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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

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool for aesthetically focused lifestyle, retail and travel brands in particular – as well as marketers who want to reach engaged audiences through the power of visual media.

Driven by connected consumers and a growing trust in technology, 58% of Millennials say they prefer ads from their favorite online personality over generic, branded content – so, whether or not influencer marketing appeals to you, there’s certainly merit to exploring the idea for many businesses. 

The idea of harnessing influence as a currency isn’t new, but in the same breath, a lot of marketers don’t intricately understand how it all works. In fact, both influencers and brand-owners alike take a myopic view to decide what influence actually looks like. Until now, it’s been determined by a handful of key metrics that show perceived interest and engagement: followers, likes, comments, shares, increased online traffic, etc. help build credibility for online celebrities and demonstrate value for brand custodians that need budget approval.

Because of this, many were left surprised at the May F8 conference when Facebook announced their plans to test a ‘like-less’ Instagram, where users and brands alike would no longer be able to get their dopamine hit off the sometimes hundreds and thousands, sometimes millions of clear-to-see interactions. And, of course, mild panic ensued.

How are we supposed to know who’s popular now? How do we work out our return on investment? What do we put in the reports?! – a sentiment that echoed through the social and PR industry through to the influencers themselves, understandably. After all, a like-less Instagram could very well affect their revenue.

If the trials were successful, Instagram users would only see how many likes their own posts received but couldn’t see the same for other users. Seems like a minor change, right? It is a minor change, a minor change that will cause a major change in the way influencers and brands use Instagram. This update opens the doors for an Instagram focused on community, personalisation and sharing. Concealing the number of likes, creates a less competitive environment between followers – an issue known to negatively impact users.

But the future is not necessarily as daunting as it may seem post the Facebook announcement.

Brands should now turn to more meaningful metrics

Brands will now turn to influencer marketing tools to monitor more meaningful metrics and understand the specific reach of creatives. For example, the Meltwater Influencer tool offers brands audience reporting features that allow users to view an influencer's community demographic. This tool allows brands to have a clear vision of who is being influenced, ultimately finding brands the perfect fit for their campaign.

What influenced the like-less Instagram update?

Social media well-being – The decision to trial posts without the number of likes was driven by the desire to provide a “less pressurised environment” for users. Chief Executive, Adam Mosseri, has stated since the conference that the like-less instagram is a step towards providing users with a platform they can “feel comfortable expressing themselves [on]”. This was incentivised by the current online issue of ‘‘catfishing‘. Whereby influencers and regular users will buy additional followers/likes to appear more ‘popular’ online. By concealing the amount of likes a user receives, the Instagram team are aiming to create a space for creativity and not competition.

Instagram stories – In January 2019, the Instagram story feature had 500 million daily users – over twice as many as Snapchat (203 million). The rising popularity of theInstagram ‘story’ feature then became a catalyst for the like-less instagram idea, aiming to encourage users to post ‘stories’ rather than a static feed of posts. The shift in popularity of the story feature is reflected by the rising popularity of video marketing. Projected to show an annual growth rate of +10.6%, the use of video will reach an ad spend of over £40 million by 2023 – altering the way brands communicate with their consumers, as well as how influencers will do this on a brand’s behalf. 

Some influencers have expressed their concern, with many worried it may impact their engagement rates, when, in fact, it’s a thought that this will give this widely adopted marketing technique a stronger level of authenticity.

Transparency obsessed demographic, Generation Z, have fuelled the need for influencers to state if a post is an ad and how they received the product, for example were they paid to promote it or was it ‘gifted’? In doing so, the sense of familiarity that we associate with influencers has changed as we know instantly if they are posting to promote.

Removing the like count will aim to bring back this familiarity to influencers, not setting them apart by the amount of likes. Instead, they will be encouraged to create highly engaging content that fuels creativity rather than that which focus purely on sales. A like-less Instagram means that Influencer talent will be based on the referral traffic they drive, minimising the worth of bought engagement. In turn, influencers will be producing high-quality content that attracts long-term consumers.

