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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

One common challenge many communication professionals are faced with is knowing how not to be biased. We get it; avoiding bias can be hard when we feel so attached to a plan that we’ve nurtured from the beginning. Although it can be painful to admit and say “this plan just isn’t working”, sometimes that is exactly what is needed in order to move onwards and upwards! A simple online news and social media brand sentiment analysis is a great way to understand our current situation from our audience’s point of view, objectively.

Brand sentiment analysis helps us to gain an understanding of how a person, a brand, a product, or a campaign (amongst other things) is perceived by those we’re trying to target. We can also filter sentiment by trending themes in order to gain a high-level view of exactly what it is our audience likes and doesn’t like. We can then optimise our brand strategy accordingly.

Any good media monitoring tool can provide such insights. Meltwater’s tool offers both social media and editorial brand sentiment analysis and is currently supported by 16 languages including Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, German, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi and Korean.

Sentiment Analysis is a research area examining people’s opinions, attitudes and emotions in written language through the method of Natural Language Processing (NLP). The Oxford Dictionary explains this as:

The process of computationally identifying and categorising opinions expressed in a piece of text, especially in order to determine whether the writer’s attitude towards a particular topic, product, etc. is positive, negative, or neutral.

The importance of brand sentiment analysis

Opinions are central to almost all human activities. They are key influencers of our behaviours. Seeing as marketing, comms and PR activities aim to influence opinions and behaviours, having a clear understanding of how our audience – be is prospects, clients or influencers – feels is important when trying to move the needle.

The growing need for sentiment analysis coincides with the ever-expanding importance of social media presence of brands and companies. This is especially the case since the introduction of social media, with conversations spiking across the social networks rising by the minute.

How do we do Sentiment Analysis at Meltwater?

As a global leader in media intelligence, we pride ourselves on our sentiment analysis capabilities. So how do we go about offering over 26,000 client’s sentiment insights?

The fundamental task in brand sentiment analysis is text classification – classifying the separation of a given text or whether the expressed opinion in a document is positive, negative, or neutral. Around 800 documents pass through our platform per second from different media sources and providers. We use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to judge which group (positive, negative or neutral) the content belongs to.

Meltwater’s Natural Language Processing model is supported by AI and machine learning algorithms. Using this model, we take individual words into account. Each document, for example, a tweet, is analysed based on the words it contains. Then we map the words to a set of predefined data to see the number of occurrences where they match up.

Let’s use the following sentence as a simple example: ‘Tesla is the best car.’

We are applying a classification algorithm to determine the probability of how positive or negative the word is in the context of the wider text. At the end, we pick the value with the largest probability score.

We think that transparency is key and like many other brand sentiment analysis providers will tell you (at least we hope they will), the metric isn’t foolproof. The Natural Language Processing model Meltwater uses isn’t guaranteed to identify limits of human language – for example, sarcasm, irony, context interpretation, use of slang, cultural differences and the different ways in which opinion can be expressed (subjective vs comparative, explicit vs implicit).

With that being said, Meltwater has a huge repository of exploitable data, one of the largest in industry, making us well placed to investigate different ways brand sentiment and tonality can be drawn, and therefore pulling highly accurate insights.

Why we should all be analysing brand sentiment around our campaigns

Most people who run a business or a team in a large company struggle when it comes to setting KPIs–Key Performance Indicators.

Here Are Three Steps for Setting KPIs for Your Team:

1. Ask what the person is responsible for and what you want them to focus on.

Check their position description and adjust if necessary

If they don’t have a position description, write them a good position description

Sum up the main reason why you have that role in your business

Do you have any initiatives for the year to focus on improving or developing key areas of your business? If any of those are relevant to a particular role, include it in your list of 5-7 key areas of responsibility

You should now know what KPIs you want the person to focus on. KPIs are about focus on key–important–outcomes.

2. You can also ask what are the most important of the person’s key responsibilities that will have the greatest impact on the business.

