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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

I’ve done a lot of volunteer nonprofit work in my private life, and I’ve worked with several 501(c)(3)’s in my professional life too.  In the past couple years, there have been a lot of articles on the way that big nonprofits have made a big impact on social media, and rightly so: the HRC’s amazing equality avatar campaign and the ALS’s famous Ice Bucket Challenge have been two charity initiatives that demonstrated the awesome power that social media, as a channel, has to exponentially increase awareness for a cause.

Those campaigns were hugely successful, to be sure… but both of these organizations have resources far beyond the usual 501(c)(3).  However, that doesn’t mean that the lessons from their campaigns can’t be utilized for the little guys.  And so, without further ado:

4 Big Tips for the Little Guys: Nonprofit Social Marketing Made Easier

A picture is worth 1,000 words… and a lot more clicks and engagement on social channels than text.  Both the HRC and the ALS counted on image-driven status updates to drive awareness of their campaigns, and it paid off big-time for both organizations.  One channel that’s sorely underused by nonprofits is Pinterest: if you don’t have a Pinterest profile and you’re an NPO, you’re missing out on your target donation and volunteer demographic: women.  Pinterest actually has data that tells us which topics resonate on which days (scroll to the last piece of this social media infographic to see them). So this is definitely a channel worth exploring.

If you’re having trouble coming up with enough visual assets for your nonprofit social marketing efforts, perhaps #2 can help…

2) Use Your Armchair Activists as Content Marketers

One of the little-known facts about nonprofit work is this: it’s not necessarily that we lack volunteer power, but rather that we aren’t sure how to best utilize the folks volunteering.  In the age of social media marketing, though, even the most agoraphobic volunteer can be of use when it comes to your nonprofit social marketing, most especially your efforts on Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook, for example, rewards a brand’s engagement: its algorithm now looks to a Page’s most active followers to let them know whether or not a post is worth bumping up to the top (which is called “story bumping” – for more on this, check out our e-book on Facebook Reach).  If your usual suspects don’t engage with a post, your Reach is severely limited.

Remember, social networks themselves are after engagement: this is what helps them sell ad space.  Coordinating our efforts so that folks are all sharing at once lets the algorithms behind Facebook and Twitter understand that something is popular, and that will help it rise to the top of an activity stream.

That being the case, one great way to utilize volunteers is to coordinate them when something we post is meant to be shared to a larger audience.  By coming up with a simple content marketing plan for them – something as simple as an email list that gives them the link to the content we want shared, the messaging behind it, and when we want them to do it can work – you’ll stand a better chance of maximizing your exposure.

Another way to use volunteers is in the sourcing and creation of imagery, video and blog posts.  Creative projects can be fun for the folks that have an interest there, and we can also run contests to produce the best avatar, video or campaign slogan. One trick that always works in animal rescue, for example, is “cute dog” calendar contests.  These sorts of programs can garner us a lot of marketing material at no cost, while simultaneously keeping volunteers (and possibly their social networks, as in the “cute dog” contests) engaged.

Social media is a powerful channel for one reason: the social network.  The personal networks of our supporters give us the chance to make an impression on an audience that we may not otherwise engage, and the social share is what gets us there, (for more on this, check out this article on brand advocacy and earned social media).  When I logged into Facebook during the Prop 8/DOMA trials and noticed that a bunch of my friends had changed their profile pics to a red and pink equal sign, I was confused… and it got my attention.  Once I realized what the HRC had done, I too changed my profile pic… and watched as a bunch of my own friends changed theirs, too.

The Ice Bucket Challenge was another great and more active example of chain letter mentality: people were asked to challenge 3 friends to join them.  Making that sort of “pass it on” an active and easily-executed request is a fantastic way to take advantage of the inherent power of your supporters’ social networks.  Give them a good reason to spread the word: people feel good about themselves when they take an action for charity, even when it’s something as simple as an avatar change or a share on your friend’s wall.