Should this first run of a like-less Instagram prove successful, brands would become less dependent on likes to identify the best influencer for their campaign. Instead, creatives would be rated on their click-through rates and the performance of their content in terms of how it drives sales. 

The types of changes we can expect in influencer campaigns

Better quality content: Now, content needs to do more than receive likes. In order to keep consumers engaged, feeds must need to be more creative, dynamic and consistent. Brands will lean towards collaborations on a smaller scale using micro influencers with 10K-15K followers. These creatives have higher engagement rates, with a more niche style, therefore providing a worthwhile ROI for brands through highly focused targeting.

More engaged consumers: There could be an increase in consumers actively following businesses. Followers will find hitting ‘like’ a lot more personal, taking this action based on their own opinions and rather than what is trending. Due to this, those with a genuine interest in your brand can engage with your content, helping you create quality consumer relationships. 

More dynamic brand image: Instagram ‘story’ views will become a key metric to monitor. Rising marketing trends such as voice activated searches and the use of vertical video, will increase and branding will become heavily dependent on innovative campaigns. 

Currently, the testing phase is still underway and the update is now active in 6 countries; Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. Instagram’s two major markets are the UK and the US, so after analysing the response from the trials, Instagram will decide whether it progresses into these major markets. The future of influencers will be exciting not endangered. The like-less Instagram will introduce a new style of influencer marketing, one that is closer to the original intention – giving honest reviews and building communities. 

A new kind of Instagram strategy to match these changes

What can we expect to see and how should we adapt our strategies to fit future iterations of how users can interact with Instagram?

More interactive content appearing on Instagram stories/IGTV 

Using ecommerce/tagging to sell products in their static image posts

Filtering followers to remove inactive and disengaged accounts 

Using targets to reach click-through rate goals

Increase in sophisticated and quality content

A change as small as hiding the number of likes on Instagram presents several opportunities for the platform. Improved online well-being and increased focus in story-based content are but a few. Instagram is making innovative movements set to change the advertising landscape and still set to surpass Snapchat in daily engagement rates, creating yet more opportunities for influencer marketing to grow.

For brands, choosing the best influencers for campaigns will have an increasing focus on  personality, energy and engaged authentic audiences. Influencer marketing in 2019 and beyond will not be to simply find customers, but to build a community. Are you ready to build yours?

What Does a Like-Less Instagram Mean For Influencer Marketing?

If you stop and think about it for a minute, you can trace almost every aspect of human society to news and social media, in one way or another. The media is a vessel for storytelling, and storytelling, is a mechanism for how we formulate opinions, make buying decisions, educate one another and express our identities as part of greater communities and beliefs. 

The news media is topical, locational and categorised, and consumers as a whole have varying levels of access to it, in accordance with their place in society. As that access grows, and the world wide web becomes a staple ingredient in the recipe for integrated communication, so it forms more of a crucial cornerstone to modern life as we know it. It is a place where brands must exist within their consumers’ lives as they do, physically.

Defining Media Monitoring in a Brand Context

Media Monitoring in the UK is Crucial to Reputation Management and Business Growth

Do Better Business in the UK by Using Media Monitoring

Companies Doing Media Monitoring right, globally

Get Started Using Media Monitoring Tools in the UK

Learn More about Media Monitoring in the UK

So, when we talk about “media monitoring” or “social listening” we are referring to ways in which we can take our offline activities online, and begin to listen to our consumers, where they are most likely to “speak” about our brands. 

At first, it might seem a little creepy. The act of listening is essentially passive and “monitoring” has a kind of big brother connotation to it that doesn’t quite apply in this context. But no, it has nothing to do with how uncle Zucc is listening to our innermost thoughts and fears and how Facebook somehow knew you wanted a new watch without you ever saying so out loud. 

Media monitoring, in this instance, refers to how we gain insight into the hearts and minds of our consumers, perceptions about our brand, topics and conversations related to the work we do or the services we provide and how our brand exists and performs in relation to the competition. 

