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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

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

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

After all of the changes LinkedIn has made to groups, it’s no wonder LinkedIn users and social selling experts are questioning the value of LinkedIn groups for sales and marketing programs. It makes you wonder if LinkedIn groups will experience the same fate as Google+ Communities, deserted after members go elsewhere for relevant discussions and cutting-edge content?

LinkedIn groups began as forums centered around communities asking and answering insightful questions to learn from each other. With the rise of content marketing, many zealous marketers began clogging the stream of the discussion with self-promotional links to landing pages, white papers, and webinars. Unmoderated groups morphed into spammy blog feeds with real discussions being buried. On the other hand, the best LinkedIn groups discovered how to moderate discussions, minimize spam, and foster on-topic discussions among members.

Social sellers started using LinkedIn groups as a way to spam group members with unsolicited sales pitches. They neglected to follow protocol: send a connection request, gauge the prospect’s interest, and then send an appropriate follow-up message. LinkedIn has addressed this issue by limiting LinkedIn users to a total of 15 free 1:1 messages per month. This dramatically slowed down the number of uninvited sales messages sent to group members.

Are LinkedIn groups still worth your time?

The LinkedIn groups user interface would benefit from a makeover, but LinkedIn groups can still be one of the best places to actively prospect, connect with like-minded professionals, and learn from industry thought leaders.

If you want to make the most of your groups, you should first identify the best LinkedIn groups for your goals, and then effectively navigate and participate in your high-value groups.

Participating in LinkedIn groups is one of my preferred ways to engage with prospects, industry peers, and subject matter experts. Because LinkedIn is a professional social network, interactions within LinkedIn groups are different than the more personal Facebook groups or casual Twitter chats.

Now that we’ve established the value in LinkedIn groups, here are my three best practices for using LinkedIn groups effectively, connecting with the right people in groups, and becoming a well-respected group member.

Become an active participant by sharing regular, relevant posts with your groups. To be considered a regular contributor, share a discussion with your groups every one or two weeks, depending on the activity level of each group.

I would caution you against using too much automation when sharing discussion. Avoid mass-blasting the same blog article, discussion title, and description to ALL of your groups. Steer clear of social scheduling tools and post discussions manually.

Personalize each discussion based on the focus of that LinkedIn group and the group members (seniority, subject matter expertise, industry). Follow each group’s rules before submitting a discussion.

Use the discussion area to ask questions of group members as a smart way to spark comments and learn from other subject matter experts.

Summed Up: Don’t post spam. Don’t post the same discussion in all groups. Follow the group’s rules. Stick to the subject matter of each group.

Visit each of your high priority groups on LinkedIn with the intention of commenting on others’ discussions on a weekly basis. Commenting within your groups is just as important as posting your own discussions. When you fail to comment on other group members’ discussions, your discussions often are ignored by group members. Group members expect each other to post relevant discussions and comment on discussions. It’s how a thriving community works.

When you do leave a comment, mention the group member (by tagging them with the @ sign) who posted the discussion. Then provide an insightful, unique point of view on the discussion. Generic comments like, “Awesome!” are worthless. And please do not use the comment box as a place for blatant self-promotion.

Monitoring your groups can take a good amount of time each week. I pick my top 8-10 groups and monitor these on an almost daily basis. As for my other groups, I subscribe to the weekly update email to ensure I don’t miss any relevant discussions.

Here’s how you can adjust your settings in each group to get the weekly or daily update email:

Summed Up: Comment regularly in your high priority groups while monitoring the others less frequently. Always provide value when you comment. Engaging with a comment is one of the best ways to support your groups.

Pay attention to group members—especially potential prospects—who are actively participating in groups and look for ways to interact with them inside the group and then connect with them.

A great benefit of LinkedIn groups is interacting with people outside your network who should become part of your network. Group members are able to search the group membership by job titles or keywords, which can help you find ideal prospects. Actively posting and commenting in your groups helps you gain visibility you would not otherwise have inside the group.

When you are an active group member, you will receive connection requests and LinkedIn messages from other members because you are regularly providing value to the group. I’ve made some of my most valuable professional connections from those within my LinkedIn groups because I am a visible group member, comment regularly, and follow up with those who comment on my discussions.

You can also take a more proactive approach to connecting with group members, but be cautious not to appear too eager to connect. The easiest way to make a connection (that I’ve found) is to comment on a trending discussion and then send a personalized connection request to other commenters. Active group members enjoy connecting with other participants. Win-win.

