In no particular order, here are 10 online tools PR pros should be familiar with for pitching, researching, managing and monitoring:
- MatchPoint – MatchPoint produces a list of journalists, ranked by relevance based on their bodies of work culled from a database of more than 11,000 news sources, 25,000 online news sites and 10,000 blogs.
- Radian6 – Radian6 is focused on building the complete monitoring and analysis solution for PR and advertising professionals so they can be the experts in all social media platforms.
- PitchEngine – PitchEngine makes it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Share social media releases by email, with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google News etc.
- Google Alerts – Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
- Google Trends – Google Trends can be used to see how popular certain search terms are across geographic regions, cities, and languages.
- Technorati – Technorati was founded to help bloggers to succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing online conversations. Technorati indexes more than 1.5 million new blog posts in real time.
- Quantcast – Quantcast is a service for measuring audiences of Web sites and blogs.
- Monitter – Monitter is a Twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying in real time.
- Social Mention – Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services.
- Nielsen BlogPulse – BlogPulse.com is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere.
A good example of a company attempting to integrate its traditional PR and PR 2.0 efforts is Anheuser-Busch. Last week, A-B launched AB-extras.com, an online newsroom created in collaboration with PR 2.0 guru Brian Solis. A-B will be using PitchEngine to issue social media releases (SMRs). The new site is a smart way for the PR pros at A-B to get more involved in social media. I suspect other consumer product companies will soon follow suit.
From Solis’ announcement of the AB-extras.com launch:
Anheuser-Busch Debuts AB-Extras.com; Fuses PR with Social Media to Humanize Stories and Ads
Disclosure: I am collaborating with Anheuser-Busch on the creation and release of AB-Extras.com
Today Anheuser-Busch announced AB-Extras.com – a social media destination for Bud fans 21 years of age and older to reveal the human element and stories behind the ads that will premier during the Big Game.
AB-Extras.com is a unique social platform for the internal PR team at Anheuser-Busch to also work more effectively with traditional and digital press and bloggers using the tools and services that they rely upon to publish and share stories.
AB-Extras.com features exclusive content using a combination of social tools and networks such as Social Media Releases (SMRs), YouTube, Blip.TV, and flickr, hosted on a blog platform. At the very least, it is a dedicated online newsroom that aggregates and packages disparate social elements from across the Web into a contextualized storyboard that streamlines the viewing, sourcing, and distribution of relevant information.
The press team at Anheuser-Busch is actively exploring the inherent benefits and opportunities of genuinely participating in the important and relevant conversations that are transpiring across the Social Web.
12 Comments
February 3, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I like Compete.com more than Quantcast, although the latter does give you more qualitative info on visitors, but I find Compete’s numbers more reliable.
February 3, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Graham,
Great list! Cool site, btw.
February 3, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Thanks! This is the best birthday gift. Some I knew, but many I didn’t know. Thanks!
February 3, 2009 at 7:24 pm
[...] read a really great post from Graham Wolfe about 10 resources for every PR pro. This list is so comprehensive that I really encourage you to [...]
February 3, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Hey Graham,
This is a phenomenal list. I really appreciate all the tools you have listed here. It was so good I was inspired to write my own list of PR resources (human) that Pr pro’s need to be aware of.
February 3, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Adam, your list looks great. I definitely should have included HARO (Help a Reporter Out) – http://www.helpareporter.com
February 3, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Check out our social media search engine http://www.samepoint.com. Searches by type of social media.
February 3, 2009 at 11:04 pm
This is a very helpful list for media relations professionals. While I’m familiar with most of the tools you mention, I haven’t tried out MatchPoint or PitchEngine yet – but plan to. Thanks for pulling this list together.
February 4, 2009 at 7:45 am
Jeremy,
If you want to try MatchPoint, here’s a link direct to free registration:
http://www.prmatchpoint.com/register.asp
http://prworkbench.wordpress.com/
February 4, 2009 at 10:53 am
Not the same ol’ tired stuff on your list, Graham. Thanks. Three additions for your next update:
- dotSUB offers a free service to add subtitles and translation to web video. Wonderful addition to a PR agency proposal for a client that wants to reach audiences beyond English. http://www.dotsub.com
– Techrigy has a “freemium” service that does many of the same things (blog, Twitter, monitoring, sentiment, nice charting of social media mentions) as Radian6, for free!
http://www.techrigy.com
– The @prnewswire and @profnet feeds on Twitter provide frequent alerts on reporters seeking expert sources and changes in the media. No commercialism of any kind, just good open-source data.
Hope this is helpful. Take care.
– Dave
February 4, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Great list. I use them all the time except for BlogPulse which I have always seen as mostly overlap between the other tools.
February 9, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Hey Graham,
This is a great list! Social Mention and monitter are new to me but sound very useful. I’ll definitely check them out.
Thanks again :)