Aspire.io vs. Meltwater

I used Aspire to find influencers for my fashion business and most of the influencers who signed up for my project were unreliable and did not fulfill their contract terms. For example, of 5 influencers I sent products to, only one completed the work that was agreed upon under the Terms. The others received a $195 product and disappeared, even though we signed a contract called Terms that is monitored by Aspire. The main downfall with Aspire is that it doesn't have a system in place to control this. For instance, they don't have a way for brands to leave a review for influencers and they don't block bad influencers (many just want free product) from applying for future projects. Aspire doesn't take responsibility for anything. What is the point of paying money to Aspire if they don't vet their influencers and control the quality of influencers who use their platform?

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I do research outside the platform, as well, to be sure to be thorough (and some of the info in the database is outdated).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

• Conversation management through using automated messaging.
• Collaboration organization by putting influencers in the correct stage/status they currently are at.

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

• Filtering Messages - things seem to get cluttered easily
• "Deleting" people in campaigns you don't want to work with instead of dismissing

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

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

We've done countless trainings with them and have done every step as outlined. In my experience, the site does not perform at all and there are no results that ever come. I think Aspire.io seems to have no ideas on how to get a response from their influencers and to get them to do what they are suppose to do.

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.

I have bi-weekly calls with my AspireIQ rep which has been very helpful. Anytime I have a question, notice a bug, etc, she is quick to respond.

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.

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

Aspire.io was the first product we have used like this. I can't imagine any of the other platforms being worse than Aspire.io is for us. We are actively searching for a platform that will be able to help our company reach its goals. In my opinion, Aspire.io is only interested in their bottom line - we ended up losing thousands of wasted dollars and time.

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

• Making our brand more fun!
• While our account is "small" we believe investing in influencers has broadened our brand and gotten in front of people we didn't have the capability of

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