New Tools PR Pros Need to Discover

Guest post by: @Alicia_LW

Tools are constantly popping up to help communication professionals save time, easily connect with journalist and influencers, and produce better results for their company and clients.

But how do you know which ones are worth the investment?

Trying new tools for the short free trail week is more often than not confusing and time-consuming. It’s like trying to buy the best wine. Does anyone actually know how to read the label? Plus, a sample of wine at the store could taste completely different with the food you have planned. Not to mention, who has time to try every single one to find the wines (I mean, tools) they like best.

Lucky for you, I’m a tool connoisseur.

BuzzSumo Pro

Started in 2013, BuzzSumo is an up-and-coming tool I’ve kept my eye on since the beginning. Their easy to use interface is brilliantly engineered to make content analysis and promotion a science.

BuzzSumo just released the pro version of their site, which I happily purchased, featuring capabilities like:

• Influencer Search: Ability to search anyone online using keywords, author search queries, and similar content shared.
• Top Content: Discover the most shared content—which can be filtered by date, type and social platform—from a specific company or on a particular topic.
• Alerts: Four different types of alerts—links, topic, domain, author—to keep you in-the-know about a person, company or topic.
• Content Analysis Report: Dive into a domain, topic or piece of content to find average shares by network or content type, how it compares to other content in that industry, related popular topics and more. You can also analyze social and content success through a side-by-side domain comparison report.
• Integration between features, ability to export lists, and you can even connect the tool to your Twitter for optimized productivity.

My Blog U

Only a few months old, My Blog U is gearing up to take the Internet by storm (#MBUstorm that is).

Ann Smarty created this tool to help content marketers, bloggers, PR pros and influencers collaborate to create and promote content. The tool is a little overwhelming but they do have lots of videos and a free Udemy course to help users understand how to get the most from it.

My Blog U is split into three main areas:

1. Brainstorm: Collaborate with others in your industry to get ideas on just about anything from topics to questions. Crowdsourcing at its finest.
2. Interviews: Become an expert by answering questions in your industry or pose a question to the community for an article you’re writing.
3. Media: Similar to My Blog Guest, post your content for others to share and link to.

The tool is currently free so use it while you can because I’m sure Ann plans to monetize this genius soon. Talking about making money, you can also take part in their 30-Day Brainstorm Challenge to win some serious prizes and cash (to fund your wine tasting).

Bonus Tools

Keep in mind the tool for me may not be the right tool for you. Even though we all have them, tastebuds can be different.

That’s why I’m labeling these next two tools as bonuses. They may be useful for some of us but a waste of time for others.

NEO

Neo will help you navigate through the matrix. A new tool created by AirPR, NEO (News Engine Optimization) breaks down how people perceive your brand messages online.

You can A/B test keywords and hashtags on social media, news outlets and search engines to identify the best way to word messages for each channel your audience is on.

Viral Content Buzz

Viral Content Buzz is a crowdsourcing tool to generate organic social shares. You can either purchase points to get your content shared or earn them by sharing other people’s content.

For me, it’s a two way street. I easily keep up with all my social platforms (you can add up to 5 Twitter handles) and in return use the points I earned to get organic shares on my client’s content.

Alicia is a content specialist and blogs in her free time at MarCom Land. Her articles have been published by PR Daily, SEMrush, and Business2Community. Check out our free tools at WebpageFX.

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Photo credit: OZinOH, via Flickr Creative Commons