The time you will spend writing and editing press releases, hunting down journalists’ email addresses, and tracking your PR campaign performance will be longer because you do not have the best PR software. Without top PR software and tools, you could be missing out on opportunities.
Do you know that every $1 invested in PR earns $5 on average? Because of this, you can not ignore public relations. How can you use the full potential of your PR actions? There is a need for PR software.
Needless to say, I have worked in PR for several years. At the early stage, I was easily confused and frustrated trying to figure out the best tools. At a conference hosted by my company sometime last year, Stephen Duke jokingly said, “The joke in the PR industry that the most popular tool is Excel is not very funny.” I often use at least one element of the stack, like media monitoring tools, media list-building solutions, etc., because the modern PRtech stacks are gaining traction as PR tools used by agencies are getting more advanced. There are still a whole lot of options.
I see PR as a kind of subtle thought inception. Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee said, “ When you are advertising, you are saying that you are good, but PR will make someone else say that you are good.”
In this guide, you will learn about the features and importance of PR software. If you are in PR but are not using software tools, you need to start using them.
Key Points
- Grammarly helps you to write without errors.
- PR software is a cloud-based tool that enables users to access, create, and distribute content.
- With PR software, you can streamline the process of public relations.
- PR software enables your business to measure the effectiveness of its communication strategies.
- Monitoring the media is one of the most important characteristics of PR software because it enables businesses to monitor their media coverage and be at the top of the industry.
Let’s begin
Meaning Of PR Software
I was able to manage my communication strategies, create content, and monitor the effectiveness of my communication strategies, all of which were possible because of PR software.
PR software is a cloud-based tool, that enables users to access, create, and distribute content,. It is user-friendly, and the navigation is very easy. This software can be accessed from any location. It has a central location for businesses to manage their communication efforts. PR software allows businesses to streamline the process of their PR.
You use PR software to disseminate important information and events about your company to the public, build your brand image, and transform negative publicity into positive sentiment. With the software, you will have access to a massive media database of journalists, media outlets, bloggers, etc to connect with in a few clicks to promote your PR content. Press releases, media reports, interviews with journalists, and conferences are ways through which you can share communication with the public about your company’s image.
Also, the monitoring and analytics tools of the PR software track and monitor all the important activities across media and social channels that are related to PR.
Features of Best PR Software
Public relations actions have many types. Significant examples are strategic communication, media monitoring, maintaining media relations, influencer marketing, and social media.
When you are selecting PR software to use, you need to consider factors like the size of your team, the basic features you need, your budget, and reviews of users to determine which is best for your organization.
A few years ago, I found that PR can be 90% more effective in driving sales than advertising. To help you, I have organized a list of the best PR software and tools you will need.
People might be lazy when browsing the internet but they are not naive. People understand that the ads are direct marketing actions pointing at them.
Public relations software must vary with such a combination of purposes. Also, you should note that no single tool can address all the public relations needs.
Considering all this, I combined the most important features of great public relations software. They are
#1. Accessing data from various sources
This involves collecting and analyzing information from various platforms and media. This involves tracking content from social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and other websites.
I didn’t have access to so many sources before and it made my work lack so many things, especially my software. But when I had an encounter with Billy Drake, he told me that my software must be accessing data from so many sources for it to be very effective. Since I did this, my software changed and my work improved.
#2. Media monitoring
Monitoring the media is one of the most important characteristics of PR software because it enables businesses to monitor their media coverage and be at the top of the industry. This helps your business to know when your brand is being mentioned and know your competitors and keywords of the industry across media outlets, including social media platforms, forums, etc. For example, Using Arkreach, I was able to track my business media coverage and stay informed. This allows me to respond quickly and stay ahead.
Read also: 20 BEST MEDIA MONITORING TOOLS IN 2024
#3. Analytics
Analytics is another major feature that enables your business to measure the effectiveness of your communication strategies. This feature will allow my business to track its engagement rates, reach, and sentiment analysis. It will also provide insights into how my business communication strategies are performing.
Read: 15 PR Analytics Hacks That Will Change the Game (Detailed)
#4. Planning of the media
Another essential feature is the planning of the media, which enables you to plan and schedule your communication strategies effectively. With this feature, I was able to create content calendars, schedule social media posts, and plan email campaigns. It also helped to make sure that my communication efforts are organized and aligned with my business goals.
#5. Measurement
This feature has helped my business in a very big way because it enabled my business to measure the impact of my communication strategies. I was able to track my website traffic, lead generation, and rates of sales conversion with this feature. Also, It helps in providing insights into how your communication strategies are impacting your business goals.
#6. Crisis Monitoring
This is a critical feature of PR software because it will enable your business to respond to crises effectively. It was this feature that helped my brand know when we were mentioned during our crisis. It was possible to monitor my company’s social media conversations and identify potential issues before they escalated.
Read: CRISIS COMMUNICATION: Definition and Best Strategies
Importance Of Best PR Software
Having PR software has so much importance and this has helped me in my work as a PR. Having PR software has increased my brand, and assisted me in monitoring and responding to media conversations. With these benefits, PR software is very beneficial to any brand.
Some of the benefits of using PR software include:
#1. Organized contact database
My media contact database is part in my email inbox, part on an Excel sheet I started years ago, part on my phone, and some on a random collection of Post-it notes and bits of paper on my desk. But with the help of PR software, it was easy for me to build and manage my media contact database with everything I needed in one place. I started by easily importing the contacts I already have and I add new ones as I grow.
