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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

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

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

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

The Meltwater Blog

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

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

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

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

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

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

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

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

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

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

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

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

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

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

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

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

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

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

Social Listening Blogs | Category

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

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

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

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

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

Brand Management Blogs | Category

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

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

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

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

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

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

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

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

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

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

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

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

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

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

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

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

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

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

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

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

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

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

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

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

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

Marketing Blogs | Category

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

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

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

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

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

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

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

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

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

From the very beginning, web development and design focused on targeting sites for stationary desktops. But, with 80% of users using their mobile to browse the internet in 2019 this means web design must now cater to a vast amount of mobile users. Similarly, as the use of smartphones becomes further integrated into everyday life, this optimisation of websites on mobile devices is now vital.

The term “mobile-first” is increasingly used in the marketing sector. In the following blog, we explain what mobile-first really means, the need to adopt this mindset, the potential to expand into new audiences and how the implementation of this principle works.

Mobile-first can be defined as a way of thinking about web design, app design, mobile websites and the user experience. It’s about optimizing the presentation of websites for mobile devices and creating a responsive design that will fit other screen sizes. With a mobile-first design, you’re working from the smallest to the largest size option.

By following a mobile-first strategy you will quickly help enhance and improve your CX. It will mean your website will welcome both desktop and mobile users, helping to drive site traffic from alternative channels - which is particularly important when using an Omni-channel marketing strategy. 

As well as this, implementing a mobile-first strategy will mean aligning the customer and user experience. By providing both a responsive design and smartphone-friendly interface will help to increase the average time spent on your site and in turn reduce bounce rates.

The reader has much less space to view content on mobile devices compared to when reading web pages on the desktop. As such, mobile design concentrates on the essentials. They make the layout much more clear and user-friendly for mobile users. The alleged weakness of lack of space is, in fact, one of mobile-first’s greatest strengths.

“Mobile-first removes the waffle and gets straight to the value.”With that being said, the biggest advantage of mobile-first is quite obvious: you can reach many more potential customers. The Guardian reported that mobile web browsing has been steadily growing since 2009. Desktop’s share of web traffic has steadily decreased as a result. In October 2016, the two crossed over. Global mobile and tablet browsing accounting for 51.3% versus the desktop’s 48.7%. This stat is only going to rise.

“Welcome to mobile where the only thing you can count on is change […] So what’s a web designer to do — get swept up in a sea of constant instability? Quite the opposite. Things continue to be so Wild West out there, you need to be a cowboy. Take risks, try new things, and accept that not all the boundary lines between devices, browsers, and the web have been drawn yet. – Luke Wroblewski, NCSA”

The exact creation and implementation of mobile-first websites will be a task for web designers – but it’s also important for marketing to know how mobile-first works.

When using the mobile-first strategy, special grids of the web pages are created in smartphone format and then scaled accordingly for larger screen sizes. Depending on the format, the rulers automatically adapt to the display size and present content optimally at all times. It’s worth bearing in mind that this adjustment is rarely smooth, which is why performing  mobile website testing is crucial to ensure everything displays correctly. This why the use of the latest technologies should be one of the decisive factors when introducing mobile-first. For now, this is the only way to offer mobile users a holistic optimised user experience.

What Do We Actually Mean by ‘Mobile First’?

When you think of who manages a company’s brand presence on social media, which department comes to mind first? For many, the answer is Marketing, PR, and Communication teams. 

Social media is so prevalent in it underpins our personal and professional relationships, so much so that what happens in the social realm has an impact on every relationship we have. That’s why siloing social media to one department is a huge miss. Harnessing the power of social can transform your brand and should be ingrained in every department’s DNA. 

Let’s take a step back and look at the word “social.” At its root, social goes hand in hand with the community. Social gets its power from people with differing viewpoints and backgrounds from different communities that engage around interests, issues, actions, and brands. You’ve probably seen “viral” content because someone from one of your communities shared it with you.

