Decent tool, but, in my opinion, not a company you want to partner with!
I do not recommend working with Meltwater. I currently use their Explore tool. While the tool itself is fine, I think the company's …
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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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
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
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 Competitors
Meltwater Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
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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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!
- 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
(1-4 of 4)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 20, 2021
Beware of Hidden Contract Terms like Auto-renewal Clauses and Built-in Price Increases.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Meltwater as a News Aggregator tool and as a social media intelligence tool to a lesser degree. It helps business leaders to stay on top of industry news through a daily newsletter, and it allows the Marketing Department to monitor public sentiment of the brand.
- 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.
- None
- Negative Impact. Very little value provided at a high cost.
Meltwater is the most expensive option with the worst customer service. Terrible experience.
5
Management roles
- Company news sentiment monitoring
- Following industry news
- Social Media sentiment monitoring
- Tracking PR campaign performance
- Tracking Social Media Campaigns performance
- None
- None, we are stopping its use as soon as possible
Not Sure
- Product Features
- Product Usability
The decision was made by someone who has since left the company. We inherited the tool and decided to keep it because the sales team showed us lots of promising features that would had allowed us to monitor the competitive landscape quite easily. After using the tool for a few months, we lost confidence in it.
I would had ensured having a trial period with a money back guarantee to ensure satisfaction with the product before being on the hook for a long time period. I would had also focused on reducing the price drastically and evaluating alternatives.
No, suppliers should provide quality support to all users and not just those who pay extra for it.
No
No, never happened. Support offered was always subpar.
- None
- Any minor task becomes painful to complete
£4,000 for Meltwater Regular and Premium Social Package.
Don't waste your time. Find a different provider. If you still want to continue with the folly of working with Meltwater, then be extra careful when reading the contract terms as they tend to sneak autorenewal clauses and automatic price increases into the Terms of Service which are only referenced on the contract, but not shown.
April 12, 2018
Meltwater Gets the Job Done Well
Our Public Relations Division uses Meltwater to select media outlets and journalists for public relations efforts across the U.S. We've found their database to be very robust and easy to search. When we find potential influencers, it's easy to add them to a list. Also, Meltwater makes vetting journalists easy - when you select the journalist, the software pulls up recent articles to help ensure he/she is writing about subjects relevant to what we're pitching. One of the greatest features of Meltwater is that for some contacts, Meltwater provides information regarding how to pronounce the influencer's name and on how he/she prefers to be contacted/
Additionally, we use Meltwater to monitor media mentions of our clients and to research industry trends and topics. Their monitoring system catches twice as much as our previous PR software did, which is extremely helpful. Additionally, Meltwater's system consistently provides us with more data (reach, AVE, etc.) than our previous PR software.
Finally, Meltwater's customer service is outstanding. From their sales reps who are truly helpful instead of pushy to their account services team, Meltwater sets the standard. They are responsive, efficient, and friendly. Love their team!
- 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.
- This software has literally saved me countless hours of research. I find contacts I need quickly, and they pull the data on the media hits in for me quickly. There are not words to describe how valuable this is to my team.
Meltwater is a far better solution for us. They are less expensive, their software is faster, their dashboards and user interface are easier to navigate, their data is more complete, and their customer service is far superior.
3
Public relations and marketing
We do not have any in-house support for Meltwater.
- We used Meltwater's influencer database to target reporters across the U.S. to announce the opening of a community of high-tech, low-barrier tiny homes in Tallahassee, Florida. We scored national coverage as a result.
- We used Meltwater's monitoring platform to track earned media stories of a national association in order to prove ROI to the client and retain the contract.
- We used Meltwater's monitoring platform to showcase our PR team's listening ability for a tourism client pitch. We won the contract.
- Meltwater continues to improve and evolve to meet our needs, and that was unexpected given our past experience with Cision.
- Our support team at Meltwater has consistently helped us brainstorm and set up searches to use in both media pitches and new client pitches. They function as an extension of our team, and that's incredibly valuable to our small agency.
- The social listening component from Meltwater has proved to be a time-saver when building PR reports. Instead of having to rely on our Digital Division's team to locate social mentions from media outlets through Sprout, I can pull them myself in Meltwater.
- We hope to use their social influencer database in the next 6 months.
Yes
Cision. We got rid of Cision because their monitoring platform consistently missed stories we'd earned in the media, making reporting to our client nearly impossible. Additionally, Cision's customer support was absolutely abysmal. The only person who ever acknowledged there was an issue and tried to help resolve it was the sales specialist tasked with getting us to renew. We had a 30 minute conversation where I walked her through my struggles, and she immediately saw that the platform wasn't working for us. She reached out to the internal team, and even she was unable to get any help. I liked her a lot and wanted to be able to renew just to help her, but the poor performance and poor customer support simply made Cision a hindrance more than a help.
