Overview
What is Meltwater?
Meltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from…
TrustRadius Insights
Saves time on media relations, but shouldn't be depended on completely
Yes and No
An All-In-One Platform That Serves All Engagement Needs
A decent starter media monitoring tool, but not suitable for sophisticated uses
Meltwater helps with media relations and media monitoring
Social listening game changer
We've been utilising Meltwater's core media intelligence and monitoring platform for years and we're big fans!
The best platform to easily identify influencers
Best in Class Suite of Products
Idea Generator, Trend Mapper and Media Compass: How we use meltwater
Jordan's Meltwater Review
Expensive but efficient
For tracking media hits, Meltwater [Media Intelligence Platform] is a hit!
Good Value for the Price
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Meltwater?
Meltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor…
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Brandwatch?
Brandwatch, from Cision (acquired February 2021) is an enterprise social intelligence platform that is designed to allow brands to listen and analyze online conversation to extract meaningful insights, inform their business decisions and understand more about the return on their marketing spend.
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What is Meltwater?
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Reviews and Ratings
(164)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Meltwater has proven to be a versatile platform for a wide range of use cases, as reported by its users. Organizations have relied on Meltwater for media monitoring, allowing them to track media mentions for their own organization, competitors, and the industry as a whole. By utilizing keywords and sentiment analysis, users have been able to stay up-to-date on specific topics of interest, such as technological advancements or industry sentiment. Meltwater's comprehensive coverage has also allowed users to identify placements on obscure trade or science sites that don't show up in traditional search engines' alerts.
Additionally, Meltwater has served as an all-in-one solution for various marketing and communication needs. Users have utilized the platform for social listening, content management, reporting, public relations, influencer relations, and even newsletter distribution. The platform's ability to compile targeted media distribution lists has proved valuable for corporate PR efforts, while the clipping component has helped users generate comprehensive reports by compiling relevant clips. The user-friendly interface and extensive media contacts database have made Meltwater a go-to choice for organizations looking to streamline their marketing and communications efforts.
Furthermore, Meltwater has played a crucial role in enhancing brand presence and engagement on social media platforms. By utilizing Meltwater Buzz, organizations have been able to listen and evaluate diverse audiences across different regions and cultures. The scheduling capabilities have allowed users to plan and promote events effectively while the tool's social listening capabilities have facilitated tracking social mentions and engaging with a large social audience. Moreover, Meltwater's Media Intelligence Platform has provided valuable insights into influencer marketing efforts with its extensive influencer database.
Despite some users experiencing glitches or dissatisfaction after prolonged use, Meltwater has received positive recommendations from customers who appreciate its continually improving services. It has been praised as a great tool for finding influencers and managing influencer marketing efforts efficiently. Educational institutions have utilized Meltwater to educate students on digital analytics and monitoring online conversations, further highlighting its versatility. Organizations across industries have found Meltwater useful for monitoring media coverage, tracking online presence, compiling comprehensive reports, and staying updated on trends and topics of interest. Overall, Meltwater's Media Intelligence Platform has proven to be an indispensable tool for media research, outreach, distribution, and monitoring.
Convenient Email Reports: Users appreciate the convenience of receiving morning and afternoon media monitoring reports via email, saving them time and ensuring they are always informed about mentions of their company or competitors in the news. This feature has been praised by many reviewers.
Efficient Content Curation: The ability to archive relevant stories directly from the monitoring report and easily add them to company newsletters is highly valued. It streamlines the process of curating content for newsletters, making it more efficient for users. Many reviewers have found this feature beneficial.
Customizable Monitoring and Automated Newsletters: Users find it beneficial to be able to customize the frequency of media monitoring reports and set up automatic newsletters based on archived stories. This flexibility allows them to tailor the monitoring to their specific needs and automate their content distribution. Several reviewers have expressed appreciation for this customizable and automated feature.
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Limited database coverage: Some users have mentioned that Meltwater's database lacks coverage of non-traditional media sources such as bloggers and social media influencers, which are important for picking up niche content.