For example, for an Account Manager, it will be client retention and growth; it may specifically be retention of the largest clients in their portfolio

For an Operations Manager, it could be core process improvement to reduce the cost of goods

For a Finance Manager, it is predominantly compliance and protection of the company from risk

For any employee, it may be a responsibility for a special project or initiative that’s relevant to one year in particular and not part of their ongoing responsibilities

A key KPI may also relate to a problem that must be addressed and solved within a certain timeframe, for example, to successfully transition the company from one enterprise management system to a new one without any downtime

Depending on the scope, difficulty and timeframe of the KPIs, and the person’s role, I usually set between 2-5 KPIs at the most.

I always set quantifiable and qualitative measures. KPIs MUST be able to be measured.

If a salesperson misses a KPI to achieve 1M in new business by 100K, that’s a call you will make as to whether they have achieved that KPI or not.

If a salesperson has achieved 1.5M in new business on a KPI of 1M, BUT they are disruptive and have attitude and behavior issues with the rest of the team, they are unlikely to meet qualitative KPIs if you’ve set up the right measures.

Measures for behavior and attitude might include things like <demonstrable collaboration with the rest of the team on XYZ, or, full attendance and contribution on all agenda items at the annual strategic retreat. The tighter the qualitative measures are the better, because it’s usually these issues that, when they arise, cause problems for the whole team and are the hardest to performance manage.

I incorporate the most important KPIs from my direct reports into the company’s overall dashboard as indicators that we track, along with key financial indicators and marketing measures.

It’s a bit circular because knowing what the business needs to achieve and focus on, will translate to key indicators for the team members responsible, which then goes back into the management dashboard for the company overall.

The other great thing about KPIs for your team is that it makes one-on-ones easier as you have timelines and progress of key indicators to track and discuss, and it keeps your team focused on what MUST be done, even if you aren’t there.

As PR and marketing teams focus on their data analytics and delivering KPIs for their campaigns and marketing actions, delving into the right metrics becomes essential. Depending on what team members’ duties, their KPIs will emerge from those actions.To begin assessing the right data, take a look at our infographic for reporting.

This post originally appeared in Jenny Stilwell, was written by Jenny Stilwell from Business2Community, and legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

How-To: Setting KPIs for Your Team and Your Company

Do you know what the people of Madagascar are at risk of?

If your answer is no, unfortunately, you aren’t alone.

In 2019, there were about 40 humanitarian disasters around the world, classified as crises, that affected more than one million people each. Sadly, the world hasn’t heard of very many of them.

CARE is a global humanitarian organisation providing disaster relief to areas in crisis, while providing long-term solutions to poverty around the world.

In partnership with Meltwater, and Meltwater’s deep data and media analytics capabilities, CARE has released their annual “Suffering in Silence” Report that clarifies the humanitarian crises that were least reported in the media.

Suffering in Silence – Which 10 Humanitarian Crises Did Not Make the Headlines?

Suffering in Silence 2019

According to the data, the top 10 crises least reported in the media in 2019 were:

10. Lake Chad Region: Armed conflict, displacement and hunger, nearly 10 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

09. Ethiopia: A vicious cycle of disaster, hunger and displacement, about 7.9 million people suffer from a serious level of malnutrition, particularly pregnant and lactating women, infants and the elderly.

08. Burkina Faso: A silent humanitarian catastrophe, around 5.2 million people – more than a quarter of the population – affected by the escalation of violence in Central Sahel.

07. Kenya: Trapped in the middle of floods and droughts, more than 1.1 million people live without regular access to food.

06. North Korea: Hunger behind locked doors, around 10.9 million people in need of humanitarian assistance to meet their food, health, water, sanitation and hygiene needs.

05. Eritrea: Fleeing drought and repression, half of all children under five stunted as a consequence of malnourishment.

04. Burundi: Instability fuelling a humanitarian crisis, 1.7 million people chronically struggle to feed their families.

03. Zambia: On the front of climate change, an estimated 2.3 million people in the country in urgent need of food assistance.