- Price
- Product Usability
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Meltwater gave us a 2-week trial period so that we could put it head-to-head against Cision. Meltwater was easier to use, and it consistently found media mentions that Cision missed. Additionally, our sales rep, Lindsay, was incredibly helpful. She believed in her product but wanted to be sure that it actually worked for us. I felt like she cared about helping us find a solution, not like she was just trying to get me to sign a contract.
I wouldn't change a thing.
No
I wanted to add the main news desk emails to a media distribution list, but I couldn't figure out how to do it quickly and easily. There was a manual upload process, where I could do it one-by-one, but I wanted to just do an import. When I emailed my rep to ask her if this was possible, she replied and asked me to send her my list of emails and asked which list I wanted them added to. She was going to manually add each email to the distribution list. She's also offered to build a media list for me if she knows I'm pressed for time. That's the kind of service Meltwater provides, and Jacy is an incredible asset to their team.
- Media monitoring
- Influencer searches
- Setting up dashboards
- None, but perhaps the most complex (because it takes more than two steps) is wire distribution. But even that is only complex for the initial set up. Once the client distribution account is set up, it's an insanely easy thing to do.
Yes
This is the one area where I think Meltwater falls short. I find their app crashes a lot and requires me to uninstall and then reinstall to get it to work again.
February 16, 2016
Meltwater Buzz so easy a baby could do it.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used Buzz at Fleishman to monitor conversations about a client. When we left Radian6 looking for a cheaper option we turned to Buzz. Any client that signed on for social media monitoring, we used Buzz.
- It captures most of the mentions on social media sites.
- Meltwater reps are really helpful with any issues you encounter.
- Buzz is user friendly
- Difficult to create a share of voice for more than two brands. you have to set up competitors on a different seat which takes up space allotted for clients. Then you're only allowed to compare two at a time.
- Difficult to dig deep into the data.
- Radian6 allows you to pick up mentions in mainstream news and compare it to what you see in social media while Meltwater Buzz only looks at social media.
- Hard to filter out certain hits and find exactly what you're looking for.
- Charts aren't as interactive as Radian6. All charts are already created for you. You have no choice on what you want to see and how you want to see it.
- The sentiment people have on the brand. Is the correct message reaching the right audience.
- Is there an increase in the amount of mentions the brand/client is getting
For accurate and in-depth info, I would go with another product. If i'm looking for some quick, general information, easy to use tool I'd consider Buzz
3
They're traditional account leads with an interest in digital/social work
1
There are no real skills required. Meltwater Buzz helps you build your profile and if you just can't get it you can always call your rep & they're happy to help.
- Used to monitor daily mentions of clients.
- Used to determine influencers
- Used to monitor any crisis situation
- We haven't
- n/a
- n/a
- We'll probably use it to just skim digital mentions. We probably won't use it when needing to do a deep dive into information
We used Radian6.
- Vendor implemented
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
Yes. It's a very easy program.
October 30, 2014
A good social tool, but could be improved with some enhancements
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We currently use Meltwater Buzz to schedule content on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, moderate and respond to posts and comments on these channels and also to listen to conversations concerning our organisation across social and blogging channels.
- Great scheduling calendar allowing for easy planning of posts. Allows you to create shortened links that can be tracked for analysis later on.
- Engage Inbox is helpful in keeping on top of and assigning tasks to others in a team to ensure appropriate, timely responses are posted to all enquiries.
- Reporting on both listening, and engagement is quite good providing the ability to filter by date, keyword or author.
- Allows for social CRM which tracks user sentiment, conversations and influence rating.
- Not all channels can be scheduled through this platform which means more manual work elsewhere. Currently only Facebook and Twitter posts can be scheduled through Meltwater Buzz.
- Sentiment is often recorded as neutral when it really should be. This means lots of manual changing needs to be done in order to gather accurate stats.
- Listening is based on keyword, although even when exclusion are included, quite a lot of irrelevant mentions get through again requiring manual intervention.
- It has had the impact of an increased level of customer service
- It has helped grow our social media channels through listening and analysis
- It has made our processes around social media more efficient
I have only ever used Hootsuite previously for social media planning and scheduling but that did not allow for listening or analysis options so can't really be compared.
5
Social Media manager schedules and monitors posts, uses reporting functions for analysis, and assigns tasks to customer service team.
Customer service team check workflow and respond to enquiries.
Media team schedule and monitor news items
Other managers monitor and use reporting functions
Customer service team check workflow and respond to enquiries.
Media team schedule and monitor news items
Other managers monitor and use reporting functions
1
A small amount of technical skill is needed in navigating and understanding the functions or each area, but once established this is not difficult.
- Social media listening
- Social media engagement
- Social media reporting
- Listening has provided insights for topics of interest to our audience
- Social CRM
- Competitor analysis
Not Sure
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
The product was chosen prior to me being in this role, so I did not have a say in choosing it. I will be looking at alternatives next time the contract is up. I will look at other products that offer similar tools and make a judgement based on features vs cost and weigh up the importance elf each element.