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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

It’s happened. The company or client you work is shutting down, shuttering one of its services, or discontinuing a product.

As part of the PR team, management brings you in to seek your help in communicating the message. But what is the best way to handle internal and external communications in such a scenario? 

Tips to Help Your Audience and Your Brand Say Goodbye

1. Maintain control of the communication flow.

“Rumors are bound to swirl around a business closure, so put these to bed as soon as possible. Release a statement to both press and customers providing as much factual information as you can,” says Hayley Smith, director and owner of Boxed Out PR, who went through this with a former employer.

Make sure the news come from you, not from another source. “Use trusted journalists, or set up an exclusive interview with an industry magazine,” Smith says.

Much like a crisis communications situation, a business closing requires assembling the right team and collaborating with the right colleagues.

“Bringing in the correct members of your team including PR, legal, finance and HR and being open and honest from the very beginning, you will be able to effectively manage the closure with fewer problems,” Smith says. 

3. Take special care in how you notify employees.

Be sure to notify employees yourself before they hear or read about the news somewhere else. Give them ample notice, if you can. Make sure those communicating with employees have been trained in how to convey the information with empathy and clarity.

Be very clear about what you’ll provide to help them as they transition to a new job. Will you offer career coaching or resume writing services, for example? Tell them what you can do to assist them.

Make sure company leaders stay involved. This is news that should come from the top of the organization, so keep everyone in the loop. All announcements should come from the CEO, division manager or head of the business unit.

“A closure or a downsizing is not an excuse for leaders to go into hiding. To the contrary, it’s an occasion when people need to see their leaders,” says Kenneth Freeman, dean of the Boston University Questrom School of Business.  

As you announce the news, provide reassurance that a plan is in place to make sure your customers are taken care of.

Publicize that the business will remain open until a certain date to allow customers to complete any transactions that may be underway or in the case of retail, to let patrons use any gift cards, loyalty points, and so on. If you’re liquidating inventory, publicize that.

And be sure to thank your customers for their patronage over the years.

Have compassion. It’s okay to express that you’re truly sorry (and sad).

While showing emotion may not a good way to run a business on a daily basis, in times of crisis like this, you can reveal your human side. It may be hard for them to hear this news—but it’s hard for you to deliver it, too.

“When my tears revealed my true feelings for my employees, they understood I was crying not because I couldn’t handle the situation but because I understood the human consequences of my decision: it wasn’t just a business that was closing; people’s lives were involved,” says Susan T. Spencer, entrepreneur and author. 

“Because I communicated openly and honestly with all the employees, every worker stayed on and saw the company through until closing day, saving me from even greater losses,” Spencer said.

Proper Planning and Communication Can Allow You to Exit with Grace

Adopting an approach that considers all your audiences and allows for planning and transparency is best when a business shutters. 

“Overall, business closures are very rarely unforeseen,” says Smith. “There is usually a chain of events that lead up to them. With a clear communications plan, the announcement will not seem as shocking.”

Brand Goodbyes: How to Communicate a Closure

When you think of top professional sports teams on social media, what do you think of?

Perhaps no sport is more popular on social media in the United States than Football. America’s Game. NFL social accounts consistently capture the hearts and minds of audiences across the platforms they care about most.

But which National Football League teams are winning consistently on social media? We found five that are a superb source of inspiration for your brand, whether you’re a football fan or not!

The Rams are back in Los Angeles and they’re scoring more than just touchdowns for their fans. The Rams are scoring engagement points by treating their fans to a behind-the-scenes look at their favorite players and moments throughout the season. 

One of the tactics that the Rams take full advantage of are Instagram Stories Highlights. Perfectly laid out at the top of their feed, audiences can go back in time and relive some of their favorite moments from the season no matter where they are.

Highlights are the perfect way to curate all of your best Stories content from throughout the year. That way, none of it ever goes to waste!

Plus, notice the consistent use of imagery and visuals in their Highlights cover photos. Everything feels consistent and on-brand. It immediately catches the eye of anyone who stops by the Rams profile.   

A short jaunt up Highway 101 you’ll find another California-based NFL team that is end-to-end one of the best in the business at social media marketing, the San Francisco 49ers. 