It’s the complex-made-simple act of regularly consuming and sorting the information we find in the media, within specific parameters that we set – based on strategy. 

So, what’s the point and why do we care?

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos

If we accept the idea that the media plays a crucial role in how we identify, agree, rally, communicate and evolve as a society – media monitoring becomes an absolutely key activity for brands that want a place in the digital landscape. More specifically and simply put, media monitoring helps you: 

Strengthen your brand. The strength of your brand can be defined beyond current sales and long-term projections. Awareness, sentiment, perception and risk mitigation are all factors in determining brand resilience (including actions such as social media branding). By understanding and planning actions and reactions to external factors, you can build stronger foundations and increase opportunity for your brand beyond its immediate environment.

Media monitoring is a crucial factor in determining how (potential) consumers feel about your brand and how they perceive it, as it makes information available to you that isn’t necessarily obvious. Also, media monitoring tools, such as a social media tracker, are able to analyse large data sets in order to give you a broader idea of how your brand is considered beyond your understanding.

Pro tip: Use media monitoring to identify and correct misconceptions and build greater awareness. You can do this by gauging sentiment and monitoring the media to get an idea of how your customers feel, through sentiment analysis. In doing so, you can measure the true strength of your brand.

“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said”. – Peter Drucker

One of the most crucial elements of managing a crisis is responding to commentary immediately. The problem is that a media crisis can go viral in a short space of time. So, how do you identify and respond to vast amounts of commentary if it’s all over the place? With a media monitoring tool, you can quickly collate mentions, and address them individually.

Better yet, you can detect negative mentions early, which gives you the upper hand in containing an impending crisis. 

Set alerts for brand mentions, catch a crisis early, create personalised replies, then learn from the situation and adapt accordingly. 

“To be effective in crisis management in the digital age means being able to use social media strategically. There is no crisis management today without a full understanding of how to use new media to listen to conversations around your brand in real-time, and understand what you do and don’t need to respond to.” – Chris Syme

Identify and create sales leads. Bridging the gap between needs and desires and a sale is a discipline within itself. But with an effective media monitoring strategy you can identify consumers who are, or could be, interested in your products.

Specifically, your searches can show you users who ask specific questions, engage with product and service information that’s similar to what you offer and you can identify problems that your offering solves and speak directly to those who communicate with them on social or in news media.

Pro tip: Use media tools to identify existing leads while generating new ones, and track how many instances of reaching out lead to a conversion.
“Going viral is not an outcome; it’s a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn’t. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanity.” – Lori Taylor


Improve customer services. In a connected world, consumers have changing expectations. They demand much more from the brands that they interact with. According to Smart Insights, “Over a third (37%) of consumers who use social media to complain or question brands expect to get a response in under 30 minutes”. With this kind of demand for engagement from brands, you  can’t afford to miss a mention, and this extents beyond mentions you’re tagged in.

If we reference the old-but-good KANO model (1980), it’s important to delight your customers, and not simply address problems or concerns.
Pro tip: Identify mentions where your brand hasn’t been tagged and address issues or reward user behaviour, preemptively.“Today, complainers – haters are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the early warning detection system for your business” – Jay Baer

Get inspiration to inform a better content strategy. Media monitoring and content marketing go hand in hand. The humdrum day-to-day posts and articles are a good foundation but they need spice to keep readers interested and they need to be topical to maintain relevance. If you’ve been owning brand content for a long time, it’s tough to stay inspired but the UK media landscape can offer you a plethora of interesting challenges, topics and memes to play into.

Pro tip: Use your media monitoring tool to identify lasting trends and topics that are heavily featured over the course of a few days. Create content daily to play into these themes over and above your monthly content plan. 
“Quality, relevant content can’t be spotted by an algorithm. You can’t subscribe to it. You need people – actual human beings – to create or curate it.”  ― Kristina Halvorson

One of the greatest challenges we face as marketers is generating inspiring content that engages our consumers. In some instances, consumer-generated content is more powerful than brand-owned media, as it offers a sense of endorsement and relevance. It also doesn’t require a company-owned resource to create.