02. Central African Republic: A brutal conflict in the heart of Africa, about 2.6 million people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

01. Madagascar: Impacted by the human-made climate crisis, over 2.6 million people affected by drought.

Here, we have summarised some of the main features and most important parts of the Suffering in Silence Report:

Number of media reports on the 10 least media-covered humanitarian crises of 2019:

02. Central African Republic: 976 results

In 2019, a total of 2.7 million articles appeared about the football club Arsenal.

Miss Universe was mentioned 93 400 times in the news globally in 2019.

In July alone, 61 500 articles on The Lion King were published.

7 Ways We Can Shed Light on Forgotten Crises:

1. Reporting Counts: The correlation between public perception and funding makes it clear that creating attention certainly helps. Accordingly, a budget for public relations should also be included in the financing of humanitarian aid measures – especially in countries that are not well known.

2. Money alone is not enough: Politicians are asked more than ever today to inform and involve the public – also with the help of digital media.

3. Setting topics: The sole focus on the number of victims or fatalities hides deeper causes and overlooks people who urgently need help. Media attention to forgotten crises helps to change the perception away from numbers towards effects, and from results to causes.

4. Stories of hope: An end to pure pessimism: It is better to emphasise common ground in order to break up the dividing lines that appear even bigger on our screens with stories of encounters between people and respectful interaction.

5. Focus on people and approaches: Humanitarian organisations have a duty to promote the role of local and national actors and to recognise their work. It is crucial to include you as a contact person, provided the security situation allows it.

6. Don’t stay behind with your own opinion:
Every voice counts and makes a difference. Even if only negative headlines are often read in newspapers, on TV and on mobile phone screens. Keep reading new news sources, spreading awareness, having conversations, protesting online and offline, and making an impact. Every single supporter makes a difference.

7. Helping responsibly: Corporate responsibility should not just be a PR or image project, but a duty towards those people who are affected by conflicts and natural disasters. Investments in the humanitarian environment must be well considered, should be based on the triple balance of people, planet, profit and be of long-term benefit to the local population.

Tip: Read our CARE Case Study or learn how the IRC uses Meltwater to keep global attention on humanitarian crises

The 10 Most Under-Reported Humanitarian Crises of 2019

In PR we spend a lot of time talking about how we communicate externally. We’ll discuss PR pitch strategy, media relations best practices, crisis communications and how they relate to our external audience – so much so that we often forget about our internal audience. When PR pros forget their internal marketing strategy and communicating with their workplace, they have inadvertently failed with 50% their job.

Many of us fall into the same trap: we get busy and prioritize the external communications tactics that show our ROI, and we forget about the importance of internal communication, employee engagement and relationships.

It's wise to remember when framed effectively, all internal communication is internal PR - and this has immense value to PR pros.

Those working in the PR department have a very public position within a company, and as such, employees are paying attention to you whether or not you’re paying attention to them. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that the only staff you need to consider is only your boss or CEO. In truth, your internal audience is every employee across the organization, and as with every marketing and public relations job, it’s important to know your audience and have valuable communication with them. 

By paying equal attention to your internal audience you will quickly show your value, become a trusted resource, boost employee engagement all whilst becoming more knowledgeable and better informed within your company. Knowing your company inside and out will, in turn, help you externally.

The best part: it isn’t very hard to master internal PR.

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. – Sam Walton, Wal-Mar

As communication professionals, we often forget that listening is key to having great conversations. In order for our PR programs to be extraordinary, we must become extraordinary listeners within our companies and welcome feedback from the workforce. Always remember the wealth of knowledge held by those around you; if you’re not a curious person, become a curious person. Ask questions, seek input and get to know your co-workers – and not just your executive team. Listen to what they have to say. You’ll learn something, you’ll become better connected, and you’ll find ways to take what you learn and apply it to your own work.

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value. – Louis L’Amour

In PR, sharing should be consistent on two fronts: communicating about upcoming programs/releases and sharing PR successes.