Now think about your company. Besides your service or product, who carries the power of your business? Every one of your employees, your people!

“Social businesses implement social technologies, strategies, and processes that span across their entire enterprise, creating and optimizing collaborative ecosystems of employees, customers, partners, suppliers, communities and stakeholders in a safe and consistent way.”—Cheryl Burgess

Innovative companies already understand this powerful concept and operate a “social business” model. Simply stated, a social business harnesses the power of its employees and partners, as well a the wider community to reach out and engage outside communities in evangelizing the brand. 

But not every organization may have the resources and support to transform their company overnight. 

Some Early Adopter Teams Are More Obvious Than Others: Marketing, PR, Sales and Customer Service

Marketing: Social Channel management & marketing, social advertising

PR: Media relationships on social, socialization of press releases, social crisis management

Sales: Lead generation through social listening and sales leads from ads

Customer Service: adding social channels to phone and web chat support

To get started, an employee advocacy tool to empower internal advocates (a.k.a. employees as brand ambassadors). By creating a positive internal work culture and providing an easy way for employees to share that culture on their personal social channels, you’ll set them up for success. Remember that having social media guidelines can remove uncertainty about posting about their employer. If you share the messages that you’re interested in spreading, empowered employees will often help with broadcasting duties. An employee ambassador program can benefit a business exponentially, as your colleagues are likely influencers to friends, family, and their wider community.

Another approach is having a cross-departmental social team advocate and partner cross-functionally to educate and empower internal teams in the social realm. This team can create a bridge and identify someone in each department to work with to support the adoption of business goals and strategy that support engagement on social channels. Since this team will be from across the organization, the implmentation rate of the initiative should be quick.

Don’t forget that the C-Suite, the E-Team, a.k.a. The Head Honchos need to be active on social networks. Executives are seen as extensions of their company; their personal brand is seen as an only slightly different than that of the company’s. It’s a testament to the power of social media that a CEO’s likability is correlated with that of the brand. So, whether you decide to hire a specialist in influencer marketing to manage the executives’ accounts or train them in-house on social channel best practices, it’s vital that a company’s leadership is visible on social. For an example of CEOs who excel on social, see how Oprah Winfrey (Harpo) and Richard Branson (Virgin) do it.

Getting every interested employee on a social network in the interest of promoting a company’s public brand is a no-brainer, but what can social offer those less interested in social broadcasting?

All Departments Should Be Making Social Important

Other departments that can make their way into social aren’t as straightforward but have significant opportunities for positive business impacts. 

For example, a Human Resources team needs to know and understand LinkedIn for posting, promoting, and assessing brand sentiment. They need to visit company review sites like Glassdoor and Salary.com, as well as recruiting platforms like Indeed.com and social networks like AngelList. Understanding the digital HR-space means engaging with new employee prospects, eventually utilizing the platform for networking with colleagues and keeping up on best practices for HR on social platforms. 

Other groups with an opportunity to get better at what they do with the help of social media are the Product, Research and Development, Business Development, Customer Experience, and UX teams. One can count on social as a tool for listening to users’ pain points, product suggestions, not to mention as a channel for gathering data to determine overall product sentiment, and possible future product or service development. It’s a great opportunity for engaging, understanding, and helping to develop services or products.

Moving towards a truly social business affords your brand an opportunity to transform internal and external culture. It’s a chance to make an impact in your industry. However, if you don’t have leadership buy-in, limited financial and time resources, then a cross-functional approach might make more business sense. It’ll take some elbow grease, but once you start successfully empowering non-comms teams, other departments will follow suit. True social cross functionality will not only increase public brand perception but will also incur business benefits throughout an organization.

Crossfunctionality: Making Social Important Across Your Business

Whether or not you do it yourself, use a consultant, a PR agency, or have an in-house PR pro, every business stage needs public relations. Since businesses need to interact with the public, government, their competition, partners, and clients (whether that is other businesses or the public), managing relationships and perceived business value are essential. PR pro, Michelle Garrett outlines why PR is an essential line item, no matter what stage your business is at.

