Free (Or Inexpensive) Tools For PR Pros
Whether you’re a seasoned pro, or you’re just dipping your toes in the proverbial PR waters, these tools will assist you in meeting your business objectives.
Here are five affordable online resources for public relations professionals.
1. HARO
Help A Reporter Out - HARO, for short - connects journalists seeking expertise to include in their content with sources who have that expertise.
Register as a source to receive daily media requests from major publications.
If there’s a relevant request for your client, you can pitch the masked email address listed in the source request. If the journalist is interested, they’ll reach out.
2. Muck Rack
Muck Rack is perfect for finding the right reporter for your pitch (including their direct email).
Easily search for journalists, monitor news, and build reports with Muck Rack’s software.
There is limited access under the free subscription, but the paid services provide more capabilities.
Note: A small downside to Muck Rack is that it only pulls from Twitter to generate its media contact list. If a reporter is not on Twitter, or doesn’t update their profile, they may not be in Muck Rack’s database.
3. Answer The Public
There are 3 billion Google searches every day, and Answer The Public taps into autocomplete data from those search engine queries, providing useful phrases and questions people are asking around your keyword.
It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh content, and formulate the perfect pitch.
4. Awario
Awario is a brand monitoring and social listening tool that takes the manual labour out of media monitoring.
With this software, you can monitor your brand, products, or any specific keywords you’d like by tracking real-time mentions from social media and the web.
Awario’s web crawlers monitor over 13 billion pages daily including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, news, blogs, and more.
The company offers a free trial, but after that you can expect to pay for the service.
5. Tweet Deck
Yes, this one’s obvious. But not in the ways you may think.
With Tweet Deck, you can view multiple timelines, trends and keywords in one easy interface, offering a decent (and free) substitute for those who aren’t quite yet ready to invest in a more advanced software such as Awario.
