By: Jo Trizila
At TrizCom PR, we use proven, successful best practices with everything we do. This includes using the best, most relevant tools. Public relations tools are supposed to make lives easier, right? But there are a bazillion online tools that swear they’re the best. Since we understand the power of a word-of-mouth promotion and the value of a recommendation, we’re giving you an insight into the way we work to make your life easier.
Why we use PR tools and software
TrizCom PR invests in the best of the best PR tools and software. However, a few tools we use every day are very affordable or free.
TrizCom PR uses tools and software to help us manage our workloads, save time, optimize processes, gain insights into our partners' campaigns and analytics, identify trends in communication strategies and competitor positioning, collaborate with colleagues more efficiently, track media mentions and placements and monitor conversations across social networks. By using PR tools we can streamline the manual tasks associated with managing a large portfolio of partners and leverage data-driven insights to help inform our decision making.
Below are 11 PR tools that we love, we use and we recommend.
How PR data drives our decision-making
TrizCom steadfastly believes that measuring PR activities is absolutely essential. Measuring our work allows us to assess a campaign's success, identify improvement areas, establish benchmarks for future initiatives and track progress in achieving our partner's desired outcomes.
Measuring PR helps organizations understand the reactions from their audiences, analyze which messages resonate most deeply and why, recognize where an initiative may need improving or refocusing, uncover new opportunities for engagement and growth and recognize successes that can be leveraged further down the line. When done properly, measurement results in more effective communication efforts that drive long-term success.
There are several ways to measure PR performance, including media monitoring (tracking coverage across print/broadcast/online sources), surveying target audiences for feedback on campaigns and initiatives, leveraging web analytics to determine reach and resonance across digital channels, measuring mentions on social media platforms, engaging third-party firms such as Gartner or Forrester Research to conduct surveys, conducting marketing ROI analysis post-campaigns and studying key performance indicators (KPIs)such as website visits or downloads of materials related to an initiative etc. Measuring PR also helps substantiate budget requests by providing evidence supporting continued investment in particular areas as we advance.
Clipping Earned Media
Trust me when I say that in my 20-plus years doing public relations, I have tried almost every news clipping service available. While a few are better than most, none capture all of our clips. One of these days, someone will develop a comprehensive news clipping company; until that time, we’re left with piecemeal.
Although TrizCom subscribes to some very sophisticated tracking software, there are free options too. Some of my favorite tools and tricks include:
Keeping Track of News - Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that allows you to monitor the web for new content, including news stories, blog posts, and listicles. When you create an alert through Google Alerts, it looks for information related to your query and sends updates directly to your inbox or as an RSS feed.
Google Alerts is incredibly efficient for keeping track of a variety of topics ranging from trends in specific industries to important current events to company news. It can be used as part of everyday workflows such as staying up-to-date on competitors' latest products or services, keeping abreast of market moves in one’s sector or industry, tracking newsworthy personalities within a particular domain—the possibilities are endless. Additionally, combining Google alerts with other applications such as social media listening tools can greatly increase the breadth and depth with which organizations analyze market performance metrics.
Source: Google
TalkWalker
Talkwalker Alerts is a free (they have a paid version, too) tool from the social media analytics platform Talkwalker that allows users to identify and track conversations about their brand on social media, blogs, forums and other websites. Through its real-time notifications, it helps you stay ahead of the competition and respond quickly to customer queries or negative reviews. Additionally, Talkwalker Alerts can also provide valuable insights into various topics related to your industry, such as new trends in consumer behavior or market developments. With its customizable search engine tailored specifically for online content discovery, Talkwalker Alerts gives users a comprehensive view of how people are talking about their brand online while providing data-driven intelligence that you can use to refine your digital strategy and make informed decisions.
Source: Talkwalker
Mention
Mention is a news monitoring software that helps organizations stay on top of industry news, customer feedback, product launches, competitor activity and more. It gathers real-time updates from millions of sources, including websites, social media platforms, forums and blogs; allowing users to track keywords relevant to their field. Boolean alerts help you zero in on your brand, competitors and customers for precise market research.
Mention enables users to collect all the data they need in one place while also providing insights into trends and sentiment analytics so they can better understand how the public perceives their brand or topic. With customizable alert settings such as frequency (daily/weekly) or language filter (English/French/Spanish), Mention lets you tailor your listening experience so you’re only alerted when it matters most. Additionally, users can collaborate with team members through mentions shared saves feature which allows everyone in an organization to “bookmark” interesting conversations for future reference.
Source: Mention
Measure Interest - Google Trends
Google Trends allows users to measure the interest of a particular search term at a macro or micro level. Users can see how popular (or not) a term is right now or five years ago. Users can filter their results in real time and non-real time. Real time is a sampling of data from the last seven days. Non-real time is a more historical sampling. Users can select a custom date range or a preset date range.
