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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

Marketing statistics have an instant—and powerful—impact. They allow you to tell an expansive story in the smallest of spaces through easily consumable data. That's why they're an essential tool in the modern marketing and PR pros toolbox. Crafting data-centric brand stories are within your reach, start with using this handy infographic as a guide.

How do you captivate and appeal to an audience with an elusive attention span?

Supercharge your marketing with statistics and you’ll grab them with take-notice data! 

This infographic unpacks how to use metrics and data in a powerful way and harness the full strength of your marketing materials. Magnify the impact of your messages by adding statistics with authority. As PR and marketing pros, tapping into that extra bit of gravitas could be what is needed to break through the static to be heard. 

Places to find great marketing statistics include:

Statista is one of the world’s largest statistics portals. It provides access to relevant data from over 18,000 sources.

Market Force works with brands to create custom predictive models for both soft metrics (like overall satisfaction or Net Promoter Score) and hard financial KPI’s like same store comparable sales or revenue per available room.

Economics & Statistics Administration from the United States Department of Commerce provides ongoing statistics on macroeconomic indicators like Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders and Homeownership Rate.

Pew Research Center tracks public opinions on U.S. National Conditions, Political Attitudes, and Domestic Issues. They emphasize key national, political, economic and demographic trends over time and use regularly updated charts.

Surveys created using Google Consumer Surveys, Polldaddy, Qualtrics, Survata, and SurveyMonkey. 

And of course, Meltwater for analytics related to your brand, your competition, and your industry. 

Infographic: Supercharge Your Marketing with Statistics

You've decided to grow your brand presence—either regionally or globally. By doing so you've added two critical activities to your to-do list. First, synchronizing your messaging across across geographies. And second, tracking the impact these messages. Here we look at what it takes to create a flexible brand voice to make the former easier to manage. For a breakdown of how to extract relevant data and gain competitive intel from it, read our benchmarking tip sheet, produced in collaboration with Ragan Communications.

Defining and documenting your brand voice is an important—although sometimes difficult—step toward creating a strong brand. The idea is that without your brand’s name attached to it, your content across channels will still come across as yours to your audience.

Take that idea and apply it to global brands, with localized content teams all working with their own external resources and freelancers, and you’ve got yourself a super-sized challenge.

Luckily, there are ways to ensure your brand voice is flexible to fit within each of your markets, without sacrificing your core brand identity and values.

Even when confined to the United States, a company would be hard-pressed to use identical language across states (or within some states) and find success. Billboards in San Francisco are splattered with colloquial lingo that would make SoCal audiences turn up their noses. And those cities are only a few hundred miles apart.

Communications become complicated on a much grander scale for global brands for a multitude of reasons:

Cultural norms can vary greatly across the globe. Take, for example, Uber’s ‘Avions de Chasse’ (or ‘hot chick”) partnership in France, where riders could be driven by beautiful women within Lyon’s city limits. What somehow seemed like a good idea to the local team, became a crisis communications issue and was quickly axed by the U.S. marketing team.

Words can have significantly different meanings or connotations from one region to another. This is especially important to double check if your message is being translated word-for-word by a non-native speaker. These translation blunders may make for some comedic relief for general consumers, but they’re damaging from a corporate branding standpoint.

Symbols have different meanings across countries. When Pampers diapers were sold in Japan, the stork imagery and messaging did not resonate with Japanese moms and dads because tales of a stork delivering babies isn’t part of Japanese culture.

Social media platforms have significantly different adoption around the world. Americans would think V Kontakte and QZone are gibberish, but they were the most popular social networks in Russia and China in January 2018. If brands only developed content with Facebook or Instagram in mind, they’d miss out on staying relevant in some international markets.

For these reasons, global brands need a flexible brand voice framework that allows regional teams to craft messages for the right platforms for their audiences.

Companies of all sizes need to document their brand voice to ensure consistency in their communications. For global brands, there are a few additional steps, but it is worth the time investment.

These three steps are the base for building your brand voice:

Pick universal voice attributes. To do this, take a sample of your content—everything from videos to web pages, e-books to social media—and identify content that best embodies what you want your brand voice to be. Then, describe the voice that those pieces convey in three words. Think broad on this: passionate, quirky, authentic, sophisticated, authoritative, savvy, etc. Finally, build these out in a grid with a description, dos and don’ts associated with each, and you have a general framework for your universal voice attributes.

Vet those attributes with local marketing team members on-the-ground in those areas. Check for any potential issues with your regions, and ensure you get a diversity of opinion from your regional experts. Don’t rely on just one team member to be the final approval for an entire country.

