Alerts automatically send key insights about your brand, competitors, or industry trends. Access to some or all of these alerts is dependent on a customer's subscription.

Smart Alerts help PR and Marketing Professionals stay ahead of the curve through real-time insights by leveraging positive trends and mitigating potential issues before they become a full-blown crisis.

This article will cover:

You’ll need saved searches in order to power certain alert types. Some alerts are based on companies or industries you are following within an alert. Learn more about Creating a Saved Search in Explore.

There are a number of ways you can create a smart alert in Meltwater - directly from the Alerts tab, through the alerts bell icon, via Explore or Monitor, and even from your Social Connections: Monitored Page.

After you've created alerts, navigate to the Alerts page for a table organized by Alert category where you can sort by search or page title, recipients, status, delivery, or date created. System Alerts are in a separate tab for easier organization.

System alerts notify you when something in the product requires your attention. Delivery methods can be Email, Meltwater web, Mobile, Slack or

Microsoft Teams.

To find and edit System Alerts, follow these steps:

Publish Assignment

Alert me when a post I created, assigned, or am assigned to approve is added to an approval workflow or reassigned to me as the next approver in Engage Publish.

Publish Approval

Alert me when a post I created, assigned, or approved receives an approval or final approval in Engage Publish.

Publish Needs Changes

Alert me when a post is marked as ‘Needs Changes’ in Engage Publish. This applies to posts I created, previously approved, or am assigned to.

Publish Failed Post

Alert me when a post fails to publish in Engage Publish. This applies to posts I created, assigned, or approved.

Publish Successful Post

Alert me when I have a new successful post in Engage Publish. This applies to posts I created, assigned, or approved.

Publish Notes

Alert me when a note is added to a post in Engage Publish. This applies to posts I created, assigned, or approved.

Publish Deleted Post

Alert me when a post is deleted in Engage Publish. This applies to posts I created, assigned, or approved.

Alerts can be sent in-app, on web or mobile, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, DingTalk, and Generic Webhook. For more information on integrating Slack, Microsoft Teams, DingTalk, and Generic Webhooks with Meltwater, click below:

You can find in-app alerts easily on the Homepage. They are displayed in a section right below the More from Meltwater promo card, showing the latest updates. There's also a Mark as Read feature to help you keep track of your alerts. Any alerts shown on the Homepage will be marked as Unread (and will stay bolded) until you select them.

Sending notifications through to your mobile rather than email can help to ensure you stay up to date with the latest news of importance to you while on the go. These notifications can be customized within your Mobile App to distribute coverage from selected search folders during your specified working hours.

To learn more, please review our How to Set Up Mobile Push Notifications article.

Ensure you've downloaded the latest version of the Meltwater Mobile app for your device. For Apple users, you can download the app via the App Store. For Android, you can download the app on Google Play.

Sometimes, you may no longer need an alert. In this case, you can pause or delete your alert altogether.

Note: When pausing/resuming an alert, it will pause for all recipients and delivery methods.

For less frequent updates, consider setting up a Digest Report. This provides a summary of your search results in one or two daily email summaries of your search results; check out How do I Create or Edit a Digest Report.

Now let’s walk through each alert type. We will go over when that alert is sent, the value, examples, and FAQs.

Types of Alerts include:

A Spike Detection alert is sent when Meltwater detects that a search volume is much higher than your saved search’s baseline. For social searches, it compares the last hour with the past 12 hours. For editorial searches, it compares one day with the past 14 days. To make sure the results are really unusual, we compare them with the previous day and week before sending you the alert.

Spike Detection includes insights such as:

Why Use Spike Detection?

This type of alert notifies you when there's an unusual change in volume regarding your specific search. It can help identify whether your brand, a competitor, or a topic is trending on social or has received wide news coverage. Receiving this information in a timely manner can help participate in social conversations as they happen, react to issues as they occur, stay informed regarding important topics, and help your overall PR or marketing strategies.