If this media exists, there’s an opportunity to capitalise on it and directly benefit from it, without having to spend time or money on its existence. Find existing posts about your brand as a starting point, then connect with the owner to discuss how you can use their content.

“The next wave of the Web is going to be user-generated content” – John Doer

“Eventually the consumer will come to appreciate the editorial point of view of every different brand. User-generated content without editorial oversight will simply be background noise”. – Michael Eisner

If you’re on top of the UK media landscape, it will quickly become clear who has the most influence in your immediate network. But, this can be a particularly difficult exercise if you’re looking to enlist influence for a niche product or service. Typically, influencers with highly specific interests and followings are a valuable connection for reaching said audiences and are adored by their fans. They tend to have greater impact on buying decisions than those who appeal to a mass of only semi-interested viewers. 

Part of your media monitoring strategy can include using tools to identify UK influencers from specific databases, that allow you to look within categories and learn more about who you could potentially build a relationship with. 

Standard metrics like reach and engagement can give you an idea of what you’re working with but you also need to consider their audience demographics. 

Pro tip: Use media monitoring services to identify key influencers in conjunction with an influencer database. This can give you quick access to summary information that will help you narrow down a pool of potential influencers you’d like to work with. 

“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them”. ―  Malcolm Goldwell

Staying relevant is a challenge that even the edgiest of brands face. No matter how “cool” or current you are today, you can’t rely on that to be the case tomorrow. Cutting through the noise means standing out and captivating audiences who are constantly bombarded with information. A great way to do this is to align with current news that’s relevant to your brand, using commentary, humour or related media. 

In order to understand the current UK media landscape and know what your most relevant trending topics are, you’ll need to monitor what people are talking about most passionately and often. 

This is also true for brands which are not afraid to align themselves with social and political causes that are close to their proverbial hearts, but more accurately their values. 

Pro tip: Choose your causes and allegiances carefully. Ensure they align with your values and that they resonate significantly with your target audiences. You can establish this through monitoring the media and identifying connections in topics, the number of mentions from a specific audience and their sentiment towards it. 

“Bring relevance to the people before teaching them to be believers” ― Sunday Adelaja

Tip: Learn more about UK social media statistics to feed into your strategy.

Social listening is particularly effective in helping you improve your ecommerce experiences for consumers.  For example,“Facebook influenced 52 per cent of consumers’ online and offline purchases, up from 36 per cent in 2014”. (Source: The Drum, 2015). So, we know that social media plays a key role in helping consumers make buying decisions and in their overall customer experience.

This information helps us make a strong case for targeting and retargeting but it’s also directly related to how we speak to consumers. By responding to brand mentions, related queries and posts, you can start to build a relationship with potential buyers and guide them towards engaging with your products and services.

Use media monitoring to find questions about your industry, and respond with helpful answers, incentives and information.

“Conversation with customers will increase sales, even if the product or service is never mentioned.” George Farris

The concept of using big data for futureproofing isn’t buzzworthy for nothing. It also isn’t new but few companies use this tactic as effectively as they should. Collecting information on who your users are and what appeals to them can help you identify trends and prepare for future campaigns.

It can help you prioritise behaviours and consumer desires you want to speak to and formulate product and service strategies for the future. Conversely, it will also give you the insight you need to mitigate risks, and prepare for future hazards – giving you the competitive edge now, for later.  This is particularly useful in the digital space, where being unprepared for change makes your brand vulnerable.

Use media monitoring to identify trends, learn about developments in your industry and to inform a change management plan.

“Being aware of the digital horizon – even if it’s way off in the distance – is one of the best things a business can do for its future.” Dan Monaghan

In today’s world, brands are often too focused on their own efforts, internally motivated and tunnel-visioned. It takes one excellent campaign to put your competition ahead, which can mean everything from a small loss of business to catastrophic irrelevance in  a matter of days.

Your competition matters, and wherever you can get a competitive edge you should – even if that means aligning with other brands to create something better or playing in the same space, amicably.