Provide brand-approved examples of the attributes in action from the perspective of each of your different regions. With buy-in from all your regions on your attributes, create a variety of examples across formats that illustrate how your brand voice can be applied globally.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

Coca-Cola GB on Twitter: "Let the Christmas countdown commence! You know what’s coming 😏 #HolidaysAreComing. Keep your eyes peeled tonight. 🎅🎄… "

Coca-Cola Australia on Twitter: "The Coke xmas truck & @salvosau brought a magical Christmas to Tamworth early this year #ItFeelsGoodToGive… "

As you create content in your company’s primary language, you can choose what pieces you feel are appropriate to distribute across regions. Have a brand voice document that is accessible for all content creators to easily localize your content. Depending on your internal resources, you may consider using global translation firms like WeLocalize or individual translators in your regions to give a local twist to your content.

Localization is key to keeping the balance between local relevance and a standard voice, but you must anticipate an extended timeline (and additional budget) for any content launches that require regional translations.

Ensure ongoing alignment with your hub and any local teams through regular meetings to discuss upcoming content and campaign ideas, and over time your team will grow in confidence with how to use your voice.

While the process of building a strong global brand voice is a significant initial time investment, the results are worth it. A unified global brand voice will give you greater brand recognition across all your audiences, cementing your position as a global leader.

Now that you’ve got your brand voice synched across regions and you’re ready to monitor your coverage globally and track your brand on social, learn how to gain business insights—including competitive—by reading our benchmarking tip sheet, produced in collaboration with Ragan Communications.

How to Ensure your Flexible Brand Voice Keeps Global Consistency

A talented marketer is not one but many things in the digital era. While team members with well developed, specific skills (design, copywriting, etc.) allows a marketing department to function at peak performance, making sure your key marketing team members are well-rounded is the best way to ensure success. Today’s marketing campaigns are much more than just putting a great ad in a well-targeted paper and hoping to gain leads. Modern marketers develop material for all stages of the sales cycle, using data and an understanding of the customer to help companies close deals. In this post are just some of the descriptions that fit a well-rounded, modern marketer.

Successful marketing requires the ability to collect valuable data and incorporate the data into a digestible, actionable format. Usually this means having data converted into visuals including charts and graphs which are much more easily deciphered than a raw dataset. For their clients, the modern marketer must be capable of putting together reports which show return on investment. This can be quite labour-intensive, considering all of the platforms which exist today that we use to market goods and services (Facebook, Pinterest, Google, Amazon, landing pages, Twitter, the list goes on). Marketers can more quickly achieve success by using a marketing automation platform which will help compile this data.

On top of reports, however, the modern marketer must also know how to make smart decisions based on the data. For example, it is absolutely imperative to incorporate A/B testing in email marketing, using data to determine successful market segmentation and other strategies.

While the modern marketer may not be a designer or an artist themselves, they must be a dutiful critic of all visual marketing materials, and be able to guide designers using data and logic to justify their opinions. The successful marketer will also be able to tell determine if typography and graphics are outdated or not ideal for a target audience (hint: avoid Times New Roman!). Today’s iconography and typography is flat, clear, and simple. But in two years, expect that to change. A good marketer stays on top of these trends, and understands the “art” as much as the science.

In my opinion, it is difficult to imagine a successful marketer that is not also a copywriter themselves. Writing good copy is, in its most basic form, the ability to sell using only words. This means knowing how to write for top, middle, and bottom of the funnel leads and a variety of audiences. Great copy is extremely important for developing landing pages, white papers, and other marketing materials. The successful marketer knows what information prospects need to know in order to buy.

On top of developing marketing materials, the modern marketer should also be an adept salesman. This is important because marketing is about sales, and if your marketer couldn’t close a deal on his or her own, how can you know that he/she will be able to develop the best strategies and materials to lead to that all-important close?

At the same time, keep in mind that there are many types of salesmen, and not all of them have marketing finesse. Those that do will be geared more towards meeting the needs of the customer than bullying prospects into a sale. Both strategies may be effective, but only one of them is scaleable (Hint #2: meeting the needs of the customer).

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

4 Traits of the Modern Marketer

PR strategy for launching new products often begins with social listening and benchmarking competitors by using a social media monitoring tool or competitive analysis software. But, what else can you do to get journalists interested in your product after you’ve done the research? PR pro, Michelle Garrett, asks industry experts to weigh in on the best way to craft PR for product launches.

Each year, brands launch more than 30,000 new consumer products. 80% of them fail.

In spite of the risk of failure, 63% of people responding to a Nielsen study said they like brands to offer new products—which means they’ll continue to try.

