TrustRadius Insights for Meltwater are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
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.
We use it for community search, so we run a query for Reddit forums or X feeds around topics our audience is talking about.
Pros
Detailed searches.
Email notifications of new Reddit feeds.
Easy to use interface.
Cons
Some AI incorporation.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is great for getting real-time notifications for keywords and topics, especially when something new has been discussed and you are looking for community insights.
Meltwater has definitely grown as a service provider, providing more features than it has in the past. I have been able to link certain notifications directly to a teams channel to push out alerts faster without having to use manual time to disseminate information. From Meltwaters explore function, I was able to quickly pick up on activity from a competitor that showed they were attempting to increase their online reputation score. Meltwater also notified me of an increase in media mentions (which I had noticed before, and decided to test if Meltwater would also pick up on it), and it was a good indication that the competitor is trying to increase interest with potential investors. The service REPs were helpful, but the newsletter function is still giving me some issues. If I can get this sorted out, then my ranking would be higher of the overall tool.
Pros
Picking up on media mentions
Capturing competitor commercials
Spike detection
Cons
Newsletter feature
Exporting information from the explore screen in a readable format rather than raw data in excel
Likelihood to Recommend
The tool is great for finding specific ads from competitors and getting an estimate of how far the reach is for the audience. There’s also a feature where you can sort news articles based on relevance. Combining a Boolean search with their advance search feature isn’t possible, but now that you don’t have to do strictly Boolean searches, it is a lot easier to set up searches for yourself. They do have training resources to teach Boolean, however I don’t have much spare time to take the courses. This limits my ability to create effective searches in the tool. I have also attempted to send newsletters from a Meltwater email, and the emails will not come through to my email. I am unsure if this issue is a Meltwater issue or an issue with my work’s security settings.
I do not recommend working with Meltwater. I currently use their Explore tool. While the tool itself is fine, I think the company's business practices are problematic. In my experience, sales reps will push you into signing multi-year agreements to avoid steep year over year price increases. In my experience, there is no flexibility to terminate early if your circumstances change or you are dissatisfied with their service.
Pros
Robust data sources
Easy to build queries
Nice visual representations of mentions/conversations
Cons
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
Likelihood to Recommend
Large corporations or agencies that are not price sensitive and can afford to absorb the cost if tools are not being used.
We use Meltwater to pitch stories for clients by developing up-to-date media lists from national and international outlets. It is very useful in searching by outlet, beat, media type, etc. instead of having to rely on Google and publicly sourced information to reach out to reporters.
Pros
Media Contacts
Pitching
Cons
More updated contacts
Expanded templates for emails
Likelihood to Recommend
Meltwater Media is well suited for developing media lists and keeping them organized within a large database. However, it is not as suited for wider email campaigns or ongoing conversations with reporters. It is good for large email blasts, but not targeted pitching.
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 and satisfy researchers and managers that pillars are being achieved.
Pros
Picks up radio interviews
Date range options are good
Media contacts are handy
Cons
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
Likelihood to Recommend
It's good to look at media coverage first thing in the day. Quicker than going through clips. Although Google also can often pick up these things too. As mentioned in reporting, you cannot have an analytics dashboard without a PDF of coverage. I like the analytics dashboards and the level of detail.
We were looking for a platform that served a variety of needs for our Engagement team. At the time, we were using different platforms to serve those needs and realized it would be better to consolidate if we could find something that would serve as an "all-in-one" platform. Upon discovering Meltwater, we felt assured our needs would be met, and they have been great to work with ever since. We utilize them for social listening, content management, reporting, public relations, and influencer relations. They have a great team who works with us closely to ensure our needs are met, and they are very responsive to our feedback as well. I'd recommend them to anyone looking for an all-in-one service to fulfill a variety of social media and public relations needs.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
We used Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform for media and social listening, to monitor the conversation around our work, and to inform our brand's messaging and outreach to journalists and other thought leaders. We also used it to establish metrics through the reach and impressions of media mentions that included our company's name.
Pros
Media intelligence
Social listening
Media outreach
Cons
Impression numbers are fabricated and imprecise
Returns false mentions at times
Misses mentions from less mainstream publications
Likelihood to Recommend
The platform is reasonably priced and fairly well suited for a more passive application, but a user who wants more detail and better features will be better served to look elsewhere.
In my work with clients, I research journalists and pitch stories. Meltwater helps me do that research and create media lists. I also use Meltwater to search for earned media coverage on my clients.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you practice media relations in your role, Meltwater is helpful. You can do research to find relevant publications and journalists, build media lists, export them to share with a team or client and you can also keep notes on your campaigns. I like using it for research, although I do research outside the platform, as well, to be sure to be thorough (and some of the info in the database is outdated). I would say if you don't practice media relations, it's probably not as useful. There are other tools that do a better job if you want to search for media or social media mentions, for example. If you are looking for an all-in-one media relations tool that's relatively easy to use, Meltwater is probably a good fit.
I use Meltwater Explore for social listening. This platform lets me see what is being said about the brand and our competitors. It gives me a deeper search than a traditional Google one since I am able to monitor social mentions. The insights gained are valuable and the data retrieved is used in several departments throughout the company.
Pros
The Meltwater Academy
Quick customer service
Expert on-boarding representatives
Quick search results
Monitoring mentions
Cons
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
Likelihood to Recommend
Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform's Meltwater Explore is great for following industry chatter and keeping up with brand influencers. As interesting as it is to find out what is being said about your brand, I find that monitoring the competition is valuable in seeing trends in the industry. As a content maker, monitoring content on Meltwater Explore has been a great source of inspiration.
We utilize Meltware Media Intelligence Platform for media monitoring and business intelligence activities.
Pros
Automated media monitoring newsletters
An intuitive graphical user interface
Regularly updated with new features
Good customer support
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
Meltwater is suited for simplifying regular media monitoring activities. It is also relatively straightforward to utilize for beginners in the media monitoring space which is a great advantage. Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform also provides strong customer support.
