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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

Any PR pro worth their salt knows traditional media coverage is still a core part of an excellent PR strategy. Yet some PR pros seem to be better at getting their clients placements than others. It may seem like magic, but it’s really all about finding, building, and maintaining relationships with media: aka Media Relations. If you are new to PR, or if you have concentrated on digital media until now and need to branch out, you may be wondering how you can work this magic for yourself. We have tips (and tools) to help.

One quick way to find the best journalists, personalities, and influencers to start and grow relationships with is to use keyword research to generate lists of highly targeted media professionals. This can be done in a few ways: through search engines that allow boolean targeted search strings, through influencer specific list purchases, or through tools designed to coordinate, nurture, and sort media relationships by keyword, history, and angle.

Search Engines and Media Professional Discovery

Using boolean search strings like “AND”, “OR”, “site:KEYWORD” etc. can dramatically narrow your searches. This is much more useful than simply tossing a journalist’s name in Google and seeing what comes up. 

By using search strings you can search keywords, topics, and angles and find journalists writing about the topics that are most closely aligned to your clients’ needs. This can get cumbersome, however. You can’t automatically build your lists using searches like this. You have to manually track your contacts through your email, your CRM, or some other external program.

This is the most expensive and the least direct method of finding and nurturing journalist relationships. Because you don’t have much input into how the lists are sorted, you are stuck with too many names that aren’t closely tied to what your clients want and need. 

Since these lists are often in an excel sheet and emailed to those who purchase them, they aren’t a living updated document. These lists can occasionally be useful for one-time events like trade shows but support a more “spray and pray” strategy. It might be a component of your larger media strategy, but it wouldn’t make a great cornerstone.

Media Specific Nurturing and Discovery Tools

These give you the biggest bang for your buck, and for your effort. With the right keyword tool you can create useful lists of media professionals that you can then build relationships from. Before you dive in, understand what topics your clients are most aligned with, then use those to ferret out the journalists that cover them most often. 

Tools like this give you insight into the topics each journalist engages with more often, so you don’t waste your time. Additionally, with access to an influencer and media database you can sort by date range, keyword, topic, angle, location, beat, role, publication, media channel or name. This allows you to finely hone which media you are approaching. Not only that, you can track your contact with each media influencer inside these tools, and share the lists you build with your team. This makes getting media placement for your client much easier, and enables you to build relationships with media over time much more easily.

What Else Can You Do to Build Great Media Relationships and Get More Coverage?

Keep an eye on the publications and channels of the journalists you want to reach. Are they struggling to keep up in some areas? Are they having to work with a reduced staff? Do you see openings where you can offer to help them with content from your clients? This is one easy way to stay front of mind for media you want to reach – and being helpful costs you nothing but time. You can also make it easy and clear how to connect with your clients for stories. Don’t make the media search for what to do next. In this short attention span economy, you want their attention on you to be sustained. If you keep your media searches and relationship building tightly focused and look for openings for your clients to be useful, you’ll find great success in mastering media relations.

If you’re ready for the next step in nurturing media relationships for future coverage, download our ebook about extending your PR capabilities with pointers from content marketing.

How to Nurture Media Relationships for Better Outreach

The holidays are finally here! For social media managers and brand marketers, that means a wave of opportunity to drive engagement with audience members during one of the busiest times of the year. To ensure you're ready for the holidays—and for the year to come—you'll also want to read our ebook on social content strategy, with examples from top brands.

Between Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Black Friday, New Year’s Eve, and the rest of the winter holidays, this is the most important (and busiest!) time of the year, especially for B2C brands. Holiday eCommerce sales alone reached a total of $126 billion last year—up from $108.2 billion in 2017.

So, what’s the best way to tap into the holiday excitement? 

Here’s a time-tested social media holiday strategy to end 2019 off on a high note.

In order to truly capitalize on all of the social media opportunities the holidays provide, it’s important to establish a social media calendar as soon as possible. You should realistically have every day planned to the end of the year.