Source: Google Trends
Design on the Fly - Canva
Canva is an easy-to-use online design tool that helps people to create beautiful designs without having any prior design experience. It offers users a wide range of templates and illustrations that can be used as the basis for their designs or even customized with their own images and text. The intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows users to move elements around easily, changing fonts, colors and sizes along the way. With over 8 million photos in its library and millions of icons, shapes and charts available, it’s easy to quickly create eye-catching presentations, posters, logos or invitations - saving time and money from costly professional designers. In addition, Canva also comes with features like photo correction tools which allow you to enhance photos automatically with just one click and animations for videos which can make short video content look more dynamic by adding professional transitions between scenes. With all these features combined into one user-friendly web application, Canva makes creating visuals easier than ever.
Source: Canva
Creating Fun Content Using Themed Days
Nowadays, there is a national themed day/awareness day/of the week holiday for everything under the sun. Just this month we see World Vegan Day, National Sandwich Day, World Kindness Day, National Adoption Day and Women's Entrepreneurship Day. These are pretty normal, albeit creative, days. Now here are some off-the-charts odd days – National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, National Candy Day, Use Less Stuff Day and my favorite, Red Lipstick Day (I kid you not)! Basically, if you’re looking for a themed holiday, I can almost bet that you can find a day for it. For a calendar of ideas, go to https://nationaldaycalendar.com.
At TrizCom PR, we love these types of themed days because they give us additional content to write and, more importantly, unique content to weave into a relevant news pitch.
For an example, check out these:
SOLIS MAMMOGRAPHY: Turning 40 - What to Know Before Your First Mammogram - Celebrating National Mammography Day with Knowledge and Empowerment
TACO BUENO: Taco Charlton Talks National Taco Day
Questions You Didn’t Even Know You Didn’t Know - Answer the Public
We’re all searching for something. The auto suggest results provided by Google and Bing are a goldmine of insight for today’s marketers. With Answer the Public, as you type, you are presented with an aggregated view of the questions and therefore a hint of the motivations and emotions of the people behind each search query. It’s perhaps one of the best but most underutilized sources of research for content ideas.
Source: Answer the Public
Bolder Writing with the Hemingway App
The Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. It's like a spellchecker but for style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not your prose. Too often, our words are like our thoughts – innumerable and disorganized. Almost any bit of writing could use some cutting. Less is more, etc. The Hemingway Editor will highlight (in yellow and red) where your writing is too dense. Try removing needless words or splitting the sentence into two. Your readers will thank you.
The app also checks readability grade levels, words that can be simpler, passive voice and more.
Create the Best Optimized Blog Headline with CoSchedule Blog Post Headline Analyzer
With CoSchedule Blog Post Headline Analyzer, users can write headlines that drive traffic, shares and search results. This tool can be used for blog post titles, email subject lines and social messages.
User Intent Keyword Search - SEMRush
SEMRush is a tool that is specific to finding profitable keywords. We're living in a time when SEO is at the forefront of a successful blog. SEMRush is a program many new and older bloggers are using to optimize their sites, create the content their audience wants and create a better experience for their visitors.
Keyword Research - Ubersuggest
UberSuggest is a keyword research and SEO tool created by the founder of digital marketing agency Neil Patel Digital. It is an amazing keyword suggestion tool that helps create more effective content strategies for businesses. UberSuggest allows you to track keywords, analyze your competitors’ rankings, do backlink analysis, uncover opportunities for link building and check website health.
It makes keyword research easier because it compiles data from multiple sources - including Google Keyword Planner, Bing Ads Intelligence and AnswerThePublic - making identifying relevant keywords much simpler than before. In addition, it includes predictive search which suggests related trending topics to keep up with changing consumer interests over time. The intuitive user interface makes searching for information easy and efficient. With just one enter of a single term or phrase you can get thousands of different results in seconds. Plus, Ubersuggest provides real-time analytics so that you can tell which terms are getting the most traffic right now as well as forecast future trends.
Ubersuggest has free and paid options available.
Datawrapper – Interactive Charts
Datawrapper is an interactive charting tool that allows users to quickly and easily create beautiful, informative charts. It provides a powerful and direct visual representation of data, which helps to effectively communicate important information to readers. Datawrapper provides a wide range of high-quality customizable templates and options for creating stunning visuals including bar graphs, line charts and maps. What sets it apart is its intuitive user interface with simple drag-and-drop commands that make the task of turning data into meaningful insights much faster. With features such as annotation tools, adding annotations onto existing graphics; interactivity by allowing viewers to explore further through linked graphics; embedding for use on any website or page; effective collaboration tools for teams working together remotely; fully responsive design for display on all devices, Datawrapper offers easy yet powerful data visualization capabilities.
Source: Datawrapper
For more information or to schedule a free one-on-one consultation, please ring us at 972-247-1369 or visit www.TrizCom.com.