Upcoming programs and releases: Internal communication is vital before and at the time of a press release or campaign. Let people know that the release is going to be made public. This can be as simple as a post on a corporate intranet or an email. A simple message letting co-workers know that “the following press release is going out today” will win you quite a few friends. As you know, everyone hates it when their customers ask about a press release that they know nothing about, a quick share solves that problem in minutes. This can also help you boost employee engagement as staff will likely share the release too.

Sharing PR successes: Most co-workers love to see the press and accolades your company receives and it is your job to share them. This can be tricky at times: most will enjoy seeing great press, but no one wants a barrage of emails every time your company is mentioned.

To keep people informed and cut down on your own email, I recommend a weekly or monthly newsletter with links. This can be as simple as an email from you, or an automated alert set up through your media monitoring tool. With Meltwater, for example, you can set up an internal newsletter that sends automatically: all you need to do is specify how often, who receives it and what articles to include. This is a simple way to optimise internal communication, start by sending these newsletters to all employees and offer the opportunity to opt out. Most will love the info and your department will increase its visibility.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. – Charles Darwin

I believe that the best way for a PR team (in-house or agency) to be successful is to integrate into the workplace as much as possible. PR rarely works well when it operates in a silo. Successful PR requires information, product, experts, other marketing (social media, advertising, etc) and access to information that only comes through successful integration - such as employee feedback. Re-read steps one and two: listening and sharing will help you to better integrate within your company.

In this great future, you can’t forget your past. – Bob Marley 

Even though it’s doubtful Mr. Marley had PR in mind when he wrote this lyric, it fits. Your future success in PR will be much stronger if you learn from your experiences, both good and bad.

About 10 years ago I started working for my first startup. I was hired by the founders and was fortunate enough to learn from their entrepreneurial ways. One day, I remember hearing one of them say, “fail fast and learn.” The concept was simple but also quite insightful, and I quickly realized that he was sharing a piece of his life’s philosophy: try things, don’t be afraid to fail, and if you do fail, recognize it quickly and learn from the experience.

The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. – George Bernard Shaw

Never consider internal PR or communication to be completed: think of it as a cycle that never ends. You listen, share, integrate, learn and repeat; it’s that simple. It may seem overwhelming to think of communication this way, as a project that never ends. But, in truth, if you follow these general steps, internal communications will begin to become a natural part of what you do everyday and you will hardly realize your communicating. This doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges, there will always be challenges; it means you’ll be very good at dealing with them when they arise.

So, there you have it: a few simple steps to mastering internal PR. Not too hard, right? If it seems overwhelming or is stressing you out take a deep breath and listen to another Marley’s classic, Three Little Birds…

Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right. -Bob Marley

5 Simple Steps to Better Internal PR

Gone are the days when consumers fully trust in the marketing content brands release into the world. In fact, research found only 55 percent of consumers considered a company’s marketing materials to be a trusted source of information when making a buying decision. Fortunately, there are other ways you can get your marketing message in front of the right person at the right time AND in the right way. How? Employee brand ambassadors.

While marketing professionals often forget about staff, those who work for a brand can be a powerful marketing channel. Staff are well-positioned to act as the bridge between a company and potential customers while helping to build trust and credibility. With this in mind, it's foolish to overlook staff as brand advocates.

Benefits of an Employee Brand Ambassador Program

Although any company employee will have a perceived bias for their organisation's product or service, internal brand advocates from outside the sales and marketing teams have a sense of authenticity about them. Additionally, the fact that they are willing to endorse a product and personally vouch for a brand validates that brand.

When cultivating internal ambassadors and advocacy on behalf of your brand through a formal employee brand ambassador program, the extra training provided—including ensuring they are kept up-to-date on the latest content and product enhancements—can benefit existing customers as much as prospective clients. The same cues that employees watch for with prospects can help them provide exceptional service to existing customers, including providing them with new tools for software adoption, adding a module to address a customer’s new business focus, or even a hands-on refresher session on your product’s functionality. The more staff know about the resources available to them, the better they can create a personalized and curated experience. This personalization can, in turn, strengthen and increase the longevity of their customers’ brand relationship.