Be authentic. Look at the profiles of potential connections to ensure they are a good fit. Don’t send generic connection requests.

This article originally appeared in Biznology. This article was written by Mindi Rosser from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Are LinkedIn Groups Experiencing A Crisis?

Managing social media is an exciting job – I mean who wouldn’t want to spend hours on an X/Twitter account and get paid for it, right? Community management is both thrilling and challenging in equal measures. For every tweet or Retweet, there is both a potential for virality and failure - you just need to learn how to steer the odds in your favor.

Managing a corporate Twitter account requires a clear vision, thoughtful strategy, and dedication to be successful in keeping a brand in front of existing customers, whilst attracting new ones. We’re here to share practical tips on how to effectively manage a corporate Twitter account to ease the challenging aspects of the job, and endear you to your customers who are Twitter users.

1) Set Expectations for Content – and Follow Through

Amidst millions of social media accounts and billions of conversations taking place every day, getting our corporate Twitter account noticed can be challenging. Grabbing the attention of our target audience starts with establishing our social brand profile, which is achieved by constantly publishing what's relevant to our followers. Consistency helps us build a “routine” that helps our followers know what to expect from our account. Users tend to unfollow inactive accounts or accounts that tweet once or twice a week. Nothing can put potential followers off from following than a corporate Twitter account whose last tweet was published a week ago. Relevancy and consistency ensures followers are not confused and is essential to keep our audience engaged.

2) Keep the Content as Diverse as the Community

People that follow a corporate Twitter account are not only interested in company news, they’re equally interested -if not more so - in the brand story, product updates, offers, “how to use” videos and industry news. By taking a good look at our following base we will see that our audience can be segmented into subgroups, each having their own set of interests and needs. It’s important to tailor our content to meet the diverse needs and interests of our followers. Media monitoring tools with consumer insight reports such as Meltwater can help us understand the topics our followers are interested in and create posts that meet their interests. The analytics will show that engaging and tailored posts will directly and positively affect our bottom line at the same time.

There are times when it makes sense to split our audience into more than one account. Comcast did this early on with @comcastcares, which is specifically for customer service. This is a good way to put the needs of the customer first, as it serves a very specific function. 

There are many simple and perhaps common sense ways that can help drive our engagement level – yet, amidst our busy jobs filled with endless to do lists and deadlines we tend to forget them! In real life when we’re greeted by someone, we greet them back. So, why do we act so differently on Twitter when we have easy-to-access direct messages and replies? Social media shouldn’t be any different. When we receive new followers on any app, we can welcome them. We can ask them about their jobs and their interests so that we can get to know more about them. This does not mean that we should have an automated “thanks for following” reply – that’s a hollow welcome. Honest engagement requires real people acting like real people.

The great thing about starting real conversations is that we can get a good feel as to what our most engaged audience is interested in, and how to make their experience better. For example, we can ask them what made them follow us and the type of posts they would like to see.

The shelf life of a tweet is approximately 30 minutes. Levels of engagement change greatly depending on the time of day, however the “Always on” nature of social media – X, formerly known as Twitter, in particular –  means that we need to keep our accounts active at all times and engage with trending hashtags, whether they are corporate or personal. Media monitoring tools, such as Meltwater intelligence, can help us schedule tweets to ensure our account stays active, even during weekends or outside of office working hours. That said, scheduled posts only do so much. If our corporate Twitter account reads as though a robot is running it, that’s not going to get us honest engagement.

We don’t always have to initiate the conversation. Engagement is also achieved when we join a conversation that is already happening. For example, Meltwater decided to listen to the conversation following Zayn Malik’s announcement that he was leaving One Direction. Using our online Media Monitoring platform we created a heat map of the most engaged parts of the world. This heat map, accompanied with the trending hashtags, resulted in brand impressions tripling! Now, this doesn’t mean that we should capitalize on all social media buzz, we must be selective so that we benefit from trending hashtags and news that’s relevant to our brand. Hijacking news that our followers find offensive will obviously do more harm than good, proving that not all Twitter engagement should be celebrated.

Be sure to add images to tweets. A picture says a thousand words, after all. Adding images, infographics and videos to our tweets will encourage users to click through and engage with the content, and will make a first glance at our corporate Twitter handle a lot more compelling.