Here are some examples of Spike Detection:

Why haven't I received any Spike Detection Alerts?

Spike Detection alerts only occur if there's an unusual spike in volume for your saved search.

A Company Events alert is sent by Meltwater when something important happens in the businesses you follow, like a partnership, acquisition, or significant headcount growth.

These alerts focus on key business events, making it easier for all departments in your organization to quickly take action. For instance, a sales team can leverage a Company Event Alert to stay up to date on their prospects. This helps you stay fully informed about what's happening in your business environment.

What type of Company events can Meltwater detect?

Company events will detect the following categories:

Filter Events Alerts by type

When creating your alert, you can select from a variety of the above event types. Choose any combination that suits your needs best, so you only get alerts about the events that are most relevant to you.

What type of content do Company Events track?

Company Events track content based on the following parameters:

What are some examples of an Events alert?

Why haven't I received any Company Events alerts?

Events should be rare and actionable, so there is no guaranteed amount of 'Company Events' you will receive.

Why isn't the company I'm searching for appearing in the drop-down?

There are ~193,000 companies available for Events. If a company is not appearing or there is incorrect company information you have the option to "Provide Feedback" from within the platform.

You will receive updates on your feedback from our support team via email.

This alert is designed to alert you to high-impact business events for an entire industry (i.e. Automobile Manufactures, Health Care Services, etc.).

Follow these steps:

Example email alert:

Industry events will detect the following categories:

A Top Reach alert is triggered when a widely-read editorial source mentions keywords from your saved search. These alerts are based on mentions that score significantly higher than your search's baseline. The baseline is calculated using data from either the last 3 days or the first 20,000 mentions, focusing on the reach of the source.

Why use Top Reach alerts?

They are crucial because mentions from influential sources about your company, competitors, or industry can have a significant impact. Top Reach alerts help you monitor key editorial sources that talk about your keywords. This enables you to inform executive leadership about high-profile press coverage or to highlight these mentions in your reports.

An X Influencer alert is sent when a widely-followed X source mentions keywords for your saved search.

Alerts are triggered when a post scores much higher than your search’s baseline, which is calculated from the last 3 days of data or the first 20k mentions. Posts are scored on the account’s engagement level and network size (number of posts, follower count, and following count).

Why use X Influencer alerts?

When an influential X handle mentions your company, competitors, or industry, it can directly or indirectly impact your organization. The X Influencer alert allows you to stay on top of influential X handles that mention your keywords. Engage with influencers who are mentioning you and potentially create new partnerships, understand what could cause your search terms to trend, and mitigate potential risks.

Sentiment Shift alerts help you track changes in the tone of discussions about your brand, industry, and competitor. Similar to Spike Detection alerts, which monitor changes in coverage volume, Sentiment Shift alerts focus on shifts in positive and negative sentiment. These changes are measured against a standard baseline, giving you insights into how the public perception is evolving.​

There are four subtypes types of sentiment shift are:

Sentiment Shift Alert includes insights such as:

The Every Mentions Alert keeps you updated by notifying you via email or mobile whenever new search results are added to a monitoring folder. These notifications can be set up for any Meltwater users.

These alerts are triggered each time a new mention appears in the selected search, with a maximum of 200 alerts sent each hour.

How to Set Up Every Mention Alerts

All alerts, including Every Mention, are connected to your saved searches in Explore. Before creating a new Every Mention alert, make sure you have saved the monitoring topics or keywords for the media coverage that you want to track.

Turn off Every Mention Alerts

To stop receiving Every Mention alerts, you can easily delete the alert from your list. This also applies to alerts set up for other users, which can be managed using the 'View Alerts for' dropdown.

Remember, when editing an alert, you can change how it's delivered, but not the alert's content or its recipients.

If you're turning off instant notifications because they're not relevant, don't hesitate to contact our team through Live Chat. We can assist you in refining the search terms to ensure you get more relevant results.

