Meltwater has been a success for me
January 24, 2017

Meltwater has been a success for me

Lance Cranmer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform

Our organization switched to Meltwater in 2015 after many years of using a different service and we have been very happy with it. For my role in public and media relations, I primarily use Meltwater as a way to keep an ear to the ground for things going on in our industry. Meltwater provides each customer with a personal adviser who stays in contact and regularly sets up call-in meetings to run through new features and answer any questions about features that I may not have experience using.

The first thing we did is set up daily e-mails that come directly from Meltwater. One e-mail contains any mention of our organization in any publication around the country. The second e-mail sends me industry news that is focused on terms that our adviser and I set up. While these industry term e-mails aren't always of direct impact to me, once in a while they are a great help.

The other major thing that I personally use Meltwater for is finding media contacts in specific markets. If we have an event or something big going on in a specific city or area, I can use Meltwater's search functions to find contacts who write about certain topics and Meltwater has all of their contact information. It saves a great deal of time that I used to spend sorting through search results on individual media websites.

Meltwater also has a wealth of information available to users about total mentions, positive vs. negative tones, and all sorts of other useful items. I don't always need these things, but when our organizational leadership asks for the, Meltwater makes it very easy for me to grab them quickly and show people valuable information. I recommend using this tool for media monitoring without a doubt.

Pros

  • Statistics and graphics that are available provide a wealth of knowledge.
  • Any journalist I've ever wanted to know more about has a complete and detailed profile on Meltwater.
  • Daily e-mails are a big help.

Cons

  • Sometimes it seems like the Meltwater app does so much that it can be a little overwhelming.
  • No matter how many times we type into our search fields that we don't want to see social media results from our own account they still seem to show up. Not sure why this can't be fixed.
  • Searching for things can sometimes be tedious.
  • I've yet to really see a way to measure ROI by using Meltwater.
  • We have a goal number of positive mentions by percentage that our organization strives to reach. Meltwater keeps excellent track of this.
  • I like what Meltwater does for us, but I don't see extreme positives or negatives in terms of business objectives. It is simply good for what I need it to do.
When I started with this organization we used Burrelles. Frankly, I never saw any results of any kind out of Burrelles. I had a login for it but never found much of a real reason to use it. I did most of my media relations the old way by going site by site on the web and looking for what I needed. When we signed on with Meltwater I saw tools and options that I'd simply never seen before.
If you send out press releases with the intention of reaching a very specific audience, Meltwater can help you with that. If you are constantly looking for industry-specific articles for blogs or social media, Meltwater can be extremely helpful for that. If you're trying to track overall impressions of your organization in the media - whether they're positive or negative, etc. - Meltwater is a huge help. I can't think of a specific scenario where it would not be appropriate if you're working in public relations or media relations.

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