The 80/20 rule is a good one for X, formerly known as Twitter: about 80% of the content on our corporate Twitter handle should be about other people. RTing target influencer posts, for example, is a great way to engage them and to give great content to our own community. That leaves 20% of our content for self-promotion. This is where a great media intelligence tool comes in especially handy: understanding who matters within our community and what folks are interested in helps us engage our community and further our influencer strategy with one tweet. Understanding and meeting our audiences needs is what makes marketing such a crucial support to traditional advertising. 

Social media management is about more than simply being seen. It requires a deeper understanding of the social networks that matter to our brand and our audiences. As a marketer, you can tap into potential customers through brand awareness but the job of growing your Twitter followers is more complex. It involves offering real value, which is easiest to achieve with the right tools and insights. 

Pro Marketing: 7 Tips for Managing a Corporate Twitter Account

Once in a while a gem pops up on social channels. We've seen it before in the form of brands dissing each other or in this case, when brands chat on social media. Whether planned or by chance, these examples are social media wins for all those involved.

Social media is traditionally thought of as a brand-to-customer or customer-to-brand marketing channel.

But what happens when brands chat on social media? The past year has shown us how fun, engaging, and sometimes controversial it can be when brands start to converse on social media – pushing the boundaries of brand marketing with each post.

Here’s a look at some of the best and most controversial examples of brand-to-brand communication on Twitter.

MoonPie and Wendy’s are two of the most talked about accounts on Twitter today. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, their social teams have proven that you don’t need to be Nike or NatGeo to go viral.

MoonPie on Twitter: "Been working on a play all afternoon where everyone in the play is named MoonPie let me know what you think… "

One thing MoonPie and Wendy’s are doing particularly well is interacting with other brands on Twitter in order to spark conversation and engagement between two audiences.

In a recent AMA on Reddit hosted by Wendy’s, one user asked what their favorite Twitter account is (besides their own). Wendy’s responded:

Sarah Lathe on Twitter: "How does this make you feel, @MoonPie? Source: @Wendys AMA @reddit… "

Which then prompted this response from MoonPie:

MoonPie on Twitter: "Thank you @Wendys 😊… "

This simple Tweet received more than 250 Retweets, 6,200 Likes, and 47 responses. One user even mentioned that they began to follow the MoonPie account because of the shoutout from Wendy’s.

In this case, both brands showed just how fun and engaging brand-to-brand communication can be. This helped to humanize both MoonPie and Wendy’s through authentic conversation.

London’s Natural History Museum and Science Museum

When Bednarz O’Connell asked this seemingly innocent question, he sparked one of the greatest Twitter wars to ever go down.

Nick O'Connell on Twitter: "Who would win in a staff battle between @sciencemuseum and @NHM_London, what exhibits/items would help you be victorious? #askacurator"

Natural History Museum on Twitter: "We have dinosaurs. No contest.… "

Feeling like they weren’t going to be defeated, the Science Museum came back with:

Science Museum on Twitter: "@NHM_London is full of old fossils, but we have robots, a Spitfire and ancient poisons. Boom! #AskACurator… "

This continued for dozens of tweets and several days. Each brand showcasing why their exhibits are the best in London.

Natural History Museum on Twitter: "We have robot dinosaurs, Pterodactyls and the most venomous creatures on Earth. Plus volcanoes and earthquakes ... And vampire fish.… https://t.co/OZMssySdOe"

Science Museum on Twitter: "What about this merman & we do have a Polaris nuclear missile as Khalil says!… "

Many marketers would argue that getting into a Twitter war with one of your competitors is a bad thing. We beg to differ. In this case, the press and publicity generated was a win for both brands. Each kept the conversation PG and in good fun proving that brand-to-brand conversation doesn’t have to be negative.

Speaking of negative brand-to-brand communication, Wendy’s was back at it again with this tweet calling out their biggest competitor McDonald’s on a mistimed post:

McDonald's Corporation on Twitter: "Black Friday **** Need copy and link****"

Wendy's on Twitter: "When the tweets are as broken as the ice cream machine.… "

Wendy’s has earned the reputation as the “sassy” brand on social media and this post showed just how snarky they can be.

McDonald’s attempted to respond, but by then it was already too late:

McDonald's Corporation on Twitter: "When you tweet before your first cup of McCafé… Nothing comes before coffee.… "

The damage was done. The Wendy’s tweet engagement climbed up into the hundreds of thousands and the best McDonalds could do was watch it all happen.

SF Bart, like so many other brands these days, has grown their social accounts through quirky and brash tweets. This time, they challenged the LA Metro team to a Haiku battle:

SFBART on Twitter: "We challenge @metrolosangeles to a transit poetry slam. Haikus only.