4) Find and Engage Like-Minded Peers, Supporters & Partners

One of the awesome things about cause marketing, when you’re trying to expand your community, is that people typically are supporting a cause first and an organization second – and so you’re already part of a larger community.  That being the case, we nonprofit social marketers can find really valuable partners, influencers and supporters on Twitter and Facebook.  Facebook Graph Search is a fantastic way to find people: a search like “People who like HRC and live in Omaha” can give us a list of folks who we might, at the local level, want to meaningfully engage at a 1:1 level.  We can also use Facebook Interest Lists to get new followers, find engaging topics, and engage Fans (for more on this, check out this article on how to use Facebook interest lists).  Lastly, we can check out who’s following other orgs who tackle your cause on Twitter by checking out follower and interest lists.

4 Tips for Nonprofit Social Marketing: Small Budgets, Big Impact

Now that thought leaders are publishing long-form content to third-party platforms like LinkedIn and Medium; we wondered what LinkedIn influence looks like. We found that opportunities abounded for PR pros looking to build their network, their professional profile, or nurture thought leadership opportunities for the C-Suite. Read on for more information about how LinkedIn's features can help build influence.

LinkedIn has a reputation as a digital Rolodex, a.k.a. the place where you connect with coworkers or industry colleagues. If you were on the platform a decade ago, you might have faced the embarrassment of inadvertently spamming all your email contacts. But those days are over.

In 2014, LinkedIn opened its publisher platform to encourage members, thought leaders, and innovators to share opinions on work in a centralized location.

Over the past 4 years (with help from Microsoft’s 2016 purchase of the platform) LinkedIn has transformed itself into a social network for those looking to further establish their professional identity as they change careers or increase their business prospects.

So has a fresh coat of paint and a few tweaks made LinkedIn a platform for building influence?

In 2015, LinkedIn sat idle at 364 million users. In October 2017, that number swelled to 467 million. This jump in users can be attributed to feature updates that have attracted business leaders to the platform. And where business leaders gather, other business leaders will follow, as will those looking to do business with or work with them (i.e. most working professionals).

Beyond better user experience, what else is new?

Instant Conversations, a Facebook Messenger clone

LinkedIn Learning to improve your skills or learn new ones via online training

Easy long-form publishing via the LinkedIn Publishing Platform

Invite-only LinkedIn Influencer designation (badge)

Stats of shared posts and article views/comments/likes

Different functionality for Premium Subscriptions (i.e. for job seekers, sales, and talent professionals), including a LinkedIn stats dashboard

If you spend time on LinkedIn, you may have noticed the LinkedIn Influencer program badges on certain profiles. It’s an invite-only program and is “… a global collective of 500+ of the world’s foremost thinkers, leaders, and innovators.”

Users will immediately see your badge (see Oprah’s below) when looking at your profile and your content is recommended to the wider LinkedIn community.

Even if you can’t score an invite for an official Influencer badge, you can still build your influence (and visibility) on the platform.

To establish Linkedin influence, you’ll want to make sure you have a complete profile. This includes having an up-to-date and professional looking photograph and at least one, though you really should have many more, professional connection. Next, create a custom URL, so that people can easily get to your profile.

After you’ve finished with your profile, consider writing a few recommendations for colleagues. And, if you’ve had positive working relationships, ask those connections for professional recommendations. If you don’t have time to write recommendations, make sure to give props to connections on their skill sets.

From there, it’s time to use the LinkedIn publishing platform to publish long-form content. Hopefully, your content will spur others to engage via comments, liking, or sharing your post on their stream. Since the LinkedIn community is geared towards a business community, remember to publish content that has an informed opinion relevant to strategy or business goals.

LinkedIn has one major advantage over other platforms – quality. Throughout the platform, you can find thought-provoking content from Influencers on how he transformed his company’s culture, Richard Branson, on his many ventures, and Caterina Fake, on why she is now starting a venture capital fund.

They know that publishing on LinkedIn can help influence by:

Positioning you as a thought leader on specific topics, in a particular industry

Growing your network as others engage with your content and increase your reach

Expanding the visibility of other content you or your organization has previously produced through cross-linking posts

Showcasing your ability to write thoughtfully about your industry, your work, or other relevant topics

PR Takeaways: The Right Business Platform Right Now

LinkedIn is now the place where thought leaders have intelligent conversations with other thought leaders, and since it’s public, the rest of LinkedIn can listen in and engage in the exchange. This capability makes it an effective PR tool for building C-Suite thought leadership, as well as a channel to increase your professional network and industry influence.