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Disjointed experience with integration: Several users have found that the platform does not seamlessly integrate with the Engage platform, leading to a disjointed user experience when using both tools.
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Expensive for non-profits: Some users feel that Meltwater is expensive for non-profit organizations, making it less accessible for those with limited budgets.
Users commonly recommend the following when using Linkfluence:
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Utilize training sessions: Joining training sessions offered by Linkfluence is advised to better understand how to effectively use the tool. This recommendation highlights the importance of investing time in learning the features and functionalities of Linkfluence.
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Define scope and choose keywords wisely: Users suggest defining the scope of use and selecting keywords carefully to avoid getting lost in the data. By narrowing down the focus and choosing relevant keywords, users can reduce noise and increase the meaningfulness of their analysis.
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Configure dashboards effectively: Users emphasize spending enough time on configuring dashboards in Linkfluence, especially when choosing keywords. This recommendation aims to reduce irrelevant information and enhance the accuracy of social media analysis.
By following these recommendations, users can make better use of Linkfluence's social listening capabilities, gain deeper insights, and improve their monitoring and analytic efforts.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(26-50 of 71)Meltwater was the game-changer for my company.
- You can easily find the right journalist at the right publication that will help your company grow.
- The automated outreach tool (that is connected to the database) makes outreach fast and easy.
- Big win for me was Meltwater's account team. They helped me every step of the way, not just with tactics but big picture strategy.
- Really none that I see. I love the software and services.
Meltwater will give any price to make a sale, then hooks users into misleading auto-renewal terms
- There are few applications that the platform performs exceptionally well above and beyond what is possible through SEO and general searches through online databases.
- The platform is not user friendly, and the company lacked training for users.
- Finding media contacts.
- News in one place.
- Quick response from their team when issues arise.
- Implementation process.
- Training.
Businesses who want to monitor competitor tracking and mentions.
- Easy to find new influencers.
- Provides easy-to-use tags for updating status of current relationships.
- Influencer profile count is set at 50 for basic account, would like to have much more.
- Very expensive compared to beginner programs like Mention or Hootsuite.
- Setup of social profiles and adding users is a quick process that was easy to understand without any formal training or directions.
- Scheduling content across social platforms is straightforward and utilizes a drag and drop option, which is quick and effective.
- Technical support can be reached within the software, so putting in a request ticket from multiple users is helpful.
- Software is glitchy when it comes to actions taken on native (i.e., liking posts) and having them register on Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform promptly. This made for a lot of "double-tapping" from our team for engagement.
- The reps for Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform are not helpful and continued to be pushy about selling more services, getting a contract renewal, and contacting team members that were not the point of contact.
- The number of users for the cost you pay is limited. With other services, the number of seats is usually enough, but with Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform, it was constantly "for another $1000, here's another user" even though the software cost was well above competitors.
Media Analysis Comes With A High Price
- The publications pulled are relatively good.
- There is limited stock noise that pulls through.
- Meltwater is a media intelligence platform based on keywords and Boolean search strings that most media analytics professionals in Public Relations are familiar with. It does do a good job of pulling in quality publications, but the UI and platform restrictions are so frustrating. You cannot overwrite the boolean like many other providers, you have a search cap limit as well as a metric limit on a particular dashboard, and the reports are not interactive.
- You cannot overwrite the Boolean.
- The UI is not visually appealing and there are many restrictions.
- Easy to learn and use
- Clear and customizable graphs for analytics reports
- Customer service is top-notch
- None to speak of at the time of submitting the review
Deceptive auto-renewal technique
- Interaface is very user-friendly
- Dashboard
- Nothing More...
- Customer Service
- Terms & Conditions
- Search Engine
Meltwater: Smart Media Monitoring
- Assesses the scale of an event: When there is a major event that earns media, especially national media we need to know how large the story is going to get. We are able to aggregate coverage across the nation to determine the level of effort we will need to push back or shape a particular story. This is a valuable insight that allows us to prioritize our efforts.
- Clips: We need to know what is being said about our industry at all times. Meltwater allows us to have real-time insight on mentions and stories that are being published across the nation. We are able to share this content with our subject matter experts daily who alert the communicators of potential issues. This content also helps us proactively create content.
