Bucknell University

The Challenge: Understanding Brand Perception Across a Fragmented Digital Landscape

Before Meltwater, Bucknell University faced the complex challenge of finding and understanding audience perception across media coverage, social media conversations, and LLM outputs.

The Media Relations team needed a reliable way to not only track and measure PR impact, but also demonstrate ROI to university leadership. Meanwhile, the Digital Marketing team needed a way to navigate a new reputation landscape shaped by Reddit and AI models.

“Meltwater unlocks that untouchable information,” says Stevie Blyler, Digital Marketing Strategist at Bucknell University. “Being able to know what prompts we're showing up for is huge for us, and so is being able to grow strategy around what people are actually saying about our brand, not what we think they're saying.”

Without a centralized platform, teams were manually compiling data across multiple spreadsheets. The process was time-consuming and ineffective for connecting PR, marketing, and AI visibility into a cohesive strategy.

The Solution: Unifying Media Intelligence and AI Visibility with Meltwater

Bucknell turned to Meltwater for its advanced data infrastructure that consolidates media monitoring, social listening, analytics, and AI visibility tracking into a single platform. 

Using Media Intelligence, the Media Relations team can now instantly generate analytics reports. With less time spent on gathering metrics, the team has more time to focus on building and executing strategic communications. “It literally is the touch of a button,” says Ferlazzo. “Previously, it took me two or three weeks to pull those analytics numbers.”

Bucknell also uses Meltwater to monitor conversations about the university across digital platforms, including Reddit where prospective students actively discuss admissions decisions and campus experiences.

In one instance, Meltwater surfaced a Reddit conversation from prospective students who were confused by an admissions email sent to waitlisted applicants. What could have remained an unseen point of friction was immediately brought to the Digital Marketing team's attention through a real-time Slack alert. Acting quickly, they identified the problem, partnered with admissions to pause the communication, and revised the messaging before re-sending it. By catching the issue early, Bucknell was able to improve clarity for prospective students and prevent a potentially widespread communications problem from impacting enrollment numbers.

“Meltwater reveals what people are actually saying about our brand, where they're saying it, and how it's all connected, which means that everyone on our team can create their strategies and interconnect them to build something really powerful,” Blyler says.

The university has since used Meltwater to build a broader Reddit engagement strategy. With always-on monitoring and alerts, admissions counselors and student ambassadors can proactively participate in conversations and provide value to prospective students.

And on the LLM front, Bucknell uses GenAI Lens to better understand how its programs and reputation appear within AI-generated responses. By monitoring prompts related to high-interest topics like engineering, management education, and student experiences, the university is developing intentional strategies to strengthen AI visibility and brand positioning.

The Results: International Media Placements Up 44% Year Over Year

With Meltwater’s consolidated capabilities, Bucknell transformed how its teams measure and act on brand perception across media and digital platforms.

“Rather than taking months to finish a project, I just hop in and the information’s all there,” says Blyler. “I quickly get the information I need so that I can build strategy rather than compile data.”

Bucknell also saw measurable gains in visibility. After implementing Meltwater, the university experienced a 44% increase in international media placements year over year, coinciding with a record incoming class and a rise in international student enrollment.

Along with gaining greater visibility into how its brand is discussed and amplified online, Bucknell has also used Meltwater to strengthen collaboration across communications, admissions, advancement, and athletics departments. These teams now strategize around the centralized view of audience sentiment, media performance, and AI visibility.

Bucknell University uses Meltwater to turn media, social, and AI intelligence into actionable strategy. Learn how Meltwater can help your organization better understand audience perception, strengthen brand reputation, and connect communications efforts to measurable impact with a personalized demo.