Since commenting or liking a post is shared on your stream, as well as the original poster’s, comments and likes you post are seen beyond your connections with a larger LinkedIn community.

Your participation in LinkedIn Groups, via posting blog or other brand content, as well as commenting and liking posts can also increase visibility for both you and your brand.

The ultimate takeaway is that LinkedIn can help you build industry influence with influential people in your field or industry. Jim Rohn once said, “we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.”

Spend time on LinkedIn and you’re in good company.

The Ins-And-Outs of LinkedIn Influence

Did you know that 90% of the world’s internet data was generated in the last two years alone? This data brings about access to more business-critical insights than ever before, but it has also made the landscape increasingly difficult for professionals to navigate. We particularly see this in the case of marketing professionals who rely heavily on digital tools/ channels and the data they produce.

According to a study by Hubspot, the marketing function alone use on average 12 different tools. Collecting disparate data from each tool can be a time consuming and confusing task. In light of this, it brings little surprise that the same study found that 61% of marketers also want both better integration and improved processes for sharing data amongst tools. Many companies are addressing this challenge by building dedicated Brand Command Centres.

Brand Command Centres are real-time visual dashboards that capture data from different sources (internal and third-party) and present insights in one cohesive format. APIs are often used to feed scattered data from multiple tools into one centralised place, giving businesses a complete 360 view of their company.

The aim of a Brand Command Centre is to aid employees with visually monitoring their performance and customer engagement activity. Brand Command Centres offer marketing departments a central place to see progress on metrics important to them and serve as the beating heart of a brand.

Since Brand Command Centres are fully customizable, you can change the focus of the dashboards depending on the different needs of the stakeholders who are viewing it. You can even have a dashboard per KPI if you wish. For example, if your goal is increasing brand awareness, you can present data from website traffic, social media, third-party referral links, PR, CRM and more for a more holistic view.

When a brand is present and responsive, it has enhanced opportunities to build customer relationships and brand loyalty through smarter decision making. However, in today’s always-on environment, brands need to be there with their audiences 24/7, listening and identifying opportunities to engage. Marketing teams are finding it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff due to the sheer amount of data being captured. This is when the role of Brand Command Centres become crucial.

Let’s walk through a few challenges that Brand Command Centres help combat.

Data should empower us, not paralyse us, yet we’re seeing an epidemic of “data fatigue” sweeping through many marketing departments. Teams are overwhelmed by the volume and pace of insights streaming in from numerous platforms that capture different customer touchpoints.

Brand Command Centres combine the variety of data platforms used in marketing with those of customer experience, sales, finance, and the c-suite. This gives teams the ability to view the full brand picture in an easy to understand format.

While Brand Command Centres are primarily used by the marketing function, insights can, and should, be used across all business units. After all, measuring and responding to the customer journey is vital for overall business success.

Brand Command Centres facilitate cross-department visibility, as a result, they break down siloed working and prevent each business unit from marching to their own tune. This supports all departments when it comes to aligning, collaborating and working towards a common goal since they’re all using the same insights to guide them to the prize.

If you talk to people outside of marketing, some still believe that this is a ‘fluffy’ function. Yes, marketing teams hold the keys to the merchandise cupboard, but they do a lot more than order give-aways.

Since Brand Command Centres make business-critical marketing insights available to all departments, marketing becomes ingrained into the day to day running of an organisation. This helps marketing become an invaluable asset across the company and the perception of the department becomes more favourable as a result.

Brand Command Centres act as a single source of truth for organisations, meaning they’re the go-to source of anything and everything to do with the customer. However, this can only be the case when a single version of the truth is apparent. By single version of the truth, I’m referring to the view that everyone in the organisation agrees that data from one singular tool provider is the real and trusted figure. For example, having one global media intelligence provider, rather than many, in order to obtain a holistic view.

Comparing apples with apples is impossible when companies use multiple tools that do the same thing. Each tool provider tracks things differently due to where, when and how data is collected. One common example of this is marketing metrics. Different tools may say they collect KPI data on the same metrics, but in reality, only the name of the metric is similar. This makes regional benchmarking extremely difficult for CMOs.