Your move, LA."

SFBART on Twitter: "Believe it or not
There's a subway in LA
(Transit, not sandwich)

@metrolosangeles"

At first, LA Metro didn’t respond, but they finally decided to get in on the action by calling out the Golden State Warriors:

LA Metro on Twitter: "Seventy-three wins
This was your reality
Yet no ring to show

@SFBART #wewentthere"

A sensitive subject for lots of people in the Bay Area.

SFBART on Twitter: "Hypothetically
If I land at LAX
Then what do I do?

😉

#transithaiku @metrolosangeles"

And the conversation went on and on with each brand (seemingly) throwing shade with every tweet.

This example of brand-to-brand conversation seemingly teeters on the “for worse” side, but both sides came into the “battle” with a nod towards fun. And the entire twitter exchange showed a mutual understanding and appreciation of their respective hometowns. Exchanges like these, with old-fashioned ribbing, can be a social media win for audiences and the brands involved.

Brand monitoring tools give marketers a plethora of resources to be able to join and start brand-to-brand conversations like we saw in the examples above.

Chatting with other brands on social media is a great way to spark engagement between two very different audiences – often those of competitors.

The key is to make sure that each message is on-brand and carefully crafted. As with other types of social media posts, the ultimate goal of brand-to-brand communication is growing a loyal and engaged audience.

When Brands Chat on Social Media

You’ve just finished up a PR campaign that was a success. The client was happy. Your boss was thrilled. Now, you’d like to go bigger, with a public relations campaign that requires more resources, more technology—and more money. Let's be honest, PR, marketing and advertising don't come cheap the majority of times.

For many PR pros, making a case to increase the PR budget can be a challenge. How will you overcome objections to your request for more dollars to executive your strategy?

How to Overcome PR Budget Increase Objections

Sometimes, it’s about changing the perception of PR and the impact of a solid public relations strategy on the wider business. If senior management view public relations efforts as expenditures versus investments, you may struggle to make a case for more budget. However, if you can change the way leaders think about PR, you may have a better chance of securing more funds.

“The old adage that we can’t manage what we don’t measure is doubly true when it comes to PR: We won’t fund what we can’t manage or measure,” says Christopher Penn, Vice President of Marketing Technology for SHIFT Communications. “Marketers and communicators looking for more budget need to be able to articulate what the increase will mean in terms of business impact.”

“When making the case, it’s important to communicate value, not just outputs or needs. The one thing to avoid is to try to justify budget increases on the basis of cost alone,” says Tim O’Brien, Principal, O’Brien Communications. “Your client doesn’t care if your costs have gone up, or even that you may have worked twice as long to get the results you originally promised. It’s best to put the focus on the future, the kind of reasonable results the client can expect, and the increased value to the client of those possible outcomes.”

Another consideration may be to take a look at what the competition is doing. Nothing gets the C-suite as fired up as talk about beating competitors. The argument could be that if you want to one-up the competition, you’re going to need more budget to implement a similar stategy as them. Media monitoring can help here by giving you insight into which media outlets are covering the competition and what they’re saying. It can also measure sentiment so you know if their plan is a success.

This all sounds good. But, how do you actually build a case?

First, determine what activities drive the business forward and what activities have positive ROI, says Penn. “If I put $1 into the PR machine, what comes out? If it’s not at least $1.01, then PR isn’t going to get more money.”

“Then, if we want to kick it up a notch, we start using advanced statistics and measurement to build models based on the ROI we generate,” continued Penn. “If I know that putting $1 into the PR machine on average makes $1.25 come out, then I want to know how to get to $1.30, $1.50, $2, $5. How much more return could we capture?”

This is where technologies like predictive analytics and machine learning come into play in elevation your public relations strategy. Predictive analytics use data to forecast what’s likely to happen. “Once we know on average what our efforts yield, we augment those efforts with data science to know when to ramp spending up and when to cool things off,” says Penn.

Using predictive analytics to project needs in advance can be a winning formula when you’re trying to increase your PR budget. To do this, you need data.

These Data Sources Can Help Win More PR Budget

What sources of data can help you make the case?

Publication data from media monitoring systems, like Meltwater

Web analytics from systems like Google Analytics

Penn stresses that you need to start with “clean” data. If your data is tainted from the start, your predictions will be wrong—which could throw off your entire campaign.

