Item: Meltwater
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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 and Cons

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 It often has outdated information on journalists who have changed roles, for example.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.

Return on Investment

Meltwater does save time in creating/exporting media lists - I would spend at least twice as much time without it. The way it's organized and you can download it as an excel spreadsheet is nice.
Meltwater does save time when it comes to searching for media mentions - although I do conduct other searches via Google News and Talkwalker just to make sure we're not missing anything.
Meltwater provides insight on who is mentioning your brand. I do think there are other tools that do this, too, however.

I don't often need help - but when I've pinged them about an outdated media contact, they really don't get back to me. They need to do a better job of keeping that database updated. I don't know what else to say here. Sorry, I wish I could share more.

Alternatives Considered

Muck Rack and Cision Communications Cloud

I started using Meltwater because of a client. I do find it much easier to use than Cision. I hear good things about Muck Rack and recently had a demo. That's probably the one I would use if I were to leave Meltwater. Cision has always been difficult to use, in my opinion.

Key Insights

Do you think Meltwater delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Meltwater's feature set?

Yes

Did Meltwater live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Meltwater go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Meltwater again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Mailchimp, Buffer, WordPress

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.

Comments

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Meltwater helps with media relations and media monitoring