Quick tips for what to include in your social media calendar:

Placeholders for recurring content activities

Next, preparing and following a set editorial plan will help you succeed during the holidays and beyond.

One of the most reliable ways to delight customers instead of adding to holiday “noise” is to create a branded hashtag campaign. When done right, these campaigns evoke emotions and promote sharing.

For examples, UPS created the #WishesDelivered campaign to promote good deeds during the holidays and showcase videos and stories where they have fulfilled a wish or delivered a surprise. #WishesDelivered offered a refreshing change of pace from other top social media posts brands rely on during other times of the year.

People are encouraged to use the campaign hashtag to share UPS’s stories or stories of their own. On top of that, every time the #WishesDelivered hashtag is used, UPS makes a $1 donation to one of three charity partners. To date, the hashtag has been used more than 10,000 times across Instagram and Twitter alone.

"Delivering Wishes"

David Bunklay, driver with the UPS Livonia North facility in Detroit (Michigan) will be working hard this holiday peak season to make sure the customers in his daily route gets their packages and gifts delivered on time. Out of every ten stops he'll do around the city, three will be at businesses and seven at residential homes, where he will deliver anything from letters to medicines, industrial parts, gifts, toys, etc. The city of Detroit needs and truly rely on these services and the men and women in the UPS brown uniform are well respected in the community. 
To find out more about the project and see the work of the rest of the photographers' team, check the @UPS account. 
#SionFullana #DeliveringWishes #WishesDelivered #UPS #Documentary #OnAssignment #MobilePhotography #Detroit #Michigan #drivers #HolidaySeason #UPSDriver

The campaign is promoted around the idea of: deliveries during the holidays begin with a wish. The goal of UPS was to turn those wishes into reality and they’ve done just that with their social media holiday strategy.

And remember, any success with this year’s hashtag will be carried over to next year when you run the campaign all over again.

Tip: Learn how Make-A-Wish America uses the Meltwater suite for their national communications strategies and PR campaigns.

Hosting a contest or giveaway on social media may seem like an obvious one for B2C and B2B brands, but the classic social media holiday strategy is still very much alive and well.

The contest or giveaway should consist of two important factors: 

The prize should be enticing enough for your audience to want to take action

The rules and content should incentivize sharing with family and friends

Contests and giveaways might be a little more time-intensive for your audience (compared to a hashtag campaign), but can pay off big time in engagement and new customers. There’s even potential to tie the contest with the hashtag you created in #2.

You can utilize the traditional, but effective “Like or Comment to Enter” approach or something that requires deeper engagement such as “Share or Caption to Enter”. 

In 2017 Lush Cosmetics ran one of the most popular holidays giveaways to date under the campaign and hashtag: #SwishUponAStar.

Media Not Found

This could be us on Christmas morning, but you didn't put Lush on your list 😉Tag someone who needs to spoil you! 🎁🎁🎁/photo by @lushsouthampton

This giveaway offered audiences a trip to the uber-popular Lush factory for two. The only requirement for entry? Fans were asked to post their best piece of “bath bomb art”, tag Lush on social media, and use the #SwishUponAStar hashtag. The Lush team picked their favorite as winner. 

#SwishUponAStar created a buzz within industry media outlets and resulted in a big uplift in brand awareness for Lush. It was also a creative way for Lush to give back to their audience during the holidays.

Don’t worry, if you’re in the B2B space that doesn’t mean you can’t join in on the holiday excitement with your audience. To be successful, it just takes a little extra creativity to for B2B brands to come off as authentic.

Here are a few B2B holiday ideas to get your team started: 

Upload a holiday video to your website or social media

Have your employees change their email signatures

Hold a B2B Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale

Make a company calendar that your audience can use

Add products and services to purchases (or provide free trials)

Send personalized cards and gifts to your top clients

Support a local charity or donate to a large organization (ask your audience to as well)

There is no shortage of ways to think BIG in your B2B social media holiday and PR strategy. Use what you’ve learned here today to make the 2019 holiday season your best few months yet.