You won’t be able to formulate an effective strategy without an intricate understanding of their work, where they differ from you in terms of objectives and how the public perceives them. So, how do you stay on top of what competing businesses are doing and manage your own campaigns at the same time?

Take the time to understand your competitors as well as you understand your own business. Use media monitoring to identify which audiences you share, how their content is performing, where you want to compete, and with whom – based on  the data.“The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort” – Colin Powell

We all know that measuring your work is important but few people get specific about why, beyond the basic narratives of good or bad performance. Specifically, measuring your campaigns can give you more insight than “good job marketing team” “bad job marketing team” and the devil is truly in the details here.
At the end of the day, a brand’s purpose has some relation to ROI. And while that may not be a primary concern in the beginning, it will become increasingly important. A business can’t survive or thrive without positive changes to the bottom line, and we can’t assess those changes or encourage them without the data. Identify what’s working and what isn’t, basing your insights and decisions on the data instead of assumptions.
“That which cannot be measured cannot be proven.” ― Anthony W. Richardson“It isn’t just a pat on the back. Measurement is about marking, but evaluation is about improving.” – From PR Week, Panel Discussion.

Identifying new markets is an important part of business growth and creating a safety net. Business growth can be achieved by extending your marketing efforts and reaching more relevant audiences. Media monitoring allows you to do this by helping you strategically identify emerging markets and potential new audiences through related topics, identifying growing needs and giving you the data you need to think outside the box.
The key to identifying potential markets lies in the specificity of your search terms. Use a combination of everything from keywords around your brand to buzzwords, related products and services, competition names and slogans.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

VANS is and has always been an iconic brand, since its inception in 1996. One of the ways in which it remains relevant is by adapting to change. Media monitoring is a crucial part of VANS’ operations. Especially considering its close alignment with the youth market and it’s affinity for creative self-expression. 

According to Warren Talbot, VANS Media marketing Manager, the brand needed to “define metrics… automate time-consuming activities and collate social media data across different campaigns”. 

Using Meltwater media software, VANS was able to use real-time media monitoring and analyse media trends, which helped them remain competitive in a noise-heavy youth retail industry. 

Vans continues to use online media monitoring as a mechanism for executing events, connecting with influencers, generating reports and measuring ROI. 

The London Pride event is a key part of the LGBTQXYZ calendar but managing the marketing and media around it is a complex task. Given the social nature of the organisation, there are multi-tiered conversations at play and a lot of controversy in terms of sentiment and social media reactions. 

For this organisation, research is key and can only be conducted with media monitoring software. Online visibility is an important part of the pride initiative and in order to gain this visibility, there needs to be regular and consistent community growth. 

What Pride in London excels at is the ability to manage it’s communities, view and respond to mentions, build and create awareness without diluting the brand message along the way. 

“Social listening helps us better understand whether key messages are resonating or becoming lost in the noise. The best way to increase engagement with our audience is to focus our communications around topics that our audience deem important. In 2013-2014 Pride grew by 135%, from 2014-2015 growth peaked to 215% and indications suggest 2016’s community growth will follow the same trend.” – Steven Ward, Deputy Chair

Starting anything new can seem daunting at first but media monitoring, with the right interface, is sometimes easier than using default social dashboards. With media monitoring software, you have a plethora of options available to you – built into a user-friendly interface. 

Media Intelligence allows you to analyse the impact of media from the largest global source base. It’s the most comprehensive solution for PR and marketing professionals as it combines editorial and social listening into one easy-to-use interface. Our media intelligence also comes with an Android or iOS app that allows you to get relevant insight and coverage wherever you are.

Meltwater Media Monitoring Analysis Reports give you customised, real-time analysis, which helps you measure impact and ROI and improve and simplify the reporting process. Customise the metrics and KPIs you’d  like to measure and share instantly.

Meltwater Mobile allows you to receive a notification every time a piece of content matches your keywords and other search parameters. It also allows you to easily collaborate by sharing content via apps like Slack or via text, email, etc. and to tag media. Mobile dashboards gives you the opportunity to digest whole conversations around a topic with thousands of articles, social media posts and broadcast coverage centralised into one dashboard for easy consumption and analysis.

