Likelihood to Recommend We are highly satisfied with this tool and according to me, it is favorable in all aspects for the people that want to strengthen their links with the Publics either internal or external. It has the capability to manage relations and disseminates information to the business community. But it is not suitable when it comes to reports and its customer service.
Read full review Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
Read full review Pros Proofing - Business Wire proofs every single release with great precision, and calls you to let you know if they think anything looks like it might be a typo. They are extremely thorough and also check with you about the way you want images or video laid out with the release so that the final presentation is perfect. Customer Service - Business Wire has some of the best customer service I've ever experienced. They are available 24 hours a day, and always have someone manning the phones to answer your questions, proof releases, and make sure your release gets across the wire at the right time. Interface - The Business Wire site is very easy to use, and saves previously used information and images like logos. This is standard for most wire services, but Business Wire does a good job as well. Reach - BW reaches a very wide range of outlets, and its relationships with VentureBeat, Yahoo! and MarketWatch are great. Clients really appreciate seeing their releases in those publications. Read full review Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list. Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example). Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example. Read full review Cons There have been a few times when a minor grammatical error has slipped by myself as well as the copy editors but it's very rare for this to happen. The cost can get a bit high if your press release is long (as price is partially dictated by length) or if you want to add a logo, image, infographic, etc. Read full review The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation. Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications. TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It's the best service we have used. We have tried a competitor and everyone prefers Business Wire.
Read full review Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
Read full review Usability I gave it this rating because the Business Wire website is very user-friendly. Being able to navigate the platform on my own without technical assistance made it possible for me to quickly and easily submit news release distributions, which can be critical at times, such as during hurricane season when we need to get information out to the news media and our customers quickly.
Cindy Arco Public Relations Manager, Florida Region
Read full review Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
Read full review Support Rating The team members are very quick to respond and do their absolute best to help resolve issues quickly. I also like that I can have one of them proofread my press releases before they are distributed. It always helps to have another set of eyes on the content. There have been a few times that they've caught an error that nobody else did so it's worth the extra couple minutes that it takes!
Read full review Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
Read full review In-Person Training Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
Read full review Online Training Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
Read full review Implementation Rating Business Wire is very easy to implement. This isn't a requirement, but it's recommended that you begin to set up saved distributions for different clients so that you don't have to start over from scratch. Rather than doing all this work on the front end, you can just do it as you send out your first piece of news for each client.
Read full review You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I like both services very much, but I prefer the topics, trends, and companies that Business Wire prioritizes. I also like the resources that Business Wire offers such as the tools under the "education" tab.
PR Newswire doesn't quite offer the same resources. Overall, I prefer Business Wire over
PR Newswire . I have not tried other similar services.
Read full review I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
Read full review Return on Investment Staying updated on business news in my team's industry Helps my team generate story ideas for our publication, allowing us to do our jobs more efficiently Read full review As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us. We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients. Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well. Read full review ScreenShots