Since Brand Command Centres run off data provided by one tool (for example one CRM system, one marketing automation platform, one media intelligence tool), teams can guarantee that the data they measure performance on is aligned across the organisation and comparing apples with apples becomes a lot easier.

Following on from my point above, when there’s no single source of truth in place, teams across the organisations can’t fully trust the numbers they’re presenting. Inconsistent and contradictory data is a sure way to erode trust. Brand Command Centres facilitate trust in data as they offer one unified source of information across the whole organisation.

How leading companies are using Brand Command Centres?

Similarly to how Brand Centres unite tools, they also unite different focus areas within the marketing function. Whether you’re in charge of managing brand reputation, generating leads, content creation or digital advertising, Brand Command Centres allow you to have different screens presenting insights on each focus area.

Here are a few ways companies are using Brand Command Centres to achieve their goals.

Protecting a brand’s reputation is a major task owned by the marketing department and Brand Command Centres act as their right hand in doing so. By analysing peaks and troughs in brand mention sentiment, as well as shifts in brand-related trends, teams can quickly get to grips with issues and prevent them from turning into a crisis.

Twitter is the modern world’s favourite channel for complaints, so it is important brands stay on top of the conversations. Marketing departments often have specialised customer service dashboards set up to monitor social media activity and make their customer services move from reactive to proactive. This Brand Command Centre dashboard aims to improve personalised communications. And it’s not all bad, you can also identify influential customers and brand advocates messaging you positive things too. You can even spot sales opportunities by tracking and analysing intent to purchase keywords such as phrases like “I’m looking for xxx” or “I need to find an alternative to xxx”.

A competitor’s crisis can easily take your brand down with it. To prevent this from happening, it’s best practice to analyse editorial and social media conversations sounding your competitive landscape as much as you do your own brand mentions. You may also uncover opportunities (as well as threats) by doing so, for example, if you spot a surge in your competitor’s customers positively discussing a particular technology, your R&D team can use insights when developing their roadmaps.

Marketing functions are using Brand Command Centres to make staff, investors, partners and other stakeholders aware of the brand’s digital influence. One of the ways they do this is by leveraging data from media intelligence tools and then presenting interesting discussions they’re generating in editorial news and social media. 

This type of Brand Command Centre screen is usually placed in the company’s foyer so employees and visitors can quickly grasp a high-level overview of the brand’s digital influence as soon as they enter the building. Due to the audience, the format of this dashboard is low in complexity, since the aim is to wow guests with exciting media coverage rather than use the dashboards for granular insights to optimise strategies.

Making engagement visual and interactive helps the marketing function to easily drill down into what their audience like and dislike. Such insights are found using the ‘trending themes’ widget that most quality media intelligence providers supply. Teams can then weak their messaging and optimise their strategies based on trend insights. Those who are quick to jump on trends are naturally seen as leaders in their fields, so this form of content creation has a really positive impact on brand reputation.

In order to improve and optimise, marketing teams must first understand where they currently are, how they’ve moved the needle, and the ROI of their output. Brand Command Centres allow marketing teams to understand KPI progress in real-time, using a variety of tools to track relevant brand metrics.

If your company doesn’t currently have a command centre, Meltwater Active Display is a solution for big data integration and visualisation to consider. Professionals around the world use Meltwater Active Display as a single source of truth, making sense of internal and external data. Meltwater Active Display integrates content and data from Meltwater, Sysomos, Salesforce, Zendesk, and a variety of web analytics sources to provide a complete view of your brand and business.

Alternatively, if you currently have a Brand Command Centre but haven’t connected your media intelligence data to it, we also provide an API that allows you to blend Meltwater insights with your other data sets.

Interested in learning more about bringing together and visualising your marketing data? Contact us in the form below!

The What, Why & How of Brand Command Centres

Earned media is getting more attention these days, as trust in paid ads continues to decline. While a brand talking about itself in an ad may not win the trust of buyers, an editorial piece that appears in a reputable publication can add major credibility.

However, when brands do score that media hit, it’s no longer enough that the story appeared. PR pros face a new challenge. Now, they must work to ensure that it’s seen by the right audiences.