Meltwater Premium Social can give you better insight into what’s happening on Twitter and Facebook with it’s social echo functionality – as well as real-time insight for social share counts on editorial content. Plus, advanced analytics give you a more detailed view of social performance and allow you to drill down into key metrics.

Meltwater Broadcast Monitoring offers easy access to radio and television content, with cross-channel media analytics. It’s a powerful yet easy-to-use way to access your clips from a global capture network and and too share and edit when necessary.

In order to be fully diligent when it comes to media mentions, it's important to keep an eye on all relevant channels. The demand for print clippings is significantly decreasing for smaller brands, but if you're a global well-known brand, chances are you're still frequently mentioned in printed publications. Meltwater offers printed media clippings and analytics through our trusted global, and local print monitoring partners. 

What can you do with these media intelligence tools?

Set a specific time period and location. You can use social listening software to set a custom date range to monitor data over the time of an incident. For example, go back into past data-sets to see a correlation between an event and negative sentiment. You can also look for keywords specific to London, United Kingdom – for example.

Media Monitoring in the United Kingdom: Everything You Need to Know

Brands are always searching for and creating new, engaging content to share with followers and customers on social media, their website, and other mediums. But constant product promotion gets old really fast, and content unrelated to a business is only valuable in small doses.

Along with consumers having shorter attention spans and the fact that it’s so easy to ignore marketing messages or unfollow a brand, marketers have an uphill battle to keep audiences coming back for more.

For many brands, user-generated content (UGC) has been the answer. The official definition of user-generated content is “content that encourages users to share their experiences with a brand, which is then shared with other users.” Examples of this include using a specific hashtag for a Twitter or Instagram contest, posting a picture using or wearing a company’s product, or submitting an online review through a website like Yelp.

User-generated content adds originality to a company’s marketing strategy, making it seem less like marketing and more experiential for consumers – which ultimately leads to higher engagement.

Social media campaigns including user-generated content see 50% higher engagement, and email campaigns using UGC see 73% higher clickthrough rates. Consumers also find user-generated content to be much more influential, with 85% saying it has more of an impact on their opinion of a company than branded photos or videos.

The best thing about user-generated content is that any company can get involved. You simply need a customer base that is willing to share their experiences with others and a campaign that lets these experiences take center stage.

If you’re looking for some inspiration to create your next user-focused campaign, take a look at these six brands currently winning at user-generated content.

One of the longest-running user-generated content campaigns is Share a Coke, which for years has featured hundreds of the most popular names on Coca-Cola cans and bottles. Consumers dug through store shelves to find their name on the product, and were encouraged through marketing and in-store displays to post a picture on social media with the #ShareaCoke hashtag. From creative Instagram posts to selfies, these were all great examples of UGC. In addition to personalized names, there were labels that promoted sharing the products with friends or family members – labels like “friend,” “grill master,” “bro,” etc.

This year’s campaign, called Share a Coke and a Song, switches things up a bit and features 70 famous song lyrics on the company’s products. Music is seen as a universal language of sorts, and Coca-Cola wanted to bring a sense of unity to its diverse customer base.

Not only can you find these limited-edition products in stores, you can also customize and order your own bottles on their website.

They even partnered with Shazam to bring music directly to its products and store displays. Consumers can scan the lyrics printed on a Coke product or store signage through the Shazam app and record a lip-synced video to share on social media with the #ShareaCoke hashtag. This gives Coca-Cola another means of collecting user-generated content and allows consumers to decide for themselves how they want to engage with Coke products and express their creativity.

A brand under the American Eagle umbrella, Aerie has distinguished itself from many competitors in the clothing industry by positioning itself as a company that is authentic and approachable.

In early 2014, Aerie launched their #AerieREAL campaign by announcing that they would no longer retouch any of the models in their marketing materials. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with airbrushed, Photoshopped images of the “ideal” body, Aerie crushes this notion with the message that women of all sizes and backgrounds are beautiful.

