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Meltwater

Meltwater

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…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Meltwater has proven to be a versatile platform for a wide range of use cases, as reported by its users. Organizations have relied on …
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Yes and No

7 out of 10
July 08, 2022
Incentivized
I use the platform for media monitoring and reporting. It allows me to see the coverage of stories created by the University to meet KPIs …
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Expensive but efficient

6 out of 10
December 01, 2021
Incentivized
We use Meltwater [Media Intelligence Platform] as a search and monitoring tool within our marketing department. It allows us to see when …
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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

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Pricing

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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
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.meltwater.com/en/pricing

Offerings

  • 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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Product Details

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 Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)

Meltwater Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cision Communications Cloud, Agility PR Solutions, and Mention are common alternatives for Meltwater.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 7.5.

The most common users of Meltwater are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(164)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

(1-25 of 71)
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Julie Collins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Robust data sources
  • Easy to build queries
  • Nice visual representations of mentions/conversations
  • In my opinion, too expensive
  • In my opinion, contracts that lack transparency and are unfavorable to customers
  • In my experience, sales reps are not responsive
July 08, 2022

Yes and No

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Picks up radio interviews
  • Date range options are good
  • Media contacts are handy
  • There are limitations on the product, for example only 100 items in a PDF. Our stories regularly record more than 100 hits.
  • It misses items if the name of the institution is not said out loud, but is included in the story, as in supers in a TV story.
  • It sends repeated versions of the same radio interview at various time intervals
  • There are no report options that include everything I want in a report
Maya DeJoie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Social listening, their Explore tool provides us with access to a variety of analytics that gives us a solid snapshot of trending narratives across news and social media.
  • They have a variety of analytics that help diversify the metrics we report to clients.
  • Community management is made feasible and effective through the Engage tool.
  • They are actively working through enhancing their reporting templates so they are easier to use.
  • They are adding new tools that enhance analytics to better understand different audiences following a need for more audience insights.
  • The platform can feel like a learning curve with lots of different ways to get analytics, but they have worked to divide tools to have a particular focus.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • I think one of the biggest misses is that the media database isn't as up-to-date as it could be. It often has outdated information on journalists who have changed roles, for example.
  • When you search for coverage, it can be difficult to pinpoint only the relevant stories you need. I think this could be improved.
  • It does A LOT of things - but I don't even understand all it does. I feel as though it could be made easier to use or at least more clear about the way the layout is so you had a better understanding of what it can do.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The Meltwater Academy
  • Quick customer service
  • Expert on-boarding representatives
  • Quick search results
  • Monitoring mentions
  • It takes a while to become proficient on this platform
  • Too many a la carte items for the sales teams, which starts to price out the client
  • Add more courses in the Academy
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Automated media monitoring newsletters
  • An intuitive graphical user interface
  • Regularly updated with new features
  • Good customer support
  • The AI for selecting stories to include in the newsletter can be refined
  • Easy to provide feedback to feed into the selection algorithm should be enabled on a per article basis
  • Make the advanced search more intuitive to use.
Kristen M. Kirst | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Social Media monitoring.
  • Media monitoring allows us to quickly and easily see mentions in local, regional, and national media.
  • Build focused topic lists so that we can pinpoint media outlets and writers based upon key priorities and initiatives we want to promote.
  • Broadcast media, we would prefer to use one platform however currently Meltwater does not have all of the features we need/want and have had to also secure TVEyes to support.
December 01, 2021

Expensive but efficient

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The account support has always been great. Technically & for best practices.
  • Media contact lists and reports are good.
  • Instant alerts for articles & social media hits.
  • The platform is a bit complicated to navigate. It takes quite some time to learn and it can be frustrating and time consuming.
  • Very expensive.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Media tracking and tagging
  • Media contact database
  • It's not the most user-friendly platform I've ever used from a UX/UI perspective.
  • The media contact database could use some more consistent updating.
  • Sometimes its tracking does not track certain TV stations' or news outlets' media hits.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Provide reporter contact information
  • Instant alerts for earned media and social media
  • Daily or weekly newsletters on a specific topic delivered directly to inbox
  • 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.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The user interface is fairly intuitive and easy to navigate
  • Reports are impressive
  • Engaging the customer support team is fairly simple when needed
  • Whatever algorithm they use to automatically apply the sentiment to media coverage needs serious adjustment.
  • It seems like Meltwater is a sales organization that offers media monitoring. [In my experience,] I've never used a product that offers so many features as upsell opportunities.
  • Speaking of sales, [I believe] the front-line salespeople at Meltwater are the absolute worst. [I feel] I'd rather deal with a sleazy used car salesman in a cheap suit at a sketchy roadside lot than a hyper-aggressive, sell-anything-and-everything-at-all-costs Meltwater salesperson. [In my experience,] the salespeople we worked with were so aggressive that they bordered on sociopathic.
Jackie Beckwith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Track and deliver metrics
  • Provide access to reporters
  • Great user design or UX
  • Organize identical headlines into one item with a dropdown option for source
  • Dashboard creation isn't instinctual to me
  • Dynamic clean-up of media lists when reporters move jobs, retire, etc.
Aaron Metcalfe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Nothing
  • Nothing
  • Nothing
  • [In my opinion,] it's not a very good at doing what they promise.
  • It's not a very user-friendly program; [feels] convoluted.
  • Customer service is sub-par.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Media Tracking: As a PR firm, we rely on [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] to track media hits for our clients.
  • Media Database: We use [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] to track down specific media contacts, in both national and local contexts.
  • The user interface for their media database is cumbersome, and it can be time-consuming to find specific contacts.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Nothing
  • Big learning curve for minimal results with dashboards, filters and reports.
  • Very expensive for what it offers.
  • Appalling customer service.
  • Too many account limitations even with an expensive package.
  • Difficult to customize properly.
  • Irrelevant content is hard to filter out.
  • Shady business practices.
August 19, 2021

Meltwater Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Meltwater has a good reach and makes it easy to add new media sources if they do not pick up brand mentions natively.
  • The account support has always been good with Meltwater and we can typically resolve problems quickly.
  • Meltwater has an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to get started.
  • It would be nice to have more customization available with the dashboards and other widgets.
  • I recently learned that you can create influencer lists from the general search results. It would be helpful to make that more clear for users.
  • I wish there was an easier way to set up the boolean searches. Account managers are great to help but it seems like there has to be a way to make it easy for novices to get a search set up correctly.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Right now it does nothing well and support has refused to help us.
  • The filters do not work against the numerous market research reports.
  • The tool does not capture media from the industry we are in. We are seeing major gaps in what it should catch versus what it is actually capturing.
  • The support is really horrible. The very first thing our customer service rep said to us was that he had to support over 80 clients and that we would not get any of his time. Well, he was right!
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