While PR is experiencing a bit of a renaissance as the value of earned media and backlinks seems to be at the top of many brands’ list of digital marketing initiatives, there are still those companies who seem to feel they won’t benefit from public relations.

The truth is, companies at EVERY stage can benefit from PR.

Every business needs PR, even companies at the top of their game shouldn’t overlook the value of what public relations brings to their brands.

As ways to get the word out about your product or service increase with the proliferation of social media and consumers’ access to information, public relations still leads the pack. Why?

“PR, unlike paid marketing, creates a different dynamic,” says Peter Himler, founding principal, Flatiron Communications, and president of the Publicity Club of New York.

“Earned media coverage, as third-party validation, still has the greatest capacity to generate action.”

Why? “Positive news stories, amplified in social media, can serve as powerful endorsements and a boost to brand reputation,” Himler says. “Unfortunately, the reverse also holds true. Think of poor Papa John.”

And because the news cycle moves so quickly now, Himler says it’s vital that businesses persist—in good times or in bad—in engaging editorial decision-makers to maintain a positive branded footprint in the media.

Brands at Different Stages Benefit in Different Ways

Companies at various stages, such as those growing, struggling or succeeding, can all take advantage of what public relations helps them achieve.

Early and mid-stage companies need visibility. They benefit from media exposure and brand recognition. Well-timed articles can help boost efforts to launch new products or roll out solutions.

“Early on, PR creates crucial awareness for your company. A new business is like that tree in the forest that falls down with no one around it. If no one is talking about your business, does it even exist?” Jesse Ghiorzi, director of brand strategy at Charge.

Working with a PR firm can also help early-stage brands define messages that resonate with their target audiences. Public relations pros are skilled at helping clients position themselves for success.

Yet another benefit of PR can be drawing talent to a brand. If a company is growing, it needs to hire strong employees. If it appears in publications and on social media in a favorable light, it’s more likely to be compelling to potential new hires. Further, it can help retain employees who may take pride in seeing the name of the company they work for in lights.

For companies that are struggling, a PR pro can help uncover stories they can tell that will bring them more visibility.

“If your business is struggling, you might be cutting back on marketing and ad budgets. The right PR tactics can help you stretch that marketing budget by getting your business covered in key publications at a fraction of the cost compared to a paid placement,” says Ghiorzi.

And, if a brand has spent time in the past building a following, it can leverage that audience to help support it during tougher times. 

Brands with momentum may believe they have no need for PR. Quite the contrary, says Himler.

“Many esteemed brands with large followings on social media may have less of a need for traditional PR, i.e., media relations. They simply announce their news via their ‘owned’ channels and it propagates from there.”

Himler continues, “However, most companies—big and small—do not enjoy the same luxury as an Apple or Google or Amazon. They must engage the beat reporters who follow their industry, or company awareness and esteem can deteriorate. Then, they may just end up in the trash heap of brands that have lost their luster.”

“When the going is good, why not start telling your story to your audience? Because there will come a time when the economy is not so good, and you need customers to know who you are,” says Brad Marley, consultant, and owner of Yelram Media.

“When that happens, it’s not as if a brand can snap its fingers and generate momentum. if you’re waiting until the bust to invest in PR to generate publicity, you’ve waited too long.”

Every business needs PR, no matter their size or age. To craft a comprehensive PR brand strategy at any size, download our ebook on digital literacy for modern PR folks and when you’re ready to prove the success of your campaigns, make sure you know what PR KPIs prove PR ROI.

Why Every Business Needs PR While They Grow

Marketing teams spend a lot of time and money crafting and promoting content to persuade prospects to begin their customer journey. But succeeding in getting customers to take a predestined path is still hit or miss if you don't follow the right method. After reading this excerpt about the six distinct characteristics of content marketing persuasion you’ll be more equipped to map unpredictable customer journeys. To get more information about the entire journey, download the ebook How to Map Your Content to Unpredictable Customer Journeys to cast aside hesitation in planning your content marketing strategy.