With six Super Bowl appearances and five championships since 1980, the 49ers are arguably one of the greatest franchises in sports history. While this rich history is hard to match, the 49ers bring it home on social media by focusing on the future.

Leaving work on a Friday like 😁 #FridayFeeling

2018 wasn’t the greatest season for the 49ers, but the moment it ended, they gave fans cause for optimism ahead of the 2019 season.

Positivity, hope, and optimism are a great recipe for successful content on social media. People want to feel like they’re a part of something big!

One team that really knows how to build a rapport with their audience on social media is the Seattle Seahawks. 

Their fans, or “12s” as the team calls them, are the focal point of many of the ‘Hawks social media posts—as they should be.

Congratulations, Steve Hutchinson! He’s headed to the @profootballhof 👏

If your brand has a dedicated and passionate audience, there’s no better way to get them fired up than to showcase them on social media. By making their fans their #1 focus, the Seahawks were able to grow their Instagram account to more than 2.2 million followers.

What does 5 Super Bowl titles earn the New England Patriots? 

America’s most disliked NFL team. That’s right! New England recently surpassed the Cowboys as the NFL’s least favorite team, according to polls.

But clearly, people love to hate the Patriots with their Instagram account attracting more than 3.3 million followers alone.

Weekend's here 😎 Tag your squad for a chance to win a Patriots football signed by the 2019 captains.

The marketing team for the New England Patriots doesn’t shy away from being the center of attention, either. In fact, they play into it and it’s an important social media lesson for us all.

No matter who you are or what brand you work with, you’ll always have people throwing shade your way on social.

Sometimes the best way to come out on top is by embracing it with fun and engaging posts.

I saved the best for last when it comes to NFL teams on social media.

As with the Patriots, the Dallas Cowboys relish in being one of America’s most loved and hated teams. But that doesn’t stop the Cowboys from having a little fun on social media and showing off their team’s personality.

1️⃣3️⃣ views | that’s 3 TDs for @mg4_4life

Every single one of their posts on Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms give their audience a feel for what it’s like to actually be an NFL player. This type of content makes the Cowboys seem more accessible and human which helps to increase fans’ love for their team. 

And when comparing the Dallas Cowboys’ Share of Voice vs. other top teams in the league, it’s clear their doing something right

Not only do they have the greatest Share of Voice in the NFL, but they also have the largest social media reach week-over-week:

No wonder they’re the most valuable team in the NFL!

At first glance, you might not think you can learn all that much from NFL teams on social media. 

But they are experts at connecting with fans in meaningful ways while using various content types to spark excitement. Use these lessons in your social media strategy to drive new audiences to your accounts and increase engagement.

To up your social media game, let us show you what an all-in-one media monitoring, social listening, and social management solution can do for your brand.

Top NFL Social Media Feeds

Why inflict an avoidable crisis on yourself? Here we look at five headline-grabbing, reputation-destroying situations that brands should be able to avoid. For a complete guide on how to handle crisis—or better yet, avert it altogether—read our ebook on spotting early warning signs and taking a data-driven approach to crisis planning.

In California, earthquakes are a fact of life. We don’t know when the next one will happen, or where it will be centered. But we know we can count on there being more of them, which is why many people have earthquake preparedness kits in their homes. It makes sense to have a plan and resources in place for a problem you know is eventually going to come up. So, why don’t more people take this same approach when it comes to crisis communications?

Almost a third of all businesses do not have a documented business continuity plan. When you consider that fewer than 10% of businesses survive a major disaster without a business continuity plan, it’s surprising to consider how few organizations have robust business continuity plans—including crisis communications plans—for their businesses.

In addition to California and our earthquakes, there are states prone to blizzards, flooding, tornadoes and other extreme weather scenarios? No to mention other urgent business issues such as executive misconduct, senior leadership resignations, and other common workplace issues. If you’re not proactively planning for how to handle these and other predictable urgent issues, you may be creating a future crisis for your organization.

