Tripepi Smith

Giving agencies direct lines to the public they serve

Public agencies succeed when they are attuned and responsive to the needs of the people they serve. Tripepi Smith helps its public agency clients succeed by giving them a direct way to monitor and understand public opinion. The firm uses Meltwater’s media intelligence and social listening and analytics solutions to continuously track media coverage and social media chatter, using actionable insights it uncovers to help its clients shine. 

Highly customizable searches let Tripepi Smith’s team members monitor and analyze specific issues or entities on an ongoing basis without struggling to make sense of the data. The solution’s analytic visualizations highlight key themes, top keywords, and sentiment measurements that they can understand at a glance. Plus, shareable dashboards and sleek, auto-generated reports make it simple to deliver those insights to clients. 

“We can go into a conversation with a client, or they can go into a conversation with their residents, and have up-to-the-minute information that can help identify priorities,” says Katherine Griffiths, Principal at Tripepi Smith. “There is a lot of content swirling around, but if a city is aware of conversation among its residents or if a joint powers authority is aware of conversation among its members, it allows them to interact in a more positive way with the people that they serve.”

Without Tripepi Smith’s team surfacing these types of insights from the Meltwater Suite, its public agency clients might not otherwise find those opportunities for positive public interaction. Tripepi Smith helps them capitalize on those opportunities and pave the way for new ones with timely intelligence.

Turning crisis situations into occasions to impress

The scope of data and analytical power of the Meltwater Suite let Tripepi Smith enhance its already robust crisis communications services. When high-priority incidents strike, it uses our social listening and media intelligence solutions to turn challenging situations into opportunities to build confidence fast.

First, spike alerts show the Tripepi Smith team signs of a potential incident requiring immediate attention — like conversation spikes or mentions from an important entity — well before a Google Alert arrives. Once the firm identifies a crisis, it uses Meltwater insights to guide its clients’ responses. AI-powered contextualization features, like content clusters and topic analysis, let the team quickly extract the most prominent narratives and messages. From there, the team can use the time it once spent on information gathering for strategizing.

“Meltwater has been keeping us on that overall pulse of everything that’s happening in our client communities, helping us track information that we can leverage into our communications,” says Business Analyst Kalee Cummings. That curated overview within the platform, as well as daily Meltwater Newsletter digests, let Tripepi Smith ensure its clients are never caught off guard.

For example, Tripepi Smith used Meltwater to help a client, a California city, maintain good public relations and community satisfaction during a large-scale public works project. Features like keyword tracking, spike detection, and sentiment analysis let it know when a conflict was bubbling, providing insights the firm could use to inform its response. 

So when the Meltwater platform detected growing resident complaints about dust, dirt, and traffic from the project, Tripepi Smith was able to help its clients quell the tension, empowering it to redistribute traffic, redirect material hauling routes, and create educational messaging about the project’s benefits. Thanks to Tripepi Smith and Meltwater, that California city shifted a potential PR nightmare into a chance to demonstrate its responsiveness and know-how, turning the negative conversation around.

Poised for the future of public relations

Looking to the future, Tripepi Smith forecasts that the U.S. public will call on local governments to become increasingly transparent and accountable. The agency uses Meltwater's media intelligence solution to help clients foster trust in the present, staying ahead of that cultural shift. 

With a continuous, real-time focus on public opinion and voices, Tripepi Smith helps its clients better demonstrate competency, understanding, and care. That capability is especially critical as local news systems across the United States decline.

“Even five or 10 years ago, our clients would have a dedicated reporter from the local newspaper who would attend city council meetings every other week; it just isn’t happening anymore,” Griffiths explains. “In the absence of those reporters covering what is happening in cities, Meltwater helps us be prepared to reach out to media so we can share good stories about our clients.” 

She and her teammates use the media database with Meltwater’s media relations solution to find and build relationships with relevant journalists and outlets. Up-to-date intel on their local news environment combined with social and media intelligence lets Tripepi Smith set their clients up for publicity and coverage wins.