Also, use care in selecting which data is best for your PR strategy needs. Data with too little detail can lead to inaccurate predictions, as can data with too much detail.

Of course, you’ll want to review and assess progress along the way. Be willing to make adjustments if the campaign is underperforming. And at the end, evaluate the results to see how it went overall—and hopefully to leverage your success into an even bigger budget request for your next public relations push.

Hopefully by now you have a better understanding of what it takes to increase your PR budget and take your media strategy to new heights. 

Making a Case for More PR Budget

For most brands, the social strategy involves just two things: responding to customer complaints as quickly as possible and pushing company announcements. What does it take to do more—and stand out on social? Edgy brands hook audiences by showing off personality. Is your brand ready to take the leap? For extra inspiration, see examples of top social media campaigns by nonprofits, healthcare, tourism, sports teams, government agencies, and television shows!

What does it take to stand out on social media?

Great content? Celebrity influencers? Adorable animals?

Today, people are becoming more and more wary of inauthentic brands and content on social media. The strategies that once worked a few short years ago are quickly becoming outdated.

Looking at recent social media trends, it’s clear that brands who are clearly winning in terms of engagement and publicity are the ones that show off their personality. Edgy brands do it with a little sass. That’s why we’ve rounded up 3 awesome examples of brands that know how to take it to the edge—capturing the hearts and minds of audiences in the process.

3 Awesome Examples of Edgy Brands that Got Sassy, But Kept It Classy

When brands share their personality on social media it captivates the collective internet. What makes it so compelling is that it showcases the fact that there are real people behind the content. Plus, it adds some humor and delight to the otherwise monotonous posts that typically make up our feeds.

One of the most successful examples of an edgy brand on social media over the last two years is none other than Merriam-Webster (yes, the dictionary).

The official Twitter account of the Merriam-Webster dictionary has become a viral PR sensation.

Merriam-Webster mainly utilizes Twitter to share interesting insights behind words that we all use every day, which is on-brand in terms of personality:

Merriam-Webster on Twitter: "'Ingenious': 🔬 marked by originality, resourcefulness, and cleverness
'Ingenuous': 😮 showing innocent or childlike simplicity and candidness https://t.co/Dpp2rS2BbU"

But where Merriam-Webster really shines is when they use the power of words to comment on current cultural events with perfectly timed and relevant Tweets:

Merriam-Webster on Twitter: "*whispers into the void* In contemporary use, fact is understood to refer to something with actual existence. https://t.co/gCKRZZm23c"

Merriam-Webster’s social media team understands the art of subtly “commenting-without-really-commenting” on current events by tying their content into the context of word definitions. This has led to thousands of mentions, tons of engagement, and an incredible amount of social media reach in 2018:

If you’re looking for an edgy brand that throws down on social media by being funny and just flat out strange in every way, look no further than Denny’s.

They’ll make you think twice about what the limits of a successful social media strategy look like today.

Denny’s first gained popularity with a Twitter meme that tricked audiences into repeatedly zooming into an image:

Denny's on Twitter: "zoom in on the syrup… "

Diving deeper into their social media presence, the Denny’s personality shines through in all sorts of ways. For example, the description on their Twitter profile reads:

“Yes, we’re fine. No, we’re not the Krusty Krab. Welcome to America’s Diner.”

The social media team behind Denny’s is quirky, sassy, and not afraid to be a little edgy:

Denny's on Twitter: "What if we individually wrapped fries? That’d be annoying so we won’t. You’re welcome."

They also understand their target customer on a deep level:

Denny's on Twitter: "There’s only 3 things guaranteed in life: death, taxes, and a group of theater kids eating at Denny’s after their last production of Hamlet."

Most importantly, Denny’s isn’t afraid to comment on important conversations on social media. For example, the time they got in on the running joke of 2017, when everyone was talking about different ways to copy Snapchat Stories:

Denny's on Twitter: "waffles in 2017 will now have stories… "

Again, a little personality goes a long way, particularly for America’s favorite diner, Denny’s.

Hamburger Helper doesn’t hold back when it comes to being both sassy and smart on social media.

Everything from their profile cover photo to their brand description is on point in terms of showing off their “meaty” personality:

And in the age of savvy brands cracking jokes on social media at the expense of random strangers, quite possibly the last brand you’d ever want to be schooled by is a food brand that can’t even be labelled as real “food.”

But that’s exactly what Hamburger Helper does on a regular basis. For example, one guy named Chris thought he would Tweet about the ease of making Hamburger Helper:

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