So, what can PR pros do to extend the reach of that earned media win, making sure to maximize the benefits it brings to the brand?

In the past, those in public relations tried to distance themselves from advertising. Now, they’re beginning to see it differently. Some are turning to paid social media to help earned media have more of an impact.

“It’s about making sure the press coverage you’ve already earned works harder for you,” says Steve Rubel, chief content strategist at Edelman.

Why is paid social an effective way to boost earned media?

Even before buying a product, consumers often follow a brand on social networks. This gives brands a chance to reach those consumers using paid social media ads. And while following isn’t everything, 62 percent of those surveyed by Sprout Social said they’re either “likely or somewhat likely” to buy from a brand they follow online. It stands to reason that using ads to reach these audiences can only help persuade them to buy.

Paid social media boosts trusted third-party content to those that benefit from the information,” says Abel Communications. “For example, a great hit in the Wall Street Journal for a B2B brand should be repurposed on LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform and amplified through a sponsored update.”

And how much can paid social media ads benefit your earned media hit? “By supplementing our highest priority content with paid dollars, we see organic and earned reach increase by 10 – 20x,” says Melissa Wisehart, managing director of digital strategy at Moore Communications Group.

Want to try incorporating paid social into your earned media strategy?

1) Be selective: As with promotion of blog posts and other content, be selective when choosing which earned media to promote with a paid social ad. Chad Pollitt, co-founder of Relevance, believes social media isn’t a good channel to promote all your content. Instead, he recommends promoting only those pieces that have already attracted higher levels of engagement.

 2) Be sure to tie the paid social effort to a goal: For example, if you want to increase sales, you can target specific groups or industries with your ads. Then, you can see if that results in new business leads.

Larry Kim of WordStream regularly uses this approach to earn widespread news media coverage for his content. On his blog, Kim cites an example of using paid Twitter ads targeted to a tailored audience which led to him to an opportunity to appear on Fox News. That then led to coverage in high-profile publications. Kim says Twitter’s tailored audiences and Facebook’s custom audiences open up new doors for brands to reach untapped customers or influencers.

 3) Choose the right network: When selecting which social media platform to use, consider your demographics. Facebook ranks at the top of the list for all age groups, from millennials to Baby Boomers, with Snapchat and Instagram coming in second and third.

 4) Don’t expect it to break the bank: Advertising on social media needn’t be expensive. According to Pier Communications, “Facebook’s Boosted Posts (which you can also set to run on Instagram) and LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content are the fastest and most affordable ways to drive traffic back to your website or a recent article.“For Facebook or Twitter, start with a small test of $100-250 to promote a great hit,” suggests Abel Communications. “With an average cost per click of $0.27 on Facebook, that’s almost 1,000 more views on your story.”

Amplifying an earned media hit with a paid social media ad can spell success for brands. Experiment by starting with a small budget to see what makes the biggest impact on your audience and works for your clients. If you’re ready to get started download our ebook to learn how to grow your social media program into a full-fledged business.

How to Use Paid Social Media Ads to Boost Earned Media

From sourcing new investments to due diligence and far beyond, more and more investment firms are leveraging Outside Insight from AI and computer-based aids to help them make better, faster, more informed decisions.

New categories of technology are popping up around every major industry to support data-driven decision-making. Startups from AlphaSense and Kensho, to StartupYard’s Decissio, are specifically helping investors leverage AI to sift through the massive amount of data available, sort out which information is most relevant and therefore make better investment decisions.

But it’s not just startups. Silicon Valley VC bigwigs and hungry new entrants alike are increasingly relying on smart algorithms to help their humans make the best investment decisions.

In a recent interview with McKinsey Quarterly, Veronica Wu, managing partner at Hone Capital, described how her firm has developed a data-driven approach to analyzing potential seed deals, through a partnership with Silicon Valley platform AngelList.

A foreign firm based in Beijing, Hone was looking to access the top deals and build a network of trust – an important step for any new entrants to the SV market. They partnered with AngelList, stating, “We saw the huge potential of the data that AngelList had. There’s not a lot of visibility into early seed deals, and it’s difficult to get information about them. I saw it as a gold mine of data that we could dig into.”