Whether you’re a B2C or B2B brand, to ensure you’re ready, read our ebook on great social content, with more examples from top brands.

3-Steps to Social Media Holiday Strategy (With Examples)

A tendency to be outspoken can be a great quality in a leader, but even the best leaders slip up. Does that mean an inevitable crisis? Not if you've prepared ahead and built trust between PR and executives. Read on for real-world examples on navigating executive mishaps. For a complete guide to crisis management, read our ebook on using media intelligence to prepare for a crisis—or better yet, avoid it altogether.

When CEOs of corporations make major mistakes or utter unfortunate remarks that harm the organization’s reputation, it’s usually PR that must find a way to fix the situation. Within the past few years, leaders from large companies, including Uber, Papa John’s Pizza, and most recently, Amazon, have all negatively impacted their business through cringe-worthy comments and questionable decisions. All of these situations caused their PR team to mobilize into crisis mode quickly.

Although most PR people may not be dealing with CEOs who are household names, there are plenty of business leaders whose slip-ups can lead to an unexpected issue. But what can a PR professional do to avoid or lessen the fallout? And how do you guide a rogue CEO when it’s time to respond to the crisis?

According to Kim Marshall, a seasoned PR pro and co-founder of S’Well Public Relations, it is important for CEOs to be fully media-trained and ready for anything. Although she was not connected with any of the companies mentioned above, she explained that lessons can be learned when it comes to all crisis situations. She said, “CEOs need to understand that in the business world, anything that’s personal becomes instantly public. And a personal crisis can be incredibly embarrassing. But honesty is always the best policy—because you need to show that you are human.”

She pointed out that frequently, a CEO may want to “hide” a crisis or a bad decision. A true PR pro must convince a CEO that a decision was wrong and he or she must change tactics and their response to the media—quickly. She added, “Don’t hide or wait. It’s important to address the issue immediately. Some of the most common mistakes I’ve have seen CEOs make in terms of public relations are not listening to their PR team, not preparing for an interview, not realizing that nothing is really ‘off the record,’ and not understanding the on-the-ground reality of what their front-of-the-line employees are going through during a crisis.”   

Known for her extensive experience in crisis management, Marshall has dealt with a number of crisis where the CEOs did not handle a situation well. In one instance, she was working at a major resort when a tragedy occurred. “The resort featured a “swim with the dolphin” program, and unfortunately, two of the dolphins suddenly died. The backlash was so huge, even Greenpeace was protesting outside the resort. But instead of dealing with this honestly, the CEO recommended avoiding showing the dolphin area to any journalists—a true impossibility since their lagoon was a focal point of the resort.”

She continued, “If we followed this bad advice, it would have caused the resort’s problems to worsen, but I had to convince them to tell the truth and show that we care about the dolphins and the environment. We then launched an educational program and found the cause of the dolphin deaths was from a toxin from a nearby golf course. After we identified the problem, we were able to clean the area and ensure the other dolphins were healthy.”

Marshall shared another example from years later when she was working with a luxury resort that hosted a group of influencers. She explained, “We held a dinner in the hotel’s restaurant and unfortunately almost everyone had food poisoning the next day. But instead of doing the right thing, taking the blame and showing remorse, the CEO remarked that they probably caught the flu and didn’t apologize. I did everything I could to help the group and wrote an apology letter to each person myself. It was seriously a miracle that nothing bad was written about that experience, but I’m sure those influencers won’t be returning to that resort. If the CEO had responded in a kinder way, those individuals would have felt like we cared about their well-being.”

Marshall believes that CEOs should choose wisely when selecting their public relations directors or agencies, as those are the people who will be guiding them during a crisis. She said, “You definitely don’t want a ‘yes’ person or someone who is inexperienced. A tough, smart PR person can save you from a major crisis or a great embarrassment. A professional PR pro is always prepared for anything—and provides the most valuable advice.”