Best Practices for Launching an Employee Brand Ambassador Program

Although employee brand ambassadors can be a successful part of the marketing mix, there needs to be some groundwork to ensure a successful brand ambassador program. Start with doing an employee engagement pulse-check. If your staff are are unmotivated, a brand ambassador program is unlikely to take off. And with only 32 percent of U.S. employees engaged, according to Gallup, (a number that’s been flat since 2000), it’s likely that most companies’ uninspired workforce won’t support a brand advocacy effort.

But, once you’ve identified a core group of engaged employees, a small pilot program with internal brand advocates can likely bring others onboard. Pinpoint the natural leaders, regardless of title, who consistently drive collaboration on their teams. Reach out to them and gather input on what a compelling brand advocacy program would look like, then put their suggestions into action on a small scale. For example, you can start with a weekly email highlighting a few key pieces of content and provide click-to-share links that can quickly populate a message on the social channel of the employee’s choice. The easier you make it for employees to share content and engage with prospects, the more likely it is they will participate. This type of content can also significantly help employer branding initiatives too

Employee Brand Ambassador Pitfalls to Avoid

You have an engaged employee base and an awesome product, so the employee ambassador program is guaranteed to be a raging success, right? That depends entirely on its execution.

I worked with one leader whose point of view around employee advocacy was, “if they (employees) don’t want to share our content, then they shouldn’t work here.” If that’s your point of view around employee brand advocacy, I encourage you to take a step back. Is there significant value in an entry-level customer support employee sharing your bottom of the funnel analyst report in their Facebook stream? Possibly, but it’s more likely that they’re annoying their friends with irrelevant content.

Instead of having an expectation that your workforce is sharing all of your content across their channels, ask them to share the content that most resonates with them. Some may choose to share projects they worked on and are proud of while others may share job listings or the latest blog posts. Allow employees to take on only what feels like a natural fit.

Speaking of good fit, although employee advocacy platforms have the benefit of making it quick and easy for employees to share corporate content, they may also result in a deluge of status update spam. There’s nothing authentic or compelling about a prospect seeing four of your employees posting the same canned message and link in unison across social platforms. Or even worse, a company leader whose “set it and forget it” approach means they’ve shared the identical generic pitch for the annual customer conference every day for a month on their social channels. There’s a fine line between automation being a helper and hurting your brand. Whenever possible, make it easy for employees to customize their social messaging when sharing content, so you don’t fall into this trap.

And last, but not least, make sure there’s something in it for the employees for participating, above-and-beyond corporate profits. Award the most active employee champions of your brand with a symbolic award or even, an invitation to your annual President’s Club. Use a leaderboard to make each employee’s contribution transparent and encourage friendly competition. In these small ways, you can integrate brand ambassadorship into the company culture, and increase its effectiveness.

For a head start in getting your employee ambassador program up and running, download Meltwater’s employee social media playbook template.

Build an Employee Brand Ambassador Program

Over 15 000 social media mentions on ‘#adidasxIVYPARK’ globally, resulting ina social reach of 146 Million people on 18 January 2020. That is just a quick glance at the impact that American artist, Beyonce, had when she launched her IVY PARK collection in collaboration with Adidas. Already, her name is a brand that easily sends her fanbase, affectionately known as the ‘Beyhive’, buzzing at the slightest peeks into her life. But with the launch of the much anticipated collaboration with Adidas, Beyonce’s marketing strategy extended far beyond just using herself as the face of the collection. 

Number of Social Reach vs Social Volume, Globally, on #adidasxIVYPARK [caption for the above image]

With the use of high-profile influencers and creating content that her fans continually engaged with, Beyonce relaunched her IVY PARK athleisure wear. It sold out in a matter of minutes. It trended on the day – all because her marketing strategy was designed in such a way that ensured this success. So, what can you learn from the Queen Bey? Let’s explore more.