While PR plays a vital role in launching products – after all, it helps educate the public and drive demand – it’s not always an easy undertaking.

“Media stories are a great way to reach and teach the masses,” says Lonny Kocina of the Media Relations Agency. “That’s because product publicity is relatively low cost compared to other mass promotion techniques. And while a product is new, it’s especially newsworthy.”

Researching the right journalists and publications and thoughtfully crafting a pitch to get their attention can yield results, though it’s getting tougher to stand out above the noise that fills a reporter’s inbox.

Why is it so much harder to get a journalist’s attention these days?

“The proliferation of media channels and how we consume information has changed everything,” said Tamsin Henderson, Director, Gather Creative. “Journalists no longer have time to go to events like they used to, so unless you’re a brand with loads of cash for a glitzy event, product launch PR requires a more entrepreneurial approach.”

“I remember the days years ago when a product launch (especially a tech product) would get coverage on every technology outlet out there,” says Crystal Richard, president of Crystal Richard & Co. “You’d set an embargo, distribute the news a week or so in advance and bam! When that embargo lifted, media aplenty went live. Today, unless you’re Google or Facebook, those days are now a thing of the past.”

And, leading with the product can sometimes be an issue for journalists who now want to write about something more.

“I would argue that the best pitches – the ones I’m most receptive to – are the ones that feel most human,” says Matthew Hughes, a reporter at The Next Web.

It’s hard to make a pitch sound human if you’re focusing on the product.

So what DOES work to earn media coverage for a new product?

When you’re tasked with handling public relations for a product launch, some approaches may get you further than others.

Here are tactics that PR pros in the trenches have used to successfully secure media coverage to help get new products off the ground:

1) Offer high-quality assets to get attention 

“Provide a few stunning, professional photos showing the product with real people, or in beautiful settings,” said Henderson. “Remember, people share and like nice pics. And the more shares a journalist’s story gets, the happier his or her bosses. So they’re more likely to feature your story if it’s got terrific photos or illustrations.”

Henderson says the editor of a business magazine once told her he’d chose her story as the front page feature purely because of the fantastic photo.

“It was a mediocre story, but he knew an outstanding photo would sell more magazines,” explains Henderson.   

She also recommends including a short video. “It can add an extra dimension to your story and give some nice background,” she says.

“In the long run, a relationship will be much more useful,” says Darcy Cudmore, PR and Social Media for Powerful Outreach.

“If you have an approaching product launch, I suggest reaching out to a few reporters well in advance. To start, just strike up a conversation about their work,” says Cudmore.

Later, when you’re ready to contact them about a product launch, you’ll have already established a foundation, Cudmore suggests.

An example he cites: He started following a tech journalist and complimenting her work whenever he read something he genuinely enjoyed. Later, when he had clients in the space, he reached out to her, resulting in stories about two of his clients.

“I appreciate the coverage, and she appreciates getting the inside scoop on new products,” said Cudmore.

3) Put the founders first instead of leading with the product, talk about the founders.

“Put the founders first,” says Melanie Marten, owner of Berlin-based agency The Coup. “You need the people behind the product to step up and give the product a soul.”

Include something about the entrepreneur’s background or journey to get a journalist on board. Behind every product, there’s usually an interesting story to tell.  

4) Skip the “launch” and aim for ongoing brand awareness

“There’s no pressure or ticking clock as an embargo approaches that will cause a journalist to shy away,” says Richard.

“People often think you need a “launch” to get a feature article. You don’t. Do cool things. Change the world. Build an amazing culture. These are all important milestones that can be used to tell your story to the media and get coverage, without the urgency of telling a writer they need to cover on a specific date or else.”

“I often used Meltwater to run international searches based on very specific keywords to help find even the most niche blog,” Henderson says.

“I export it to excel, and sort by readership, location, type of outlet, etc., etc…This gives me an instant window into influencers talking about products similar to whatever I’m launching. So I can prioritize my media list, without having to spend days researching who to contact.”

Henderson says she also uses Meltwater to gather links and data for detailed coverage reports following launches.

Try these approaches to get coverage for a new product

While conducting PR for product launches may not be as simple as it once was, it can still be done successfully. If you’re looking for more pitching tactics, watch our on-demand webinar on the topic, Don’t Be That Guy.

The Ins and Outs of PR for Product Launches

Although public relations wasn’t officially a profession until relatively recently, the practice has been around for thousands of years.

In 50 B.C., Julius Caesar publicised his military exploits in the first known political campaign biography to convince the Romans that he would make the best head of state—a practice which is still used by political candidates today.