Proactively Plan for Common Urgent Issues

While there’s no way to anticipate every potential crisis that can come your way, there are a number of known crisis scenarios that it is likely your company will have to respond to at some point. Here are a few urgent issues your crisis communications plan should address:

Major weather events including tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and blizzards all have the potential to adversely affect your business. If you have offices and employees in these areas, you’ll need to prepare internal and external communications plans for dealing with office closures or an inability to access offices, disruption in shipping products or mailing statements to customers, and extending assistance to customers in affected areas. Prepare resources to help your employees navigate these stressful situations in a safe manner, and to help them feel prepared to assist your customers too.

Whether it happens as a result of extreme weather, an accident on your grid, or power company issues, a power outage can greatly limit your company’s ability to serve your customers. You’ll want to plan to communicate whether or not you have backup generators, what services are affected by the power outage, and how you will accommodate and communicate to customers when the power is back on.

More than 184 million ransomware attacks were carried out in 2017. Meanwhile, the number of cyber attacks against businesses nearly doubled from 82,000 in 2016 to 159,700 in 2017. Your communications team needs to understand how a cyber attack could affect your ability to serve customers, and how your technology team will be able to circumvent such attacks and restore things to business as usual.

As a consumer, I’m all too aware of how easy it is for my personal data to be breached. Whether it’s due to hackers hitting up big companies like Equifax, Target, and Yahoo, or an employee losing a laptop full of customer data, it’s an incredibly common and upsetting occurrence. While you can’t anticipate the precise details, you can prepare a data breach microsite and customer and employee communications that detail what you need to disclose in such cases and outline any resources you are making available to those affected (such as credit monitoring).

What happens if your website goes down? Ideally, you will have an alternate server location prepared to host your domain and a notice of the disruption. You can also have a standalone website status monitoring service customers can use to find out the status of your website. You’ll need to map out the corporate channels available for your communications, and optimize for speed of communication. You want to be the first one on social to mention your outage, as well as the first one to sound the all clear when the site has been restored to service.

At a former company, we had a number of customer-facing offices in areas that regularly experienced extreme weather. For each of the different extreme weather types, our urgent communications plan included the following templates:

An intranet post tracking the offices impacted and any closures and including talking points for customer-facing employees, the key employees involved in the response to such issues, and a calling tree for escalating issues
An internal email that notified employees about affected offices and employees, and linked to the intranet post for updates

An internal email update to keep everyone involved in the issue’s response informed of the status of the issue on a daily or more frequent basis.

A blog post that told customers about affected offices and what their other options for service were until the offices reopened

An email to customers that provided a brief explanation of the issue and linked to the blog post as a source for updates

Social media copy that provided a high-level description of the issue and linked to the customer blog post

Having these communications drafted in advance—with a clearly defined communications plan and pre-identified stakeholders—made it easy to quickly address these issues and avoid customer complaints. Yes, we frequently made improvements to the process and the templates, but the basic plan and its templates were put to use without major changes for several years.

As communicators, there never feels like enough time in the day. So it may be tempting to put off proactively planning for urgent issues that may not strike while you’re on the clock. However, if you want to earn a seat at the leadership table, and save yourself some stress at the same time, making time for proactive urgent communications planning is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.

For a complete guide on how to handle crisis—or better yet, avert it altogether—read our ebook. It covers how to use media intelligence to spot the early warning signs, manage and monitor crisis every step of the way, and ultimately take a data-driven approach to learning from mistakes.

5 Common Urgent Issues That Don’t Need to Become a Brand Crisis

Content marketing is becoming more important than ever before. Recent statistics show that B2B companies content as a marketing strategy generate 67% more leads than those that do not. But writing great content that no one sees won't get you far. That's why SEO is so important, it'll get the right content in front of your intended audience. As we refine our KPIs, knowing what content resonates with audiences helps us pinpoint the ROI of marketing activities.

Research shows that 89% of B2B marketers are using content as the main channel in their marketing strategy. With that said only 19% rate their organization’s efforts as successful and only 41% are clear on what an effective or successful content marketing strategy even looks like. While content marketing holds scads of benefits, it also involves some level of work and it can be easy to make simple mistakes that can impact your SEO content marketing strategy.

Though there is indeed an impressive growth in the use of content as an essential tool in their marketing strategy, B2B companies and marketers are still making SEO mistakes that are simply killing their content quality and marketing efforts. This post will teach you the core SEO mistakes that are killing your content strategy.