Content marketing that persuades a prospect to take additional action along the customer journey has six distinctive characteristics:

Consumers and businesses alike wish to engage with organizations that they admire. Furthermore, we've come to expect no less than stellar customer experiences from those companies. Millennials and Gen Z are often referred to as 'generation 'woke' due to their passion for social rights initiatives, it therefore brings little surprise that social media demands that marketing teams become more transparent when engaging with audiences or communities. To be liked requires revealing details about the company beyond our product, logo, or slogan. When we do this, our content marketing automatically becomes more authentic and persuasion boosts as a result. The more people that like your brand, the greater the chance of marketers increasing social proof.

The reasons we ask key industry experts and influencers to collaborate with our marketing teams on campaigns, webinars, ebooks and so on isn’t just please they'll provide unique and valued content; it’s also that many of those experts reciprocate the opportunity. Those experts often promote the content or introduce us to audiences that may be interested in our product offerings and this has a significantly positive impact on customer journeys. For example, when marketers successfully position their brand in line with credible experts and sources, this too enables an element of social proof and therefore boosts persuasion. 

The currency of content marketing isn’t money; it’s trust. As marketing pros build trust online, we drive more push audiences through the customer journey and increase sales. Mass adoption of strategies happens with consensus. If many in your network utilize PayPal, for example, you’ll most likely be using PayPal. It’s not so much that people wish to be part of the herd, it’s that the risk of going alone may be too high for many. As such, consensus plays a key role in persuasion and is therefore a vital component of a successful content marketing strategy.

Time constraints, expiring discounts, remaining seats, and contests are all marketing strategies that persuade the audience to move from the current moment to the next. Push too hard, and your marketing team can just as easily can turn off the audience, but with the right amount of strategicness, and marketing pros can accelerate the customer journey by playing on scarcity. 

A percentage of the population wants consistency, even when it no longer serves them. To access this element of persuasion, marketing pros must meet their customers’ expectations. Expectations that you set at the beginning of the relationship. If changes to the customer experience occur, outline when and why those changes need to take place and how the end product, the consistent expectation will remain the same. This helps improve persuasion as it shows that the customers can rely on you for a consistent (or possibly improved), end product. It's also worth bearing in mind that in order to offer high customer experiences - you need to exceed expectations and not just meet them.

Content that’s shared helps the author or company that’s published it gain recognition in their industry. This is the brick and mortar of thought leadership. Industries all have few leaders and plenty of followers. The perception of authority on a topic is a proven characteristic of persuasive content marketing. Authority doesn’t happen overnight, though. Authority is attained over time. Authority requires momentum as the most recent, frequent, and relevant content you’ve produced is shared and recognized.

Nowadays, personalization is key to content marketing success. While it's not.part of the 6 content marketing elements of persuasion, without some form of personalization your message could fall flat. Personalization comes in many forms, it can be as simple as knowing your target audience and speaking in their language.

Recent research from Cisco provides evidence that the average product has over 800 distinct customer journeys. Consumers and businesses require hyper-relevant content to allow them to research their next purchase decision and they want relevant, upto-date content when they’re searching for it. Research from Google on microments shows that the customer journey doesn’t happen in a predicted timeline, it happens in a connecting-the-dots series of moments that are different for every customer.

To help optimize your customer journey and boost persuasion in your content marketing messages, Google recommends the below tips:


1. Examine all phases of your customers’ journeys and map the moments when people find inspiration, learn about your products, make a quick purchase, or anything in between.

2. For each moment, identify content that needs to be developed to help make the purchase decision easier or faster.

3. Leverage context to personalize the content. Location, time of day, device, and demographics are needed to align the content with the customer for increased impact.

4. Optimize the content in each moment to help move the visitor from one moment to the next instead of driving them from awareness through to conversion.