Before the rise of the most powerful PR professionals, there were some ancient personalities that influenced and shaped the PR industry.  

So who are the first PR influencers worth mentioning? 

Ptah-Hotep (2200 BCE) was an Egyptian literary who wrote the book The Maxims of Ptah-Hotep focusing on the importance of communicating with people. 

Socrates (470 BCE - 399 BCE), one of the founders of Western philosophy, was of the opinion that effective communication should be based on the truth. 

Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE) whose work Rhetoric dealt with the art of persuasion and shaping the public opinion. 

In 50 BCE, Julius Caesar (100 BCE- 44 BCE) publicized his military exploits in the first known political campaign biography to convince the public opinion of Romans that he would make the best head of state – a practice which is still used in mass media by political candidates today. This document is regarded as the first public newsletter.

The PR industry wouldn’t be what it is today if it wasn’t for its pioneers and significant events that laid the foundation of public relations as a notable profession. 

But let us start from the beginning, that is in 1440 when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. It caused nothing less than a cultural and social revolution, enabling the sudden widespread of propaganda, journalistic activity, and printed material such as books, pamphlets etc.

Around 140 years later (in 1584), Sir Walter Raleigh decided to do some advertising and sent reports about the beauty of Roanoke Island to England to persuade more settlers. Despite his efforts, his attempt was far from being a success as it turned out that the land was swampy. 

In 1773, Samuel Adams, considered the Master of Propaganda, orchestrated public relations for the Revolutionary War, while 3 years later, Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet Common Sense encouraging people to fight for an egalitarian government. When Amos Kendall became the press secretary of President Andrew Jackson (1820), he was quickly regarded as the one causing public relations to become a career. 

Basil Clark is regarded as the first PR professional, establishing the first UK PR agency Editorial Services in 1924.

However, PR became a profession when Ivy Lee started working as an advisor of John Rockefeller in 1903. The publicity expert was responsible for Rockefeller’s reputation boost after a crisis caused by a series of strikes in the coal mines. Ivy Lee is also believed to be the author of the first press release. 

One of the most important names is the field of PR is Edward Bernays, the Father of Public Relations and author of the influential book Propaganda. Being the nephew of Sigmund Freud, his PR strategies were greatly influenced by his uncle’s theories on behavioural psychology. Edward Bernays was of the opinion that political propaganda used by the governments during WWII, could also be used by corporations to influence the customer and consumer in a more subtle form. 

Businessman Henry Ford started using PR in the 1930’s to publicize his company and boost sales.

As you can see, only through the effort of numerous people who dared to try new approaches, we can speak of public relations as a meaningful profession.  

PR is a very broad topic, therefore it makes sense to focus on the most important aspects, one of them being inventions enabling the development and progress within the industry. 

History mentions numerous inventions that caused major changes in society, however, we will focus on the ones relevant for public relations. 

Daguerreotype (1839): First commercially successful photographic process

Tesla coils (1897): Electrical resonant transformer circuit. It is used to produce high-voltage, low-current, high frequency alternating-current electricity.

But what affected the modernization of PR? Once again, the answer is innovation.

It started with the birth of the Internet (1969), followed by the phenomena that the world wide web became accessible to the public (1991) and Hotmail was defined as the first web-based email service (1996). 

Soon after, in 1999 to be more precise, first bloggers emerged and were finally able to share their content on Blogger, the first free blog publishing platform. 

5 more years have passed before the world witnessed the explosion of social media platforms with the launch of Facebook and Twitter. They attracted more and more customers each day, advertising became easier and we could go on an on about the impact (positive and negative) the platforms have on society.  

Consumers, as well as technology enthusiasts, could buy their first iPhone in 2007 and the number of Apple customers is still growing, which can be attributed to effective PR including advertising, media relations, well thought through marketing concepts etc. 

People have been using PR (and PR’s sister occupation, content marketing) to capture the public’s attention and spur them into action since the beginning of time. The channels have changed a bit here and there with various inventions such as the printing press, followed by the Internet and social media (can you imagine how the American Revolution would have been different had Twitter existed?), but the basic strategies and principles remained the same.

People have been using PR (and PR’s sister occupation, content marketing) to capture the public’s attention and spur them into action since the beginning of time (yes, we are suggesting that cavemen probably had some sort of PR campaigns). The channels have changed a bit here and there with the invention of the printing press, and now the Internet and of course social media and sophisticated media monitoring tools; but the basic strategies and principles are the same.

Check out this cool infographic from Max Borges Agency to see how public relations has evolved over time:

The History of Public Relations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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