The B2B space has its own unique requirements and considerations, and it differs from B2C in some core aspects: 

Most B2B products/services usually cost more than B2C products (a pair of jeans profit potential in most cases is up to about $100 while a SaaS (Software As A Service) solution can be $1000 a month).

In B2C, it’s usually a single shopper who makes the purchase decision. In a B2B company, there are various decision makers involved.

For both B2B and B2C, the buyer’s journey usually goes as follows:

Awareness Stage: Problem or need identification.

Consideration Stage: Possible solutions research, comparing between the different products available.

Decision Stage: Reaching a decision and making the purchase

A B2B content marketing strategy usually deals with many sets of keywords and search terms to target buyer personas who are decision makers at the different stages of their buyer’s journey.

Search engines are a great way to get in front of these prospects at earlier stages of their research process, but all too often, marketers themselves are the reason search engines hold your content back from prominent positions in their search results pages (SERPs).

Although they are usually treated separately, content marketing and SEO goes together like cereals and milk. SEO is all about keywords, backlinks, and great onsite optimization.

The best way to get backlinks is by publishing killer content and letting the masses link back to it.

Now that we’ve established the connection between B2B content marketing and SEO, we can start laying down the SEO mistakes that are killing your content marketing strategy:

Google loves long, in-depth, informative content that satisfies the searcher’s needs. Generally, the more in-depth the content is, the more likely it solves the searcher’s intent or question. As opposed to that, what Google hates the most is when searchers click a link on a SERP, sees that it’s not what they were looking for, and immediately bounces off by hitting the back button. This is called Pogo Sticking.

This doesn’t mean you should be writing long for the sake of long (it also doesn’t grant you permission to be boring or paste large batches of text that are unscannable and tiring, but more on that later on). Do however make sure your content is comprehensive enough to answer searchers’ questions. A good strategy would be to determine the main keyword phrase and google it, to see how long the content in the 3 top SERPs is and make sure yours is longer, more concise and more in-depth. Make sure to add something to that content that others didn’t to make it more valuable to the readers (and the search engines).

Without refuting the above, a good way to lose your reader’s attention is using long paragraphs. Most people SCAN, not read. Short paragraphs encourage reading by being easier on the eyes and are easier to understand.

In the age of smartphones, the average reader’s attention span became even shorter than that of a goldfish. The importance of recapturing the reader’s attention continuously throughout an article became even bigger. Breaking up the text, using subheads, lists, and images will help you keep the readers on the page (and get noticed by search engines).

According to Google’s Matt Cutts, while misspellings are not used as a direct signal in Google’s (over 200 different) rating factors, “reputable sites does tend to spell better than sites with low page rank”. While probably not hurting your ranking, misspellings can hurt your credibility in the eyes of the readers and chances of getting linked to.

Your content is part of your website. Like the latter, every single piece of content should be optimized both for search engines and readers. You can, and should, optimize your content’s meta information like you do for your site. Write unique meta titles and descriptions for each of your content. Same goes for optimizing images and using CTAs. This will increase visibility on SERP and shareability on social networks.

The most unfortunate misconception in the SEO industry, is that a page/site will lose Authority/Page Rank/Trust if directing users to external sites with outbound links, this is utter BS. If your content is only “me talking” and does not link to other content, why would readers and search engines find it credible and authoritative enough to link to you (and rank you higher)? Content that is more well-researched usually cites sources by linking to it. Google also recognizes this as a signal for that site/page credibility and users will more likely trust and share (and link to) this content.

Your content being better than anyone else’s doesn’t mean it will instantly go viral and reach No. 1 ranking on SERPs. Though it’s a more cost-effective way of promoting your content, a great (white hat) SEO strategy takes time. Today, marketers can’t afford to neglect any type of owned, paid or earned media in their strategy. Combining the three will help you attract, convert, nurture and close leads. Find what mix works for you by focusing on your overall marketing goals. Each goal will require a different combination of media, finding the right mix and constantly evaluating and measuring it against set KPIs will help you reach your marketing goals.

Top 7 SEO Tools to Boost Your Content Marketing

To help you avoid making these mistakes, and streamlining your content marketing strategy better with SEO, here are some Tools that will boost your content:

Squirrly is a WordPress SEO plugin which lets you do keyword research right in your post editor.