5. Measure each of the moments you’ve mapped to identify gaps and fill them.

Marketing teams are increasingly being asked to prove the ROI of their content marketing efforts. In the past this was difficult to do as we lacked relevant tools to enable measurement, but thankfully, this is no longer the case. Pushing people down the customer journey by writing content that changes people's behaviour is no easy task, but measuring and optimising will help you do just that. Start by completing a simple content marketing audit review. To help, we've provided the basics of this below:

Collapse multiple articles on the same topic into one single, thorough article that incorporates as many dimensions as possible. Redirect traffic from the weak articles to the new, rich articles.

Research topics beyond popularity and make a complete map of topics by hierarchy, taxonomies, and lexical onomies. Implement repurposement processes that drive efficiency and maximize resources within the organization.

Align content marketing channels to ensure the content is incorporated into email, mobile applications, video, podcasting, public relations, organic search, social media, and paid promotion strategies to maximize impact and ensure a smooth customer experience.

Measure the performance of the content strategy over time, observing ranking, visits, new visits, sharing, and sentiment. Utilize testing against a control group to observe the impact.

Incorporate effective calls-to-action and landing page strategies to ensure readers can convert when they are ready to move to the next stage of the customer journey.

Hopefully, the above tips will allow your marketing team to take their content marketing and customer journey mapping to new heights. The six elements of persuasion we discussed are from our ebook How to Map Your Content to Unpredictable Customer Journeys. Download this for free to gain deeper insights into creating content that meets your customer at every point along their journey!

The 6 Principles of Persuasive Communication

In Joaquin Phoenix’s 2020 Academy Award acceptance speech, he noted that even though we may be advocating for different things, “we are all talking about the fight against injustice.” More specifically, the fight against injustice toward our planet, which has been a momentous topic for the past couple of decades. After increasing the amount of pressure on corporations to recognize their role in fighting climate change in recent years, several of the world’s largest corporations have updated their corporate sustainability policies in the past few months. 

Going green also appears to be good for business, not just the planet. The world has been favoring those who are making moves towards sustainability and a promise of a greener future. Consumers are committing their loyalty with eco-friendly brands, voters are putting more weight on environmental implications from political leaders, and we see stock prices go up when corporations showcase sustainable business practices. 

Given the increased attention around climate change and CSR policies, we wanted to find out who is driving the conversations around a greener future. Our research revealed that public figures like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were influencing the conversation and those engaged in the online conversation, unsurprisingly.

Tip: Take a look at the top sustainability influencers and the top sustainable fashion influencers.

These change-makers advocating for Mother Earth on social media are analytical, social, and philosophical individuals. They are motivated by challenging the status quo, which it appears they are doing quite successfully. Keep it up! 

The domino effect that enabled corporate sustainability has practically forged a new way of business operations. In the first few weeks of 2020 alone, we have already heard bold declarations from top tier US corporations in their pledge to combat climate change: 

Delta Airlines says they will be the first airline to become carbon-neutral (offset their carbon emissions)

Amazon says that 50% of all their deliveries will be carbon-neutral by 2030

Ambitious Microsoft says they will actually become carbon-negative by 2050, accounting for all of their carbon emissions since 1975. 

The infographic below gives us insight into the conversations around corporate social responsibility and how sustainability is taking up space in social media. What surprises you the most? 

Corporate Sustainability: What’s Trending?

Last month Meltwater Canada hosted a client event in Montreal, during which communication professionals had the opportunity to hear from industry experts on the topic of managing brand reputation in an online world. Quebec has quickly become Meltwater Canada’s fastest-growing market, due in part to the fact that Meltwater is the only locally available solution to offer social listening, engagement, influencer marketing, and audience segmentation on one platform. 

The roomful of professionals braving Montreal’s cold pondered what to make of this and other insights that emerged over the course of the hour-long panel discussion. The panel discussion consisted of many insights and tried and true strategies from Brand Strategist, Kathy Acimovic, and Head of Communications at Essilor Canada, Lina Betancourt. 