Reducing the Frequency of Alerts

For less frequent updates, consider setting up a Digest Report. This provides a summary of your search results in one or two emails daily. To learn more, have a look at the help article on this topic.

Follow a Post allows you to follow a Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), or Reddit post, directly from the Content Stream. Every time that post receives a new reply, repost, or quote, you will be notified. This will help you in both traditionally negative and positive cases.

You can follow a post via an every-mention alert email or directly via the content stream.

Alerts are delivered by email for the following new actions.

Alerts can be received via email, Slack integration, and WebHook.

RSS Feed will alert you every time a new document appears in your RSS Feed(s). This alert works the same way as an Every Mention alert but only for your select RSS feed. Learn more about adding RSS Feeds.

Page Engagement alerts are sent when there is a noticeable increase in interaction on your Facebook page. You'll receive this alert when activities like reactions, comments, shares, clicks, and video views on your posts are substantially higher than usual. This 'usual' level, or baseline, is measured over a rolling 7-day period, with the metrics updated daily based on the past 24 hours.

Note: Page Engagement alerts are exclusively available to users of Engage and Social Analytics.

Likely Boosted alerts notify you when it's predicted that a competitor's Facebook post has been promoted to target audiences for a fee. This is based on the level of engagement the post receives, including reactions, comments, and shares.

If you're an Explore customer and have authenticated a Facebook profile under your monitored social connections, you can monitor up to 10 Facebook pages for such boosted posts.

The system checks posts from these monitored pages every 6 hours for 7 days to track engagement updates. Importantly, a Likely Boosted alert is only sent once for each post.

Breakout Post alerts are issued when a post on your Facebook page receives more engagement (reactions, comments, and shares) than the average of all your posts in the last 7 days.

To enable these alerts, you need to connect at least one Facebook page. You can then select up to 10 of your connected Facebook pages for monitoring. These posts are reviewed every three hours over a period of 7 days, comparing their engagement to the rolling average of the last 7 days for your page.

Note: Your page should have regular daily engagements to set an accurate baseline.

System Alerts keep you informed about various actions and statuses within the system. You'll receive notifications for:

These alerts are automatically activated for all users, but you can choose to opt out of any specific alerts through the Alerts page:

Types of System Alerts:

You can send Smart Alerts to external users (non-Meltwater users). Simply enter any email address you wish as shown below:

Important to note:

What customer types receive Alerts?

All packages receive Alerts

How long can I pause an alert?

As long as you wish

How many users can receive an alert?

Up to 10 users can be added as recipients per alert

What happens when a user who set up an alert leaves the company?

If the user is deleted, we receive a message through warp-zone and remove them from the alerts, and if there is no one else in the alert, you will see a message in the UI

What happens to users on the recipient list if they leave the company?

What happens to the alerts when a company leaves Meltwater?

Subscriptions are deleted, and the alerts will no longer exist

How long is the alert data retained?

Up to 6 months for subscriptions. 3 months for notifications.

What happens when a saved search, Facebook Page, Company, or RSS Feed that is correlated to an alert gets deleted?

Results will show as “Search Not Found” in the Crud table

What data does Meltwater receive when connecting the different integrations?

It is a one-way integration. The only permission Meltwater has is to be able to post messages to a channel. We cannot read any data back. The only information we receive from the apps is the information necessary to post the message to the channel they hook up to.

How long will an alert go from processing to active?

In a good scenario, it can take around five minutes to go from processing to active. Occasionally, it is possible for an alert to take more than five minutes since there are some backend processes that need to be completed which we consume from other teams so there can be a delay.

How is a document triggered for an Every Mention alert?

The Smart Alerts team looks at the published date. If the published date is more than a day old, the document does not trigger an alert.

Why was there a delay between the published time and the time the alert was sent for every mention?

Alerts are sent as soon as they are sent to us via the system. There are times when there is a delay between when it was published and indexed which is dependent on the source

💡 Tip

Need more help? Feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat or check out our Customer Community.

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