Public Relations is a multi-faceted field, and that means a variety of PR tools, applications and processes are needed in order to make it work at its best. A good PR campaign goes far beyond writing and distributing press releases, and if you’re new to PR it’s difficult to know where to start.
In my last two PR focused posts, I talked about why a PR strategy is important and how to access the right media coverage as part of your PR 101. In this post I’ll introduce you to a selection of PR tools — the applications and websites — that will help you implement your PR campaigns.
14 PR Campaign Tools to Help You Succeed
A good PR campaign consists of various elements, from sharing your interesting, newsworthy content through the relationships you’ve built with journalists, to enhancing and measuring its success with SEO and analytics.
Let’s look at some of the PR tools you can use to in each of the elements of your PR campaign.
Analytics
- Google Analytics: Your website should already have Google Analytics set up, so you should start tracking your PR efforts here as well. This includes the quantity and quality of traffic from social media platforms, press releases, thought leadership pieces and so on. It’s important to be able to define where new customers are coming from; your marketing strategy, PR strategy, or a combination of both.
- Google Tag Manager: While placing Google Analytics code on your website(s) is fairly straightforward, the tracking of Google Adwords conversions, remarketing, events and other third party apps can be more cumbersome. This is where Google Tag Manager comes into play. A valuable tool, GTM means you no longer need to wait for others to implement tracking code — only for you to then troubleshoot and have the back and forth until the issue is resolved. Instead, you add the GTM code to the website and then you are able to manage all other code snippets from the Tag Manager interface.
Content Curation
- Feedly: Feedly is an application that helps you curate news that is relevant to your industry, organization and product. You can follow specific publications or blogs, as well as set up keyword-based feeds so you can see who is writing about your topics of interest. This will help you find the journalists and publications that are interested in writing about the stories you have to tell.
- Google Alerts: A more basic (and sometimes cumbersome) way to follow the news you are interested in. Set up keyword-based alerts that can be emailed to you or followed on an RSS feed.
Find Journalists
- Help a Reporter Out: Journalists spend substantial amounts of time looking for sources to feature in their stories. Help a Reporter Out allows you to see what or who a journalist is looking for and volunteer to be a source. They get their expert point of view and you get exposure. It’s a win-win.
- MuckRack: This website is multi-purpose. It allows you to find and pitch to journalists, as well as follow news you are interested. It even has built-in analytics to track success.
Build Relationships
- BuzzStream: When you’re really in the thick of your PR campaign and you’re trying to keep all of your connections and conversations sorted, this is where BuzzStream becomes invaluable. It has functions for researching journalists, creating contacts and communicating right within the app.
Find Out What’s Trending
- Google Trends: Google Trends will show you what people are most interested in learning about right now. Maybe there’s a trending topic that you could get involved in.
Search Engine Optimization
- Keyword.io: If you have an idea of what keywords you should be focusing on, but you could use some more specific suggestions, this tool will give longtail keywords to you based on your general search.
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool: The keyword tool in Google Adwords will help determine which keywords have the highest number of searches to further narrow down your keyword selection.
- SEMRush: Get a snapshot of how your website ranks on the web, who is mentioning you, who is linking to you and all kinds of other factors that improve your organic ranking.
Social Media Management
- Mention: Monitor who is talking about you, get insights into competitors, find industry influencers and much more.
- Hootsuite: Managing your social media accounts can be time consuming, which is why Hootsuite makes it easier to share, converse and protect your brand’s image.
- Buffer: Just want an easier way to schedule and share tweets without having to spend so much time logging in and out of your account? Buffer can help with that.
Distributing Press Releases
- PRWeb: In the event that you do need to send out a press release, PRWeb will help you host and distribute it to the relevant publications.
Let TPM Implement Your Next PR Campaign
This selection of PR tools and apps is, of course, just a starting point. I know there are many others out there, but I hope you have found this list helpful.
If you’re looking to create a winning PR campaign, you’ll not only need the right tools but a well-developed strategy too. Give yourself a head-start by reading our previous posts in the series:
- Why Is a PR Strategy Important for MSPs?
- PR 101: Choosing the Right Media Coverage and How to Access It
Alternatively, if you’re looking to venture into the world of PR for your business but don’t know where to start (or have the time or resources to manage a PR campaign internally) contact us today. Positioning our clients as thought leaders within their respective domains, our PR gurus have done it all — from coordinated speaking spots at key events to having client commentaries published in industry publications — and they can do the same for you.