Several of the evening’s insights follow:

Here’s why you should care about your followers 

Unlike earlier technologies, social media is unique in unlocking valuable insights into your most dedicated followers, who often double as your most engaged customers. There’s great value in learning about their behaviors and seeing where these correlate with your brand values.  Think about your ideal consumer and compare this with other insights available to you, and correct your course as needed.

People are talking about your brand and influencing your reputation

One of the evening’s panellists spoke about wanting to understand what makes people care about a brand, and concluded the common thread is reputation. People engaging in conversations about a brand online, and endorsing that brand, play a large role in conditioning whether others care about that brand as well. 

Before the advent of the internet and social media, consumers didn’t directly approach companies to learn more about them. Today, in contrast, companies have been given an incredible opportunity to engage these consumers in a direct conversation.  

The need for audience segmentation: reality meets expectations

Your top customer segment is typically fewer in number but higher in value and influence. You might begin by focusing on the needs of this high-value segment, before proceeding to look at others. A second approach is to value the people you see reflecting your personality. For example, if you’re a wellness brand, you’d prioritize people whose lifestyle is wellness-focused.

Audience segmentation is critical — regardless of your priorities, consumers expect you to tailor your efforts to a variety of audiences. With so much data and intelligence available at your fingertips, they consider this a given. If your brand is unable or unwilling to cater to different audience segments, they’ll waste no time finding another brand to connect with. 

Know where you want to go and how to chart your progress. 

What are the measures that will help you get your brand to reach its goals? Let’s say you’re a small brand and you want to increase your awareness and reach. Now imagine you’re an accessibly priced brand with aspirations of becoming more upscale. The measures you track will be marketed differently. The one thing they both have in common is the need for tracking your progress. 

Don’t discount the value of intuition—or vendor support 

Where data, metrics, and machines leave off, instincts step in. Trust yourself to know what’s relevant and what’s not. If you still feel lost, ask your vendor for help. When using data tools or platforms, one panellist said she leans heavily on the people behind it to help her decide what’s noise and what isn’t. 

Approaches that used to capitalize on customers unfamiliarity with foreign places and fashions are no longer nearly as effective. Quebec consumers are no different than consumers in the rest of the world in terms of their ability to access the world on their phones and through all of the various digital channels. 

Social media has made the visual properties of brand messaging so much richer than before. Understanding that visual literacy and just how far brands can take things presents a huge opportunity for Quebec businesses. Social shows no signs of slowing. 

 This blog piece covers key takeaways based off a recorded transcript from the event. Please note this is a summary of the discussion and not the speaker's actual verbiage.

Managing Brand Reputation in an Online World

It's happened to the best of us, we've written an article with embedded Tweets and Instagram posts, months later we're checking our SEO and spot broken links. Turns out those sources we linked to changed their handles, making us adjust all our links with a vow to stay more vigilant. But, as we increasingly use social media posts as source material; this begs the question, once your social handle gains traction, is there ever a reason to change it? Here PR pros weigh in.

If you jumped on Twitter when it first launched, you may have been a lot more likely to have done so under a pseudonym or nickname. Similarly, your Facebook and LinkedIn company profiles may have had to add additional words because someone else got there first and claimed your ideal handle.

For some influences, having quirky social handles don’t get in the way of partnering with brands. But for others, what seemed like a whimsical social handle choice may now actively be holding back your career. Something more basic and straightforward—like your real-life name—might be more helpful.

After all, you can just change your social handles on the major platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) without starting over or losing your momentum. But on the other hand, changing your handles could result in losing all the embeds and account mentions you’ve earned over time.

Before you flip the switch on a social channel rebrand, take into account these brand and influencer social account renaming experiences.

Confession time: @SFerika wasn’t my first Twitter handle. That honor goes to an account I created in 2008 using my typical Internet message boards user handle. When I decided I was ready to go forth with a professional Twitter account, I created a new one rather than renaming my old personal account since the two accounts wouldn’t have the same audiences. But for many other people, it makes more sense to rebrand their existing account.

