate Profile Picture

Make your profile picture count. Steer clear of any photo that could cause confusion or blank looks. Since this is the first item your audience will see, it should be brand-centric. If possible, use your brand’s logo. Remember, this will show up on everything — besides your posts, comments, and any other activity.

Notice the following examples, in which Coca-Cola, SAP and Zendesk use their profile pictures to advantage with their brand logo.

This appears right under your profile picture, and is your brand’s introduction. It requires forethought. If you don’t write anything here, it’s a wasted opportunity. Use this space to write a clear and to-the-point introduction that inspires confidence and motivates prospects to engage with you. Stay away from boring facts, and focus on what gives your brand its personality.

For instance, if you’re a technology brand, you want to show that you’re at the forefront of the digital era. If you’re a financial institution, you want to create a sense of trust right off the bat. Consider the following:

Working hard to bring innovation and technology to life for the modern business.

We use our industry knowledge and expertise to fight the financial battles, so you can concentrate on your business.

These are short and quippy but deliver a clear message to all visitors.

4. Leverage Your Cover Photo to Promote Your Current Company News

Your cover photo is valuable real estate, and should never go stale. Change it often and keep it fresh according to what’s happening within your company. Have you recently participated in a community fundraising event? Create an image that shows it off. You could use this to promote:

Once you’ve created a cover photo for your news, include a pinned post with a link to more information.

Social media is all about visual content. One study showed that Facebook posts with images received 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. It is well worth your time and resources to promote visual content creation. This includes images, infographics, charts, videos, and more.

Since the fairly recent addition of Facebook Live Video (and other networks following suit), we’ve seen evidence of just how much video counts in social media engagement. Customers want to see new developments as they occur within your company and to have the sort of transparency that builds trust. Live video does just that. One study showed that Facebook users watch live video three times more than traditional video, which is evidence of the power behind this feature.

IBM is a great example of leveraging video (both live and traditional) in its Facebook strategy. Take this one, showcasing IBM’s role in the movie, Hidden Figures. It tapes IBM’s archives to show how it contributed to the historical accuracy of the film. It’s a great, behind-the-scenes explanation that skillfully leverages the popularity of the film to shine light on the company.

Companies that want to be on the leading edge would do well to integrate Facebook Live video into their marketing strategies. –Mari Smith

Ever notice the Trending Topics section in your Facebook’s dashboard? Don’t dismiss it offhand—it gives you valuable information you can use to your benefit. In fact, Facebook gives priority to posts that are about these trending topics. Want a higher place in your audience’s feed? Then craft a post that touches on one of these trending topics, while still remaining relevant to your brand and audience. It’s a great way to work your way up the social ladder.

There are no hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn’t on Facebook. You will have to discover yourself the perfect cocktail of Facebook engagement for your B2B company. Facebook Insights is a wonderful measurement tool to see which posts receive more engagement, and which you can skip. You can also consider using tracking codes such as Bitly to see what people are clicking on.

In the end, you need to find out what works, and stop what doesn’t.

Timing matters — it can make the difference between high engagement and crickets. It can take a while before you find the right timing for your audience, so don’t be afraid to play around until you get it right. Monitor which days and what time of day your posts perform best, and stick to that schedule.

Facebook is all about engagement. People will comment on your page for all sorts of reasons — to ask a question, get support, and even file a complaint. Answer all of these as soon as possible. When you practice this, it creates loyal customers and builds your brand’s reputation as a reliable B2B company.

Examples of Real B2B Companies that Are Killing It on Facebook

IBM is a great example of using your cover image to promote your PR campaigns. Right front and center, its image promotes its diversity initiative, as well as its role in the recent box office hit, Hidden Figures.

HP Business is not afraid to leverage everything that Facebook has to offer — with a rich collection of photos and videos that engage its audience, and an informative About section that builds confidence in its expertise.

Salesforce, a customer success platform, is not afraid to show its B2B company’s personality throughout its Facebook page. Posts skillfully lead back to its website, but also include curated content that promotes the company’s industry expertise.

Use your cover image in conjunction with your B2B PR campaigns

Leverage images and video as much as possible throughout your Facebook experience

Use topics that are trending to rank higher in your audience’s news feed

Amp up your engagement by always responding to comments, questions, and complaints made on Facebook

When done right, Facebook can become an integral part of your B2B public relations strategy. To get deeper into the reeds with your B2B PR, download our ebook to gain insight into 11 Lessons that PR pros need to learn in a digital world. Try it for yourself, and you won’t be sorry.

How to Leverage Facebook in Your B2B Public Relations

For the past five years, Instagram has been an important tool for marketing and PR pros, allowing brands to produce everyday imagery to connect with audiences. But, as with every platform, the rules change and evolve which can affect your efforts to boost organic engagement. In this article, we look at how to get out from under a shadowban. 