Don’t wait until hell breaks loose to get your CEO thinking about the public impact of their words and actions.

Preparation: Your CEO is by default a brand spokesperson. Make sure that she or he understands this, and takes it seriously, especially if your executive is on social or interacting with journalists and influencers. 

Trust: Everyone can slip up, but not everyone is prepared to take accountability for it. Sometimes ever. Let your executive know that you’re here to fix messes, and are prepared to take the lead when that happens.

For a complete guide to crisis management, read our ebook on using media intelligence to prepare for a crisis—or better yet, avoid it altogether.

Rogue CEOs: Tips on Building Trust Between PR and Top Executives

In today’s dialogue-driven business environment, it’s critical to learn how to build a strong social community – and that goes for B2B as well as B2C.  If you have experience in B2C community-building, here’s the good news: B2B isn’t all that different.  After all, B’s are just a collection of C’s – the C’s are just consuming B products.

Yes, that sounds a bit like a song I might sing to my toddler.  But building a B2B community really isn’t all that different fundamentally than building a B2C community in terms of the high-level goals and the requirement that one act like a human.  That being said, there are 5 big differences between the B2B and B2C consumer, and understanding them will get your B2B community marketing initiatives off to a good start.

5 Differentiators Between B2C and B2B Community Members

1) Your B2B Community Wants You to Solve a Business Problem

A business consumer is your consumer because whatever it is you’re selling is theoretically something that they need to do their jobs – or do them better.  The #1 thing that you can do for a B2B customer is to help them do their jobs better. This is something to keep in mind when crafting a content marketing strategy.

2) In B2B Community, Industry & Discipline Supercede Company & Brand

Business consumer purchasing habits are largely determined by the industry and discipline in which they work – and that industry or discipline will most likely follow them for quite awhile.  What this means for you, as a B2B brand, is twofold:

1) You can form long-lasting relationships with a person that will follow them even once they leave their current position, and

2) There isn’t a whole lot of brand loyalty here that’s more important than product functionality.  Unlike a B2C world wherein consumers will forgive shoddy performance because they have immense brand loyalty, we revisit differentiator #1 here: these consumers want you to help them do their jobs better.  If your product isn’t up to snuff, they’ll choose a new one regardless as to whether your logo is cute and they used you in their last job.

3) B2B Influencers are Influential within Their Industry

Here’s where B2B marketing is actually easier than B2C: your influencers are pretty darn easy to find.  Typically, a B2B influencer is going to be a seasoned professional in the business industry you target.  What this means is that any decent social media marketing tool will allow you to identify and engage influencers a lot more easily than you might if you were selling ice cream.

The other bonus here is that industry influencers typically consider their thought leadership position to be part of their jobs.  What this means for you is that, if you can figure out a way to engage an influencer with a program that increases that person’s influence and reach, you can create some happy and long-lasting partnerships – and some of those will (per point #2) last after both of you move on to other companies.

4)  B2B Community Members are Generally Polite Online

It’s not that often that you see a B2B customer ranting online about a company.  After all, per point #2, people are likely to stay in the same industry and discipline a lot longer than they are in the same job, and it’s simply not professional to go off on a rant.  The good news here is that you run less risk that you’re going to cause some sort of social media crisis or be called out on social channels for whatever it is that’s annoying people.

But remember: just because people are obeying the “If you can’t say something nice…” rule doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying just as hard to please your B2B customers.  You should be trying harder, because the engagement can last a lot longer.

5) Your B2B Content Marketing Can’t Be All Fun & Games

Yes, pictures of cats are fun.  But B2B consumers have a job to do, and while being entertained is most certainly a nice way to lighten up the workday, real value to business professionals is in content that (per #1) helps them do their jobs better and more easily.  Please don’t take this to mean that engagement in B2B necessitates pedantic, dense educational material; you can still get creative with what might help folks do their jobs better.  Hubspot is expert at creating cool template downloads, for example.

