If you know the “four P’s” of marketing and public relations, you know that everything fits into one or more of these categories: price, product, promotion, and placement. What changes are the technologies and devices you use to accomplish your goals. Here are some tools that can help you stay on top.
Outreach
One of the most important PR practices is building relationships with reporters and other writers. Their jobs are structured around deadlines, and they don’t have time for run-on press releases. Give them the facts, along with applications of your product or service, in short, simple sentences.
Pitch your article only to those reporters that cover your field. Something that can help narrow your audience is Cision. This program helps you search for and target writers based on the filters that you choose, such as print, Internet or broadcast media.
Help a Reporter Out, an online resource, lets you register as a source of information. Member journalists send emails to the site seeking sources and you get access to three of those emails daily. This is a great way to position your company and/or executives as thought leaders.
Say it With Pictures
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is one of those phrases that, no matter how many times you’ve heard it, still rings true. Stories with images have an astounding rate of 94 percent more views than stories without. Don’t post any old image with your article or blog, use quality images that relate to the content. Here are some tools that can help your article get noticed. Get your masters in communication online from USC.
Canva: A popular tool that walks you through the process of creating quick and easy images that are available immediately for posting or using in a presentation.
Recite: Use this site tool to make your quotes stand out visually. Highlight a quote from your CEO or another source, or search the site database for famous quotes. Pick a quote, pick a background and you’re done.
Infogr.am: Add bar charts, line charts, pie charts and more to communicate information quickly. Import data, search for info within the program or type it in directly. Animate your charts for extra impact.
Easel.ly: If you have complex data to communicate, try this site that lets you choose from templates or create your own design. Earn your edd degree online.
Finding the Right Email Address
Have you found some information online and need to connect directly with a blogger or other possible source? Try Connectifier, which works with social media IDs to find a current address. Additional, similar tools are Sell Hack and Thrust.io. If you’ve got the name and company, these tools will track down an email address for them.
Online content continues to grow in importance and usefulness to your organization. As technology changes, marketing and public relations professionals must adapt and embrace these changes to stay on top. The good news is that many of these tools are free to use or low-priced. With no time to waste, you’ll want to try them out now.
