American Indian College Fund

Challenge

Earning Attention   

When only 1% of college students are American Indian, it takes work to attract the media?s attention, and yet the College Fund never got the feeling their previous media intelligence provider was on the same page. The service rep kept changing, and the tool they were using offered a very limited media contacts database, preventing the College Fund from tapping into the appropriate spheres of influence. Even basic searches returned just a fraction of relevant, published articles. 

"It was disappointing. We were paying a lot for that tool," says the College Fund's Dina Horwedel. 

Solution

A Team Effort to Create New Spheres of Influence 

The College Fund's Meltwater service rep has been with them from the beginning and frequently meets with the team to discuss their goals and methods. Real-time alerts notify the Communications Director of trending conversations and key news stories, allowing her to be more proactive. Meltwater's platform also assists her in communicating with audiences outside her traditional audience by identifying and targeting journalists receptive to her message. By pitching journalists directly, she finds them more likely to follow up, particularly when she shares Meltwater's readership metrics on the type of article she's envisioning. 

"I'm using Meltwater to create a newsletter informing journalists of what's going on in our world," says Dina Horwedel. "This is helping us ramp up our advocacy effort."