From their initial ads has come an influx of user-generated content, with customers sharing their own pictures wearing Aerie products and using the campaign hashtag. The company frequently engages with these posts on social media and encourages others to share their story of what makes them #AerieREAL on Twitter and Instagram. Their campaign embraces the diversity of their customer base and empowers women to own what makes them unique.

Like Aerie, Loews Hotels wanted to create a more authentic experience in its advertising by straying away from the industry’s norm of using models in marketing. To gain feedback on customer satisfaction and understand what features and amenities were most important, Loews began scouring Instagram for pictures that past guests had shared by searching relevant hashtags and location tags. They expanded it to a full-blown user-generated content campaign with the #TravelForReal hashtag, encouraging customers to share what it’s really like to stay at a Loews property on Instagram.

Loews is collecting these photos for their website, social media posts, and even print advertising. Imagine seeing a picture you took on one of their Facebook or magazine ads. Well, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Their philosophy is that “nobody tells our story better than you,” and every image you see in their marketing materials is 100% original and without a bit of retouching. Loews wanted authentic, and that’s exactly what you’re getting when you interact with their content.

When it comes to user-generated content, most people think of social media campaigns and hashtags. But reviews are another way that consumers can share their experiences with both a brand and other customers, and they’re essential to building a brand’s online reputation.

Amazon has more customer reviews on its site than anyone, so they understand the impact they have on purchase decisions. At the top of any product page, you’ll immediately see the average number of stars an item was given, along with a link to read reviews. They realize that some consumers prefer to read reviews before learning more about the product itself, so they make that search and discovery process as simple as possible.

However, many companies struggle to get customers to take the time to write a thoughtful review. The reason Amazon’s process works is because it’s so easy. Anytime you make a purchase on their site, you receive an email asking you to rate the product from 1-5 stars and the option to leave a review. So if you don’t want to spend time writing a few sentences of feedback, you can still express your satisfaction or dissatisfaction through this star rating.

Amazon’s product reviews also play a key role in filtering search results on the site, allowing a user to view only products that have a specific rating. So not only do they get valuable feedback from customers, they allow them to play a part in other visitors’ searches.

You’ve probably come across Calvin Klein’s advertising in magazines and online with the fill-in-the-blank sentence “I ________ in #MyCalvins.” Through celebrity endorsers like Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber, and Kendrick Lamar, Calvin Klein gives these figures (and everyday consumers) the stage to explain how their brand plays a role in their lives.

You can submit photos wearing Calvin Klein products through the #MyCalvins hashtag on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and their website – and the images are featured throughout their digital presence.

When viewing the image galleries on their site, you can sort the photos by product category (jeans, underwear, etc.), gender, or geographic location, see the social media handle of the person who submitted it, and the platform it was submitted on. Then if you click on a picture, there’s additional information about the products featured with links to the corresponding product pages so you can buy the look for yourself.

The #MyCalvins campaign connects well-known celebrities with typical consumers, making it appear that they’re “just like us,” living their daily lives in the company’s apparel. And adding an ecommerce element to each user-submitted photo allows consumers to immerse themselves even further into the brand, while also creating new sales opportunities for Calvin Klein.

Up until this point, the brands discussed provide tangible products and services to consumers, making it pretty easy to collect user-generated content. But American Express goes to show that truly any company in any industry can make it work.

The American Express OPEN Forum is a blog-like website that covers a variety of business-related topics, including company culture, ecommerce, money management, social media marketing, and much more. But what’s most interesting about the site is that almost no content is contributed by American Express employees; it’s all user-generated.

By creating a free account on the site, you gain access to exclusive content shared by small business experts, can post your own questions, answer questions submitted by other members, and contribute original content. There’s even a mobile app available so you can receive a daily summary of articles based on the topics you specify interest in.

American Express brings user-generated content to the professional realm, giving their audience a place to come together and collaborate on common business questions or challenges.