- Monitors social: We need to know what is being said about our industry on social media, particularly important for our industry as we operate in communities small and large across the nation. Meltwater allows us to aggregate the thousands of messages and mentions we receive so that we can focus on monitoring those accounts that have a higher authority and influence level.
- Logins: If you have more than one product from Meltwater you have to login into different portals. Not a huge deal except I cannot save my password for each one because my computer recognizes both portals as the same website, so if the passwords vary it won't save them.
- Dashboard: There could be more modules to choose from that could enhance the reporting capabilities.
- Add-ons: I know it is the name of the game but there are a lot of added paid features. Meltwater could benefit from beefing up their basic package with more features for their users.
Meltwater is a helpful platform for businesses
- Building dashboards is very simple
- Communicating with the Meltwater support team is easy
- Monitoring social channels and media channels is simple
- More reporting functions for growth management on social channels
- Better auto identity of positive and negative sentiment
- Cheaper pricing for buying the whole monitoring and social planning packaging
Keeping track of our coverage!
- Great customer service, staff are very knowledgeable and helpful.
- The platform saves us a lot of time and energy by creatively organizing our contacts so we can quickly and easily send releases.
- We appreciate the platform staying updated and relevant, constantly keeping it user-friendly and to fit our organization's needs.
- We would love to be able to "select all" when we send releases to our contacts. We have so many groups and currently have to check off each one.
I love Meltwater for Media Tracking!
- Tracks media mentions
- Tracks social media
- Exports journalists and sources
- The ability to edit things within the platform. I have to export all my searches, which is cumbersome
Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform - User-Friendly
- The dashboards make it really easy to present data with easily digestible visuals.
- The ability to save dashboard settings makes it easy for us to pull reports on a day to day basis.
- Allows us to monitor multiple partners in the same platform.
- Include more non-traditional media contacts in the media contact database.
- We also use the Engage platform - it would make it simpler if both Engage and Intelligence had a more similar layout or if they mirrored eachother in some way. They seem like two completely separate entities.
- The Sentiment reported through Intelligence isn't always accurate. One of our partner's names is a common last name and people often tag them on social, however it is completely unrelated to our partner. When this is reported as negative, we have to manually adjust.
Meltwater is Drastically Better than Cision
- It captures and lets us clip broadcast mentions simply and efficiently, whereas other tools are not as accurate and easy to use.
- The customer support is great, the team is responsive and helps find a solution to any issues you run into.
- The interface is easy to use and is pretty intuitive. It is easy to catch on to and cuts the time it takes to do monitoring a reporting in half.
- The media influencer database should include more non-traditional media members including bloggers and social media influencers as these are the types of contacts that are more likely to pick up niche content.
- The platform does not play super seamlessly with the Engage platform making the experience using both a bit disjointed.
- I wish the number of inputs for the Share a Voice dashboard widget could be larger.
User-Friendly Platform, Customer Service & Product Updates Make for a Great Expereince
- The Meltwater platform is extremely user-friendly. I like the simplicity of the navigation, layout and search functions.
- The search capabilities are great. I can narrow my search of a particular media contact down to topic, location and event see previous published works to determine if they're a relevant source to our efforts.
- We utilize the Dashboard and widgets within them daily. We love to see our potential reach, estimated ad value, content stream, etc. It really shows us in real time that our efforts are achieving real results.
- The ability to create more searches without added cost would be nice. Or the ability to freeze/hold searches in order to add more without adding to total... we have annual events that we only track for a certain amount of time, so I'm having to save those search terms and delete them in order for us to track new things that are upcoming.
- When sending an alert/release through outreach, I wish there was a way when selecting recipients, to see and select individual names from saved lists (without having to know the name). Sometimes we have something to send out that we want to send to a few specific people from several lists. We end up having to go back to saved lists, selecting those people and creating an entirely new list, which we end up deleting because it's never always the same people.
Meltwater Gets the Job Done Well
- Customer Service
- Media list building
- Media monitoring
- Meltwater seems to miss the smaller outlets we're pitching in smaller media markets. However, every time I ask them to add the outlet into their system, they get it done.
