Newswire vs. Meltwater

Personally, I see no difference between Newswire and other press release services. This one's available with our current PR SAAS solution, there's nothing wrong with it, and pricing is usually somewhat competitive. These days nothing works as well as actual media relations, so Newswire comes in handy for just having a solid link for a press release and getting the SEO on backlinked sites.

Incentivized

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I do research outside the platform, as well, to be sure to be thorough (and some of the info in the database is outdated).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.

Incentivized

• Communication via video calls and emails. They were responsive to any questions we had.
• Provided all the information we needed to make the decision to move forward. They had the materials around what publications and news outlets they could get into for us.

Incentivized

• Up to date contact information. It is actually relevant and active info, not always the case with others.
• The user interface is better than most tools. While not perfect, it's pretty easy to figure out how to get what you want.
• Their support is excellent. Anytime I've needed help I can call, but better than this, they proactively call and assist.

Incentivized

• The editorial process was always very hard on our sale releases. Even if we followed the same structure we used to with PR Wire they would flag it as advertorial.
• The option for video is nice but would be better to actually embed it into a part of the release versus just floating at the bottom.
• Would be interesting for them to share more industry-specific releases or give the option to only get emails on specific industries. The E-blasts are always too general.

Incentivized

• Their tracking system for media mentions isn't perfect - we have stumbled across several posts mentioning our company/product that were not picked up by the platform. While frustrating, we send these URLs to our rep and their tech team ensures that that website will be monitored moving forward.

Incentivized

Simply put, they are a great team, excellent support and a platform that is so seamless to use. Great reporting content, can do attitude and a solution / product that works. They are an established company and there are many 'new companies' out there claiming to offer a better service but they lack the depth and capabilities of the Newswire platform

Incentivized

We have had great success with Meltwater Buzz the past 2 years. The reporting has been great for our board reports, seeing the conversations going on between our followers helps us to learn who our audience is and what we can do better on our social media. The analytics we see on Meltwater Buzz we could not get anywhere else

Incentivized

Simple step-by-step process to get your news out to the world. Easy to understand process and explanation as you go through the steps. Each upgrade does have a charge, but it's pretty visible. Once you get familiar with their platform and systems, it becomes fairly easy to use to get your news published. It's also nice how quickly you are able to get the news out and published in the places you choose.

Incentivized

Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.

It was available for immediate use

Incentivized

It seemed to be okay overall an we plan on continuing to use it as we expand

Incentivized

When we have needed support, the Newswire support team has responded quickly and been very clear about what we need to know. We have never had a significant issue and they have been very helpful at cleaning up any points of confusion on our part. I always feel like they have my back.

Incentivized

Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.

Incentivized

Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.

Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.

It is a very simple product to get started using, particularly for press releases. I have no used the other functionality so I can't say for sure how easy or difficult that might be, but my guess is that the way the platform is built makes it easy for anybody to get started.

Incentivized

You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.

To be honest, they are very similar in many ways. Business Wire, for example, is more focused on business news as opposed to other types of news. Newswire has a more general and broader application. Other news services like Bloomberg are only interested if the company is traded on one of the stock markets.

Incentivized

Meltwater serves as an all-in-one platform, so it has benefitted us greatly in being able to service a variety of needs in one place. Having a streamlined platform is important to our team since it can feel counterproductive to visit a variety of products to service one client's needs. So, Meltwater has been essential in ensuring our needs are met through one destination.

Incentivized

I have not really used this software feature to the level to scale at this point

Incentivized

• In a new technology area, Newswire has helped us build brand recognition.
• During the pressures put on Healthcare over the past COVID periods our presence in the Marketplace have been difficult to maintain. Newswire has been key in our efforts.
• When medical imaging AI tools exploded on the scene three years ago, there were over 150 vendors at conferences. Those that didn't promote with tools like Newswire and now gone.

Incentivized

• Improved PR reporting, for sure.
• Competitor analysis for clients and ourselves.
• A great ability to track the news and understand particular news drivers for certain industries, allowing us to get our client in front of the media at or before the perfect moment.

Incentivized