You need the right tools to get results in public relations. At Acumen Velocity, we believe that PR should tap into technology and enjoy increased productivity and seamlessly that it brings.
Research by Gartner indicates 65% of marketing executives already have plans in place to invest more in marketing technology in the next year. And marketing software spending is projected to exceed $32 billion by the end of this year.
Here are 10 must-have tools for your PR tech stack:
1. Agility PR
Agility is a powerful monitoring and database product. It provides access to more than 700,000 reporters, influencers, and content publishers globally.
Monitor, Target, Amplify, Measure, Target, and Manage your PR campaign from a central dashboard.
For your PR campaign, you can take advantage of the distribution and targeting options to reach more contacts.
Using Agility, it’s now easier than ever to target prospects based on their location or job title. And you can use the translation features in the tool to serve a global audience.
2. BuzzStream
BuzzStream has been around for a while. Use it to search for content publishers and influencers in your industry. Build relationships, then run relevant outreach campaigns that appeal to these people.
Just enter your keyword and search. You’ll see a list of relevant influencers. These are your potential reporters and content publishers.
You can dig even further by filtering results to search for influencers based on geographic location, language, types of content they mostly share, and more.
3. ConvertKit
ConvertKit takes your email marketing and CRM pursuits to the next level.
With ConvertKit, you can capture the email addresses of your target customers, send emails through an autoresponder to your contact list based on their behavior and interaction with the Automation Rules you previously set. E.g., Webinar signups.
Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit is passionate about helping online creators take charge of their business. That’s why his team added features that help you to quickly create autoresponder sequences that suit every situation.
You can’t go wrong with ConvertKit. It’s the perfect email marketing tool to successfully drive your PR campaign.
4. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a must-have if you want to be deliberate with your PR plans and campaigns.
Use Buzzsumo to find key influencers in your industry or based on a particular topic.
To get started with Buzzsumo, sign up for free and click on “Influencers” above the search box.
Simply enter your industry or topic and let the tool do the magic. You’ll be presented with key influencers’ names, page rank, number of followers, social media URL, retweet ratio.
You can sort the results as you want. It’s quite easy to use Buzzsumo to find content publishers that will share your story.
5. HARO (Help A Reporter)
If you’re looking to secure valuable media coverage, HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is the right PR tool for you. It allows you to manage your campaigns. Once set up, you’ll receive relevant email pitches for interviews in a particular industry.
You could be exposed to opportunities to speak at events or share content on a media outlet. How powerful can that be?
HARO is 100% free to use for a single email account. Set up your account properly to receive press queries based on your specific niche (e.g., food truck) or keyword.
Here’s the downside to using HARO: it’s only US-focused.
You might want to switch to ResponseSource if you’re based in the UK or want to attract press queries that will likely get your company featured on UK media outlets such as The Mirror, OK magazine, BBC, Huffington Post, and so on.
6. Sprout Social
One of the major distribution channels for your story is social media networks. That’s why you need Sprout Social to manage every task.
Sprout Social is a powerful suite of social media analytics tools designed for small businesses and startups.
Use this social tool to create robust engagement reports that collate data and user insights from your social profiles, including data about your competitors, how far you’re growing on each social channel, and the perfect time to post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Apart from helping you schedule social posts and view analytics, Sprout Social also offers social CRM capabilities. It’s now easier than ever to automate sales and marketing to engage your prospects, leads, and customers.
7. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is one of the most popular CRM software for PR campaigns. It works well for both enterprise organizations and small businesses that are just getting started with customer relationship management and workflow.
You get all the common features provided by CRM tools as well as advanced features that help you engage your contacts based on their interaction with your story.
This allows you to keep track of your marketing activities assign and track deals, and manage your customer data more efficiently from a central dashboard.
8. Mixpanel
While Google Analytics is completely free and popular, Mixpanel is also a powerful analytics tool that provides insights on user interactions with your website and mobile applications.
Mixpanel tracks communication with website visitors, including email open rates, smart notifications, in-app A/B tests, and interactions on user survey forms.
It has a user-friendly interface that enables you to visualize all of the collated data quickly.
9. Trello
Trello is the #1 visual platform for collaborating, planning tasks, and delegating assignments to team members. It uses boards and cards.
Although Trello was formerly designed to aid software development teams to communicate better, it has now become a perfect solution for marketing, sales, customer service, and HR.
It’s a great software for creating customer journey maps too. With Trello, you can prioritize tasks, organize projects, and increase productivity. Users add comments to cards so that team members involved in the same project can stay in the loop.
10. Litmus
Whether you’re sending a plain email or HTML email, you need to test it first.
What if the last email you sent to Journalists was broken? What if your links were broken, images not displaying properly, and your typeface was off? Could this be the reason why you never got any meaningful response?
Litmus is an email design and testing tool for online businesses. Since email is one of the most effective means of connecting with journalists and bloggers, you need the right testing tool to ignite it.