PR professionals are BUSY. Between pitching, content creation, social media, and so many other day-to-day tasks, any tool that can make our lives easier is always worth a try. At The Agency, we’re constantly on the lookout for new and exciting tools to help us enhance and improve our work. After some thorough research and testing, here it is: our tried-and-true picks for the top digital PR tools we can’t live without.
HARO
If you work at an agency, you’re likely familiar with Help-A-Reporter-Out (HARO). HARO connects you to journalists who are looking for sources for specific stories. Sign up (for free) and set your topic preferences to receive source requests three times a day, five days a week. While many of the requests may not be relevant to your client’s industry or expertise, sometimes you’ll come across a gem that your source would be a perfect fit for. Your submission won’t always get picked, but it’s a great way to get media coverage when you do! The Agency’s own Arleigh Vansconellos was featured by CIO thanks to a HARO submission – check it out here.
Canva
Need an infographic for a client, or an image to complement a social media post? Look no further than Canva, a graphic design startup giving Photoshop a run for its money. You don’t need to be a graphic design wizard to use the simple platform to create beautiful, professional-looking images for web or print. Canva offers hundreds of unique templates to choose from, or you can start from scratch and create your own. Our team loves using Canva – we used it to create the header image for this blog! Oh, and did we mention it’s free?
Coverage Book
We recently discovered Coverage Book and now we can’t imagine life without it. Coverage Book makes it easy to create visual media coverage reports without cutting and pasting screenshots, manually searching website visits, and checking social shares. Coverage Book does everything – all you have to do is sign up (they offer a variety of reasonably priced plans), add your coverage links, and in minutes you have a detailed report available to download or share online.
Sprout Social
Having tried O.K. social media management tools in the past, we were pleasantly surprised when we began using Sprout Social. The number one thing we look for in a social media management tool is sophisticated reporting and analytics, for which Sprout does not disappoint. The platform produces detailed, visual, and easy-to-understand social media analytics reports that we can send to our clients. It also offers social media monitoring and publishing capabilities. Sprout Social isn’t free, but it’s definitely affordable and at least worth a free trial.
What are your favourite digital PR tools? We’d love to check them out! Share them with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @PRTheAgency.