More companies are noticing a drop in Instagram engagement, and more viewers who unfollow, despite the fact that the platform’s growth is accelerating. As soon as brands started noticing the drop-off and eventually compared notes with each other, theories emerged as to why certain posts were seemingly being suppressed, and the phenomenon was labeled a shadowban. In fact, the Instagram shadowban started being mentioned on social media in November 2016. By June 2017 it became a much-speculated-about, trending topic. Here we look at some of the best practices you can use to keep building engagement on the platform.

Mentions of the Instagram shadowban didn't significantly appear on social media until mid-November 2016, but after late March 2017 they gained steam and in many ways, are still relevant today.

It’s important to note that Instagram has never acknowledged an official policy for “banning” posts or hashtags. However, brands and influencers reported that their engagement on the platform had decreased noticeably. And, we know that Instagram does take initiative in terms of identifying and mitigating bot influx, so new precautions will continuously affect our ability to gain organic reach. We can see this in the anecdotal evidence from Amanda Rose from ldn rose “I noticed that I was getting close to no new followers a day. Previously I would get around 5-8 new followers a day (albeit I would also lose at least 3 a day ha!). The lack of new followers wasn’t too concerning. But, the drop in likes and comments was frustrating.” 

In previous posts, we’ve covered hashtag use as a way of hooking audiences that might not be following you. But with the shadowban, it seems like the use of these has led to posts being suppressed. Hashtags are essentially a search feature, and by associating your brand with a related one (preferably one that’s trending), you’re increasing the chances of your content being found. For instance, someone might type the associated tag into Instagram’s search field. Or they might simply click on the one in a post they’ve come across. But what if the hashtag you’ve associated yourself with leads to the opposite, and your post fails to show up in search results or public streams?

As Maggie Marton from BlogPaws put it, “….shadowban waters are pretty muddy. We reached out to Facebook (they own IG) for additional information. One thing we learned is that “shadowban” isn’t an official term at Facebook. It appears to be the pop culture term—along with ghost ban, stealth ban, or shadow ban.”

The shadowban has been associated with the use (or misuse) of hashtags, discovered when users started conducting some experiments. As Moonlit Creatures explains, “I’ve gone through ALL my hashtags and discovered that the #boho hashtag is broken. Using even one broken hashtag will render ALL your other tags useless! I don’t know if just this one thing will fix all my Insta problems, but I’m staying optimistic.” In other words, a post with an “offensive” hashtag will not show up in searches for any of the other hashtags listed in the post.

As a result of being shadowbanned, only your current followers will see your hashtagged posts as they show up in their stream (and if your followers were to re-gram your images, these images would be subject to the same shadowban). Not only does this limit your engagement with the greater IG community, but it can also lead to a stagnant or even negative growth rate. Obviously, the exact opposite of what we want.

Understanding the shadowban has become an even bigger priority since Instagram now allows stories to be hashtagged to receive additional platform exposure, based on these hashtags. It has been speculated that Instagram’s hashtag scrutiny is motivated by their attempt to use hashtags for ad planning, and to stop users from getting attention when they use irrelevant hashtags or overload posts with hashtags, thereby making the hashtag taxonomy less effective.

While brands still think of the shadowban as a problem, Instagram has avoided addressing related issues as bugs that need fixing. Instead, the platform has tried to provide guidance on the level of content: “We understand users have experienced issues with our hashtag search that caused posts to not be surfaced. We are continuously working on improvements to our system with the resources available. When developing content, we recommend focusing on your business objective or goal rather than hashtags.”

If You’re Caught in the Net of an Instagram Shadowban, What Should You Do?

Go here to check the posts you think may be affected. Be warned that this is an educated guess as to how the algorithm is identifying posts to shadowban. Another way to check is to log out of your account, search for the hashtags you’ve used in a specific post, and see if that post comes up in the search results. If your images aren’t showing up, posts with this hashtag might be flagged.

Then, Grab Strategies for Success from Top Instagram Influencers

Make sure you aren’t using any of IG’s banned hashtags that have been overtaken with spammy posts.

Form an Instagram Pod or Engagement group: A pod is an informal group of like-minded accounts that visit each other’s photos and feed the algorithm by engaging via original comments and likes. Learn more about influencer pods.

Even if Instagram allows 60 hashtags per post, should you really use that many? Use hashtags sparingly in conjunction with your branded hashtag(s). The Instagram limit per post is 60, but you may want to be more targeted and not come off as spammy with your hashtags.

Don’t use third-party apps to post photos, especially with hashtags. Revoke account access to any third-party apps you’ve enabled. Instagram isn’t a fan of third-party apps that like, post comments, or post hashtags on your behalf.

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