Stay far away if you're looking for reliable broadcast monitoring
- Social media monitoring
- Online news monitoring
- Poor customer support
- Service is not as described by sales team
- Very poor broadcast monitoring
- Ineffective software
- We didn't identify anything particularly distinctive about the Meltwater solution, and the difficulty of doing business with them far outweighs any potential benefits.
- The results were cluttered and the search process was not intuitive.
Meltwater customer service is top notch
- Keyword searches
- Influencer searches
- Creating lists
- When searching keywords, deeper searches could be helpful. Not just the top publications.
- Updating the database more frequently when editors change publications or positions. I want to know that I can trust that I am sending my pitches to the correct people.
Meltwater does the trick!
- Keyword Search - We are able to find who has recently written about a topic. This allows us to target those who have been recently interested in what we are writing about in our release. It is also a way for us to expand our contact list to reach people who may be writing outside of their normal beat/genre.
- Search Function - We take advantage of several saved searches that track media mentions. This uses boolean logic to get us the exact results we are looking for. The search function is also great for searching for mentions of our competitors, narrowing our search to a specific product we may have done a campaign on or a more broad topic outside of our company alone.
- Reporting - Meltwater allows us to set up our own customized reports that are emailed to us on a regular basis that we request.
- Dashboard - Each user is able to set up a dashboard (homepage) for the platform with the reporting functions that are specific to what we are interested in or need to be aware of. This is a great day-to-day update of our media mentions.
- Their tracking system for media mentions isn't perfect - we have stumbled across several posts mentioning our company/product that were not picked up by the platform. While frustrating, we send these URLs to our rep and their tech team ensures that that website will be monitored moving forward.
Sending out press releases is not only easy, but there is also great value in the ability to reach a wider journalist and editor base.
A list of media contacts is very beneficial for a search of current employees when looking for a contact to reach out to. This allows us to reach out to new contacts to form a relationship with.
Excellent media platform that is evolving to new interface
- Large database of news outlets, easy to search on specific topics.
- Large database of news media, makes finding relevant reporters easy.
- Search capabilities robust.
- Interface for news release layout and distribution works, but needs to be improved.
- New interface remedies some of these problems, but needs to be fixed/tweaked to be usable for a large organization such as ours.
Meltwater review!
- Meltwater churns out visually accurate and pleasing graphs that correspond with the numbers shown in our reports.
- When you pair key words correctly, Meltwater is able to capture all relevant media/press mentions and makes our lives much easier.
- The support that the Meltwater team provides whenever we have questions can't go unrecognized. They are always super quick and responsive to our needs.
- Some articles do fall through the cracks on occasion and we wish Meltwater would catch those articles.
- The impression numbers that Meltwater generations sometimes seem inflated and we'd like more accurate numbers, if possible.
- Meltwater's broadcast search feature is great, but we would love for there to be a functionality where we can download the audio/press clips that mention us/our work.
Meltwater Experience Review
- Timely Analytics- I have email alerts notifying me of daily analytics.
- Ease of connecting with key influencers in the space.
- Track against competitors.
- More social media capabilities-connecting and monitoring more platforms.
Meltwater for Press Release
- Easy-to-reach customer support
- Large database of journalists
- Emails are easy to create and distribute
- The formatting can be difficult to match branding standards
- Last year, there were journalists still in the system who didn't want to be so they would reply angrily
- It's expensive for non-profits
Meltwater - Good for the Price
- Up to date contact information. It is actually relevant and active info, not always the case with others.
- The user interface is better than most tools. While not perfect, it's pretty easy to figure out how to get what you want.
- Their support is excellent. Anytime I've needed help I can call, but better than this, they proactively call and assist.
- Their media monitoring leaves a little to be desired. I find Google Alerts gets as much as they do.
- I wish I could use this more as a CRM but the only thing you can do is create lists and simple notes of your contacts.
- They offer bulk emailing but it's very easy for a recipient to know if they are part of a mass email. Mass emails are not encouraged anyway but this is one of their "selling features."