“In my former advertising life, I acquired the nickname ‘Ringo’ from a few of my old coworkers,” said Joseph “JK Kalinowski, Creative Director, Content Marketing Institute. “Long story short, it involved a Beatles poster that was hanging in my office and a person walked into my office and said ‘What’s up Ringo?’ The name stuck. When it was time to create a Twitter account some years ago, I used the handle ‘@ringo66.’ Fast forward a few years to my beginnings with CMI & CMWorld. Everyone in the CMI family called me ‘JK’ because it got confusing that we had two ‘Joes’—Pulizzi and Kalinowski. We joked that it was a ‘Joverload’ at CMI. Our community knew me as JK, so it just made sense to switch the handle to @jkkalinowski.”

For Kalinowski, changing his Twitter handle made it easier for him to connect with people he met in the course of his job. “Using my ‘recognizable’ name instead of a nickname/codename made me recognizable to the people that I wanted to connect with. For me, especially after an event like #CMWorld where you meet and make new connections, having that clarity in my handle helped my connection/follows.”

Your Social Handle Reflects a Job You No Longer Have

When marketing consultant Maureen Jann created her Twitter account @MaureenOnPoint, she was the in-house marketing director for Point It digital marketing agency. While many people would have changed their social handles immediately after leaving the position, Maureen didn’t.

“I had originally picked my twitter handle to be a complimentary play on words with my employer’s company name (Point It),” she said. “When fortunes shifted and my new situation left me building my own business under my new moniker, SuperDeluxe Marketing, I opted to keep my handle.”

Maureen was already building her influence under the existing handle and had consistent feedback from her followers that the handle resonated with what she shared on the channel.

“Although the word ‘point’ was in the name, it was general enough to live outside of my initial employer’s umbrella,” she said. “Ultimately, I chose the name carefully to begin with to compliment my skills, my desire to be considered a thought leader, and finally to be compatible with my company’s theme.”

It’s important to note Jann did eventually change her Twiter handle to @SuperDeluxeMo as part of her business development for her new business, SuperDeluxe Marketing.

Someone Got There First But Didn’t Last

Sometimes, brands have to settle for their second choice social handles because someone else got there first. But over time, those sought-after social handles can once again become available.

“When we first set up our accounts @Kineo was already owned by another company,” said Andie Coupland, now the marketing manager at HT2 Labs. “We had to go with a longer version of our name (@kineolearning). Having kept tabs on the handle, it appeared to be dormant. After approaching the owner of the brand a few times, we finally manage to get hold of the @Kineo handle.”

For Coupland, the handle change was worth any initial confusion it might have caused due to it ultimately being a better fit for the brand.

“At the time meant a shorter handle meant more characters for tweets when we were tagging/being tagged, and was also easier and more consistent with our other social channels,” she said. “It took us a while to get the handle, but it was worth it to own the best-fit handle for our brand.”

While you might not want to keep your handle if it included a specific brand reference that doesn’t resonate on its own, there are cases’ like Maureen’s—where it makes sense to keep your initial social handles.

You’re Renaming and Rebranding Your Company

Sometimes, there’s no way around changing your social media handles. In the case of a major rebrand that includes a company name change, you really can’t make the case for keeping the social handles the same. But at the same time, you need to be careful about how you make the change to provide minimal disruption to both your customers and the brand.

Timing is everything when it comes to making a brand name change. For marketer Carmen Hill, that meant juggling two Twitter accounts over the weekend.

“For Twitter, I followed the Moz advice. We had the new handle ready to go, but the account wasn’t active. When it was go-time (scheduled for the weekend with a Sunday evening email announcement), we changed the new account’s handle to something else. Then, I used it the new name for the old account, so we kept all our followers, tweets, etc. Then, we went back to the new account and changed that handle to the old company handle. The hardest part was keeping all the passwords straight and doing things in the right order, quickly.”

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