These six brands have tackled user-generated content from a variety of angles: social media content, customer reviews, a community of business advice, and user creativity. Even though they may be from a wide range of industries, target different audiences, or focus their marketing on different channels, they’ve all found a way to put their customers first and let their experiences speak for themselves.

Consumers want to know that companies are listening when they have something positive or negative to say about an experience, and user-generated content provides them with the platform to do so. It not only gives brands a chance to understand their audience’s wants, needs, challenges, and questions, but it makes their audience feel like they matter.

So if you haven’t thought about incorporating user-generated content into your marketing mix, now might be the time to give it a try. 

This article originally appeared in Mainstreethost, was written by Kim Speier from Business2Community, and legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

6 Brands Winning at User-Generated Content

How is the Australian media landscape faring as the influence of content from anchors and ‘Mad Men’ slowly fade to the background? Meltwater sets out to uncover interesting insights overarching our media landscape and how these insights may influence the opinions of communications professionals, marketers through to academics who actively operate in this landscape.

What media are we consuming these days? From the ever-burgeoning size of your list on Netflix to subscribing to your weeklys on current affairs, the audience is in the driver’s seat. With the advent of social media and hyperspeed internet connections, traditional media powerhouses are fighting off the increasing challenges of social journalism and content disruptors. Tables have been turned as the audience is now in control of the remote as they democratically choose their desired media outlets. 

The insights in the infographic above are only a glean of the endless myriad of information waiting to be discovered within both mainstream and social media. Imagine the various permutations that researchers can learn and analyse different habits of the audience. Marketers and communicators can harness these insights to better understand consumers and deliver more focused campaigns for their target audiences. Policymakers and public officials can work more qualitative ways of reaching out to the people they serve.

Tip: TikTok is on the rise. Consider working together with Australian TikTokers to stay ahead of your competition!

Mobile technology has taken over so many aspects of our lives. From making a purchase, keeping up-to-date with news checking our accounts and connecting with social networks, our eyes and fingers are constantly tethered to our iPhones and Pixels. Scrolling through news-feeds and clearing notifications become second nature to our mobile experience. People are consuming more content at a greater speed and with less attention due to the limitless amount of information available at their fingertips. This reiterates the importance of headlines and key snippets of info to capture Australians’ attention.

Readership patterns in Australia have changed and in the past couple of years, the trend is speeding up within the media and journalism industries. This trend translates to the increasing migration of readers moving towards online publications. Media conglomerates continue to record high turnover of media professionals such as journalists and copy editors amid the declining sales of the print versions of broadsheets. Despite the modest take-up rate of online subscriptions, Australians are paying less to read their news. Many also turn to free syndicated versions of the news or rely on the alternative form of journalism in the social spaces of Facebook and Twitter. 

This brings us to the changes to the regulations on the media industry in 2017. With the evolving trend of readers moving to alternative news sites and search engine powerhouses like Google and Facebook, the government freed up the media space by lifting the “two out of three” policy – where a media company can only be a dual service provider made up of print, broadcast or radio. This move was introduced to protect the Australian media industry and essentially allowed the merger of two media companies – Fairfax Media and Nine – which currently goes to head-to-head with the juggernaut NewsCorp. Ironically, the abolishment of the legislation to a certain extent sees the massive media companies consolidate power in the industry and effectively weakens, or even kills off, the smaller players.

A recent development is Nine’s takeover bid of Macquarie Media. The takeover was unanimously agreed by the Macquarie board despite a lower-than-expected bid and shareholders were quick to voice their discontent. This consolidation may prove to be a good business strategy for Nine and Macquarie Media as it provides a stable platform for the smaller company to operate but critics would suggest a change in the strategic direction of its content in the future.

Governments play a huge role in how the media landscape remains sustainable, true to its journalistic roots and competitive in the modern media landscape. In view of the double-edged initiative, governments and state-owned media companies should take the forefront in championing the truth while innovating new ways to counter the challenges from the disruptive industry. With technology and funding, researchers and activists can empirically discover the various narratives and discourses that can be found within the reports from media outlets and companies. 

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