If you like to write content that’s both SEO and human-friendly, then this tool is for you. It not only let you optimize content, but also lets you measure the success of the content optimized.

Squirrly has a number of tools on its dashboard, but one notable tool which can help boost your content marketing is the Keyword Research Tool.

This tool helps you find the most relevant keywords for your articles. It also finds keywords used by your competition based on the specific keyword you entered.

With those keywords, you can craft winning content that’ll get ranked. Squirrly also shows what phrases are trending, useful for writing sharable content.

Though the Google Keyword Planner tool is mainly associated with PPC and SEO, you can also use it to enhance your content marketing strategy.

Specifically, there are three key features that are germane to content marketers:

Search for new keywords and ad group ideas. This feature is useful for generating content ideas. When you enter a word in the search bar, the tool will generate new keywords from the search. From the new keywords, you can find content ideas that are related to the keyword you entered.

Get search volume for a list of keywords. This feature allows you to examine the popularity of the keyword. Precisely, you can see stats like average monthly searches and the level of competition a keyword has—high, medium, or low (though the level of competition is for PPC only).You can follow the stats to pick keywords that have high search volume and low competition (which are the best keywords to use for effective content marketing).

Multiply keyword list to get new keyword ideas. This feature enables you to create new keyword combinations.It does this by allowing you to enter the keywords into different columns. By this, you’d be able to discover new keyword combinations that you can use as content ideas. This will help you pick long-tail keywords which works best when it comes to content marketing.

Google Trends shows the popularity of a given search term over time; it shows how often people search for a keyword and where they are searching from.

This tool helps you stay ahead in your keyword research; it helps you see which keywords are best for your content strategy and which region to target.

Google Trends has many search-related features which can be useful for content marketers.

These features will help you see where you’re going.

For instance, after doing your keyword research on Keyword Planner, you can run the keyword through Google Trends to see if it’s waning or rising in popularity.

Google Trends shows a list of related search term after entering a keyword; this makes it a breeze to find new content ideas that people are interested in.

For instance, after entering the term “content marketing,” Google Trends suggests the following keywords which also have high search volumes:

Using Google Trends, you can also create a yearly editorial calendar for your content marketing campaign. That’s because Google Trends shows you those events and topics that gain traction at certain times of the year.

While it’s not completely advisable to base your content on trends, Google Trends is a great way to discover what people are talking about in your niche market.

One way of creating great content is to find the most shared content in your niche, follow its structure and try reproducing the same for yourself.

Content Explorer by Ahrefs helps you do just this.

With this tool, you can discover top-performing content in terms of social sharing, get to see the keywords used in the content, and model the same by crafting your own content around that topic.

This will help you come up with content that will outperform the competition or at least produce similar results.

Content Explorer is pretty easy to use: Just enter your keywords into the search bar and the tool will list out the most shared content based on the keyword you entered.

For instance, the screenshot below shows the results for “content marketing.”

It’s not just enough to create content. The content you create should bring you a measurable ROI.

Google Analytics helps you measure the ROI of your content.

But beyond that, you can use Google Analytics for nearly every aspect of content marketing—brainstorming/idea generation, targeting, optimization, testing etc.

For one, you can use GA to see what content your visitors like and then follow through to create more of that kind of content.

You can do this by going to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

The result will look something like this:

Keywordtool.io is a free tool for finding the words that people search for on Google.

The Meltwater Blog

Brand Goodbyes: How to Communicate a Closure

Top NFL Social Media Feeds

5 Common Urgent Issues That Don’t Need to Become a Brand Crisis

The 7 Simple SEO Mistakes That Are Killing Your Content Marketing Strategy

The Gamification of Social Media

Personality-Based Marketing

Social Entrepreneurs: 5 Consumer Brands that Started on Social

PR and Marketing Trends: Navigating Changing Media Landscapes

12 PR Blogs Your Competitors Are Reading

Infographic: PR and Marketing Reporting—Keys to Capturing KPIs

How 5 Fashion Brands Use Social Media

Psychology of Social Media: The Science Behind Why People Share Online