They created a machine-learning model based on a database of over 30,000 deals from the last decade, drawing from sources like Crunchbase, Mattermark and PitchBook. For each deal they looked at whether a team made it to a series-A round, and explored 400 characteristics, from investors’ historical conversion rates, to total money raised, the founding team’s background, and the syndicate lead’s area of expertise, finally landing on a list of 20 that they consider most predictive of future success.

Some insights Hone uncovered (via McKinsey):

Startups that failed to advance to series A had an average seed investment of $0.5 million Average investment for start-ups that did advance to series A was $1.5 million A deal with two founders from different universities is twice as likely to succeed as one with founders from the same university; diverse perspectives are a strength About 16% of all seed-stage companies backed by VCs went on to raise series-A funding within 15 months.

Due to the progress her firm has been able to make as newcomers to Silicon Valley in such a short period of time, Wu believes there will be a shift in the way the space operates in the future.

In the venture-capital world, success has historically been driven by a relatively small group of individuals who have access to the best deals. However, we’re betting on a paradigm shift in venture capital where new platforms provide greater access to deal flow, and investment decision making is driven by integrating human insight with machine-learning-based models.

AI lends the assist in major investment decisions

In 2014, Hong Kong life science venture firm Deep Knowledge Ventures appointed an AI system called VITAL to its board of investors, giving it a vote in every investment decision to be made. As the company is focused on age-related disease drugs and regenerative medicine projects, VITAL makes its decisions by scanning prospective companies’ financing, clinical trials, intellectual property and previous funding rounds.

Deep Knowledge Ventures made waves three years ago as one of the first to employ a machine on staff, but this is quickly becoming the new norm.

Akkadian Ventures’ data-driven diligence software tracks 14,000 companies that fit their investment criteria – more than $20 million in revenue and growing between 75% and 100% per year – to understand the development of the hottest Silicon Valley startups and determine which companies to pre-approve for investment. Today it has more than $100M under management.

Swedish firm EQT Ventures is famous for its invention, Motherbrain, which Andreas Thorstenssons claimed would ‘disrupt the traditional venture capital industry’ using software. EQT Ventures has € 566 million ($ 630 million) in commitments, leveraging data in the form of “Motherbrain which proactively sources investment opportunities, and Together, a matchmaking tool for angels and early-stage startups.”

According to the team, “EQT Ventures is designed to be the VC we would have wanted when on our own startup journeys.” Sourcing data from a multitude of sources, EQT Ventures and Motherbrain are leading the charge in computer-aided investment decisions with their “hybrid startup and VC firm” approach.

Arguably one of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors, Steve Jurvetson of DFJ argues that the benefits of machine learning software will extend far beyond investing, into every industry imaginable. “I think the application of iterative algorithms to build complex systems is the most powerful advance in engineering since the Scientific Method. Machine learning allows us to build software solutions that exceed human understanding, and shows us how AI can innervate every industry.”

While it’s not likely to replace human intelligence anytime soon, we should take notes on the increased VC focus on AI and data science-driven startups, diligence methods and investment strategies.

The Growing Focus on AI in Venture Capital

The airline industry is infamous for difficulties in maintaining profit margins amid a number of internal and external factors that consistently threaten to throw them off balance. From rising competition and consumer demands, to labor deficits and union strikes, to fluctuations in fuel prices, airline decision-makers need to constantly adjust their strategies and find new ways to cut costs and increase revenue in order to remain above ground.

Large carriers and low-budget airlines alike are facing mounting struggles globally to maintain profit margins while facing a number of external factors that are causing disruption.

According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, airline travel in the US has increased 15% from 2007 to 2017, while flight prices are seeing all-time lows. Worldwide, air traffic has nearly doubled since 2007.

While demand has increased, so have profits for major airlines, predicted to sit around $33.8B in 2018. However, this hasn’t come easy and has led to some significant changes in customer experience.

Looking out at some of the external factors impacting airlines emphasizes the need for leaders at the top to remain acutely aware of any changes that might impact their business, in real time.

As the demand for labor in the airline industry continues to rise, workers are in turn demanding higher salaries and more benefits. From budget carriers like RyanAir to Air France and United, firms are facing labor union strikes, increasing wage pressure across the board.