5 B2C vs. B2B Community Marketing Differentiators

It used to be that one of the biggest challenges PR pros faced was faxing a press release to 100 reporters—one at a time. (Yes, some of us remember those days.)

Today, everyone is online 24/7, creating a completely different environment for those of us who communicate for a living. While the Internet has made many facets of our jobs so much easier—like getting those press releases out—it’s also created an entirely new set of challenges.

Here, we take a look at how the digital world has changed some of our challenges as PR pros.

Crisis Communications – No Longer the Luxury of Time to Plan a Course of Action

Gone are the days when you had the time to prepare a statement in the event of a crisis.

John Thompson, founder, and principal of Critical Communications and assistant professor at Southwestern University just north of Austin, has worked with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Intel, Dell and Motorola. He was at ground zero in one of the first Internet-driven scandals, the Pentium processor crisis at Intel in the 1990s.

“In those days, we had hours we could work with in getting back to the media. Today, time is compressed to minutes, and that puts a premium on both truthfulness and reasoning that isn’t necessarily understood,” Thompson says.

A crisis communications plan is imperative for businesses to have prepared in advance. It takes forethought to have a framework in place for communicating in any crisis, be it fake news, an accident or a social media misstep. And, brands often don’t get a second chance to make it right—with social media, judgment by consumers can be swift—and at times, harsh.

Cameron Craig, head of global corporate communications at Polycom who spent ten years on Apple’s PR team and is also a speaker and consultant, cites Zappos as an example of how to handle bad news well. When Zappos announced extensive layoffs, they did something unique. The company put all its internal messaging on its external site.  

“While layoffs are never good news, the way they handled it strengthened their brand over time,” says Craig. “People appreciated their transparency.”

Craig also points out that in the Internet age, it’s tougher to keep secrets—if you can keep them at all.

In his days at Apple, Craig says they’d plan big launch events to unveil new technology. In most instances, the team was able to keep the news a secret until the big unveil.

“Today, when you have products that take a long time to develop, it’s much harder to keep them under wraps,” Craig explains.

In these cases, he suggested it may be better to “embrace the leak.” Yes, some brands will release information internally, expecting that it will leak.

An example Craig cites occurred when Tim Cook of Apple recently shared some news first on the employee intranet. It was then leaked, ending up on TechCrunch and other online publications—but the information was written in a way that seemed as if Apple understood there’d be a leak.

Craig suggests this may be a wiser way to approach situations such as these.

“If you understand that the wall between internal and external communications is coming down, you can communicate differently,” he says.

What About the Ethical Dilemmas PR Pros Face—Do They Differ Today?

When it comes to ethical dilemmas, how have times changed? Not as much as one might think.

“PR people have always dealt with issues of defending controversial positions, or finding a way of delivering a position they disagree with after losing an internal battle,” Thompson says.

Craig adds, “While it’s changed in some ways, it’s still kind of the same. On any given day, reporters are coming to companies asking us for our opinion on politics, scandals and so on. We’ve always had to look at each case and consider the ramifications for our brand.”

“Those issues still exist, but they now take place in a world that is described as ‘post-truth’ or ‘post-fact’ where the social underpinnings of reality appear to be open to debate,” Thompson continued. “That isn’t a PR person’s dream—it’s a nightmare.”

Thompson believes that PR pros have to step up to enforce ethics more than ever before. “Given their unique position in understanding the implications of corporate initiatives and possessing the communication skills that corporations need to win in a fast-changing marketplace where driving transitions are everything, PR pros have an opportunity here.”

The Internet Has Made It Easier to Self-Publish

While the Internet may have created new challenges for the modern-day PR pro, it’s also created its share of advantages. Self-publishing is one both Craig and Thompson cited.

“It’s easier than ever to self-publish through platforms like LinkedIn, Medium and the Huffington Post,” says Craig. “By using them properly, you can reach a pre-existing audience, rather than build one from scratch.”  

Thompson says a lot of enterprises are still working to connect the ability to self-publish with their corporate strategy.