Using the Right Influencers for Your Brand

As an industry that is set to reach $10 billion by 2020, influencer marketing is highly lucrative for any brand and business. While some fans would have wanted Beyonce to send press drops of her collection to loyal members of the ‘Beyhive’, there was a reason why celebrities and macro-influencers were used predominately for this campaign.

For one, celebrities and macro-influencers have a much higher follower – from 500 000 followers upwards – which increases the exposure that a brand receives when working with influencers like this. For a global launch like ‘#adidasxIVYPARK’, it makes sense to use some of the biggest influencers to not only create global exposure, but target their market in a way that was cost effective and would have a higher return on investment. From the Generation Z appeal that Zendaya has to Reese Witherspoon, who represents the modern working mother, reaching wider buyer personas through influencer marketing was made possible for this campaign, resulting in the collection selling out in minutes.

If you look at the Instagram post from Ellen DeGeneres below, her post received over 2 million views and over 260 000 likes – all of which are potential buyers. By using influencer marketing in this way, your chances of reaching a wider audience are greater.

Thank you, @Beyoncé. I love my big orange box. Your new clothes are really cool too. @WeAreIvyPark @adidas

Second, one of the social media trends on the rise in 2020 is the use of vertical video platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram Stories. More online users are consuming video content, and when it comes to vertical videos, the more followers the user has, the bigger the success in views and engagement. This proved to be true for the celebrities and macro-influencers used for this campaign.

From the Live video that Laverne Cox shared as she tried on clothing items, to the IGTV videos from Yara Shahidi, the combination of using vertical videos and top influencers resulted in an increased awareness on the upcoming collection, the brand trust being built throughout the campaign, and ultimately turning these viewers into buyers.

What can you take away from this? That no matter the size of your business, you can utilize the power of influencer marketing. Global fashion brand, Zara, localised their #DearSouthAfrica campaign by using about 60 South African micro-influencers to achieve their own success. If you know how to find the right influencers for your specific brand, you can achieve the same success.

Marketers know that with any campaign, you need to have a hashtag. They’re important for cutting through all the other digital noise that arises but also helps finding posts easier, particularly on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. This makes standing out of a digitally noisy crowd easier, which is exactly what Beyonce did. 

Trending Themes on #adidasxIVYPARK in South Africa [caption refers to the above image]

If you wanted to look for all the content that was coming up for the launch, but only typed the word ‘Beyonce’ in the search bar on Twitter, a variety of posts would come up, and you would have to scroll through it all to find anything ‘Adidas’ related. But because there was the branded ‘#adidasxIVYPARK’ hashtag, this categorised the content specifically to the clothing collection, creating a user experience where people interested only on the collection had an easy way of finding content for it. Hashtags like this also allowed for a community of people to come together and join the conversations on the hashtag, which then creates an engaged community.

BEYONCÉ LEGION on Twitter: "❤️🧡 #BeyHive! Reply to this tweet with your adidas x IVY PARK pics 🧡❤️

#adidasxIVYPARK… "

From a business point of view, using a branded hashtag increases your social media presence by making your content accessible to those interested in your brand. As social media users use hashtags to engage with each other, brands can do the same. If, for example, you use a media monitoring tool to help you discover trending topics, like #adidasxIVYPARK, you’ll participate in high-traffic conversations that lead to more brand visibility. And the more brand visibility you have, the larger the audience you reach which can then generate more leads for you.

Everyday, millions of content marketing pieces are being created. With that, the question becomes: how do you stand out? The answer? By ensuring that the content you create is valuable, relevant and connects with your audience. 

For Beyonce, the content marketing for her #adidasxIVYPARK collection already began in December 2019 for an interview with ELLE magazine. Not only did Beyonce wear clothing from the collection, but she answered questions that were asked by her fans, allowing her to connect with her audience while providing valuable and relevant content for her collection.

But, there’s more to her content marketing strategy:

If there is one sure way to grab the attention of an online user scrolling through Instagram, it’s  by using great visuals. Because people process visuals faster than text, our attention is drawn more to better looking imagery. 

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