According to Reuters, labor costs surpassed fuel as global airlines’ biggest single expense in 2016, at 22 percent of costs against just under 21 percent for fuel. “That is expected to jump this year to 30.9 percent versus 20.5 percent for fuel.”

“As airlines have been making profit, the workforce has got market power, so that is pushing up the cost of labor,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said in an interview. IATA forecasts that unit cost, or the measure of how much it costs an airline to operate each kilometer and seat flown, will rise 4.3 percent this year versus 1.7 percent in 2017.

Airports are currently facing demonstrations from workers globally – affecting those that operate an estimated 36% of world travel, from Sydney, to France, Germany, Brazil and the US. According to a press release from SEIU, airline industries continue to gain profits off of low worker wages as they subcontract out to ‘low-bid, irresponsible contractors” amid aggressive cost-cutting.

“The global airline industry is leading a race to the bottom that’s hurting communities across the globe,” says Stephen Cotton, General Secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation. “Airline companies keep coming up with new ways to drive down wages, cut benefits, and increase workloads. But the world’s airport workers will be at every corner to fight these injustices. Our movement to win fair pay and union rights is catching on and spreading all over the world.”

While the existing labor force continues to demand a higher salary, many airlines are struggling to find talent at all, particularly when it comes to commercial pilots. The ‘desperate’ shortage has caused a significant disruption in the form of route cancellations, including the all-out pilot boycott Ryanair experienced earlier this year, causing the carrier to cancel 1 in 6 flights globally during peak holiday season.

This is due in part to changing requirements that have deterred young people from undergoing necessary training to become a pilot, and a general decline in interest for the career path. Due to the shortage, pilots also face demanding schedules and less flexibility.

As a result, salaries are spiking, and benefits offered to new pilots have increased dramatically. Business Insider cites an increase at budget airline GoJet from an entry salary of $20,504 in 2014 to $61,512 in 2018, inclusive of a sign-on bonus.

Further impact: More cancellations means less available flights particularly in smaller communities and regional airports, as smaller airlines tend to be disproportionately affected by understaffing. As a result, passengers need to either cancel travel plans entirely or find farther, less convenient options.

Wages aren’t the only factor cutting into airline profits. We’re facing a slump in crude oil prices globally, hovering at around $50/barrel. While the US puts pressure on Saudi Arabia to bring prices down, the producer is pumping out record volumes of crude.

Low oil prices of course mean lower costs for airlines. But at any minute this can change. Those that hedge on jet fuel – like European carriers – will find the impact of higher fuel prices coming through later than those who haven’t.

Robust global economies, along with a dip in oil prices, have contributed to greater demand for consumer travel, and with it, more airlines offering more routes and more options for the discerning traveler. However, as competition increases, airlines are forced to consider tradeoffs between sacrifices in customer experience, flight prices and other cost-saving efforts vs the potential of losing customers to other carriers.

As well, more flights that take off and airlines that operate out of global hubs means greater competition over space at these airports. Airports are already facing crowding, and greater demand means they can charge higher prices for a spot at one of their gates. However, more flights and passengers can also mean more delays if operational efficiencies aren’t increased accordingly, which cut into airline profits.

Competition comes also in the form of data-driven technology that is threatening to undermine the age-old infrastructure airlines continue to operate on. Google can more quickly offer real-time information and is working to use AI to predict flight delays before they’re announced. As well, Uber’s deep understanding of the connection between consumer and transport positions the brand perfectly to step in with a better customer experience and take over traditional airline sales channels.

What makes tech companies an even more significant threat is that they’re not tied to a single airline, potentially forcing more fair and streamlined pricing and expectations for consumers across the board if a brand hopes to remain in the competition.

Beyond these factors, elements like climate disasters fueled by rising climate change, political unrest and disputes among nations, and mechanical maintenance or update costs all contribute as forces that impact an airline’s ability to increase profits. Further internal issues like organizational silos and lack of collaboration or feedback loops also inhibit these massive organizations from reaching their goals.

According to a study by BCG, the PMOP – or, profit-maximizing operational performance – approach can help airlines improve profitability by taking an integrated and analytical perspective and evaluating all potential tradeoffs.

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