“There’s a tendency among many to devolve the strategy to counting clicks rather than building a position in the marketplace,” he cautions. “If you post pictures of the latest Marvel superheroes, you will likely get clicks. You will not get a position in the marketplace.”

And so, the role of the PR practitioner is evolving.

“Today’s PR pro is responsible for striking the right journalistic tone in the content produced by a firm so that someone truly wants to read a blog or contributed article in an executive’s name and will find something compelling about it beyond a product pitch,” Thompson says.

Sure, the evolution of technology creates new dilemmas—but it also helps us move in valuable new directions.

Ultimately, being a modern PR pro requires learning new lessons—and sometimes it requires unlearning old ones. To keep up on the skills needed, download our ebook, 11 Lessons That PR Professionals Need to Learn in a Digital World.

Challenges of Modern Day PR Pros Versus Those of Decades Past

When you set out to work on a PR campaign, you may be excited to jump right in and produce results. But, strategy is the key to success for any serious initiative—helping drive results as well as set expectations.

A great place to start your research is competitive benchmarking. It not only gives you a great perspective on what’s giong on in your industry, but guides you in uncovering untapped opportunities, differentiating yourself from rivals, and setting ambitious–but realistic—goals.

Why Competitive Benchmarking Is Important in PR

By benchmarking the level and quality of your brand’s media awareness against competitors, you’ll enter a new campaign armed with the information you need to measure effectiveness.

“The desired outcome is to learn which processes lead to greater success in order to improve your company’s performance,” says Sandra Fathi, president of Affect.

By gauging where things stand when you begin, you’ll be able to track success (or failure) as you go. Not only will you be able to report on whether you’ve gained a competitive edge through your efforts, but you’ll be able to keep up with key PR KPIs. Measuring things like spikes in website traffic in conjunction with earned media coverage; or the number of prospects who get in touch because they saw an article about your company; or the growth in social media followers or interactions, you’ll be able to report on the impact your efforts are having.

By setting up a competitor dashboard in your media intelligence platform—where you compare your share of voice, reach, and coverage numbers to your competitors—you can keep an eye on results. Doing so enables you to change course if you need to. Ultimately you’ll draw data from this dashboard to report results.

“Looking to your competitors to learn not only what they’re doing well, but what you might want to avoid, can help guide your next move,” said Lauren Cranston, PR manager for Skyword. “It isn’t enough to track just your own performance—competitive analytics can make or break everything you thought you knew.”

“Benchmarking is important because PR is actually a competitive function—and because all inputs-outputs-outtakes-outcomes are considered in the context of a market,” says Alan Kelly, founder and CEO of Playmaker Systems. 

While much of public relations measurement seems to revolve around the number of press releases written or the number of pitches sent, benchmarking lets you focus on the results you’ve achieved, rather than the effort you’ve made.

“Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the benchmarking process is that it only charts achieved success (earned media coverage), rather than simply listing or summarizing all monthly PR activities—the number of news releases distributed, columns written, interviews conducted or time spent ‘pitching’ stories to the media and following up pitches,” says Len Stein of Hubspot.

“Yes, all of these are gauges of PR activity, but when the rubber hits the road, it’s all about success for the client, rather than the water carried.”

So how do you effectively benchmark a PR campaign? Parameters can be broad or narrow, depending on your goals. You can also include other departments in the effort, to ensure you get as much out of the benchmarking as possible.

Fathi gives this example for using benchmarking to build PR strategy and report on success:

Objectives could include things like: 
Build and maintain Brand X’s position as a thought leader on a given topic.
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With results in hand you can validate what you’re already doing, while looking to see where opportunities lie.

“Don’t be afraid to learn you’re wrong,” Fathi says. “Don’t be afraid to change course.”

Benchmarking can be used to demonstrate ROI when compared to true business metrics. Leverage the findings to gain C-Suite support for your strategy, budget, headcount, and resources.

As Fathi suggests, “Measure what matters to the C-Suite and present the data in a way they’ll understand it.”

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