Therefore, with the help of a PR strategy, you can add notes to the document of your history of interactions with particular contacts. You can use flexible custom tags to help you identify a contact based on anything you want.
#2. Reaching the right audience
With all my contacts in one place, PR software has made it very easy for me to select the groups, traits, tags, or anything that will match my audience for a particular media pitch.
You can search and sort all your contacts and also construct the perfect audience for your press release, or other communication with the help of PR strategy. For PR success, it is crucial to match messages to the right audience.
Another handy feature in PR software that boosts my contact database and increases my chances of connecting with the best and right journalist is called “contact recommendations.”
#3. Easy way of creating, sending, and designing press releases
You will always start from scratch every time and be limited to fairly simple and plain releases if there is no PR software.
In terms of what you can create, how easy it is, and how long you can do it, PR software always offers a major upgrade.
I never knew about this PR software until I started working with Donald Shaw. He introduced me to the PR software, and since I started using it, I have control of every aspect of my work, from colors and fonts to headlines. Since then, I always come up with the right look for my brand.
See Press Release Examples to Inspire You in 2024 (+ Expert Tips & Templates)
#4. Easy personalization
Do you send out your campaign without personalized content? If you are doing so, You need a good PR software.
With good PR software, my press release was easily personalized. I only need to compose my message and it will be automatically personalized based on the information in my contact database with the help of the special fields in the text.
When my messages started being personalized, I started seeing an increase in engagement, which helped my brand. Therefore, you need good PR software.
#5. Improved teamwork
Your team members can access the account and share information, and they can add, update, manage, and contribute to your contact database
The team members can also create phone call and contact histories, keep track of your interactions, tag their team members, and discuss threads with them.
PR software will help my team members work well as team members. There are a lot of things my team members do among themselves and they are doing massively well all because of PR software.
Read also: 7 Proven Ways to Develop Thought Leadership Strategy for Your Company
Best PR Software
The PR software is a full-service support system that impacts everything about my brand’s management of media relations, from organizing the way I access and use information to the resting of my messages and more.
If you are in PR, I advise you to support your efforts with PR software because it will make your job easier. You should not use just any PR software, but the best PR software.
Here are the best PR software that I have tested and strongly recommend to you:
#1. Brand24
This is one of the most comprehensive public relations programs. With this tool, you can track all public mentions from a lot of sources, like Social media platforms, Podcasts, forums, etc. This tool has a 14-day free trial.
With Brand24, you can easily separate results by sources through which were mentioned, strengths of their influence, etc. This software offers an endless number of features. It also provides you with a detailed analysis of sentiment.
With Brand24, you will be able to track the attitude of your audience towards your brand, whether it is positive or negative. You will identify your key communication channels and see the changes that could impact your reputation.
#2. Prowly
This software media management feature helped my press releases. It helped me to find media opportunities, collect and store media contacts, and analyze the strength of my campaigns. This software has so many interesting features, like the creation of press releases, and analysis of your campaign to organize the workflow of PR campaigns.
This is also a solid tool that you can use to support the management of your media relations.
#3. Muck Rack
This is software for building media relations. It carries the most up-to-date media database in the PR software industry.
I will say that the profiles of Muck Rack’s journalists include a lot of handy information for PR professionals. With Muck Rack, you could craft media lists, collaborate with your PR team on outreach, and monitor journalists. You will also be able to pitch your media contacts.
#4. Meltwater
This multipurpose PR software has social media, media relations, and consumer intelligence. Meltwater allows me to create lists of journalists from my niche, spread my press releases, etc.
This is very helpful for the management of social media. It helps in finding influencers, and you can manage relationships with them.
Furthermore, I discovered that Meltwater is expensive software dedicated to large companies with large budgets. I doubt the reliability of the social media monitoring feature of the software. I followed trends and tracked the activities of my competitors.
Read also: The Best 2024 PR Package Ideas & Everything You Need.
#5. Hunter.io
This is a very different kind of PR software. This software focused on the mastery of a narrow part of public relations. It specializes in allowing users to find appropriate email addresses and other useful contact data.
You will be able to create and analyze your cold email campaigns. I recommend this software if media outreach is truly important in your PR strategy. Hunter.io is software that helps with email marketing.
#6. Prezly
This is an effective communication software that is dedicated to individuals, PR teams, agencies, and marketing agencies. It will help your public relations effort in content distribution, and email campaigns.
With Prezly, you can share your press releases and stories through your custom-branded online newsroom. As for your email campaigns, you can set and manage them directly with the platform. It provides real-time campaign analytics.
Read also: The Ideal Press Release Length: How Much Should You Write
#7. BuzzSumo
This software supports your public relations efforts from a particular angle because BuzzSumo is a content research tool.
The software allows me to discover trending topics. It will also help you identify journalists and influencers associated with a keyword.
Moreover, BuzzSumo presented me with insights about my competitors. This will benchmark your brand. Also, you can uncover and repeat their secrets of success.
For you to be able to enjoy the tool’s public relations features, you need to purchase a Suite plan ($499/month)
Read also: PR KPIs: Top 10 PR KPIs Every Comms Pro Needs to Track in 2024
#8. Cision
Cision is a widely recognizable public relations and media monitoring tool. It helps send and track your press releases, measure their performance, find contact, and evaluate your PR efforts.
Cision is a PR software that provides a large database of media contacts ranging from bloggers to journalists to influencers. It also includes profiles on social media. I was able to decide on how to reach my contacts more efficiently because of Cision.
Through a PR newswire, I directly targeted my desired journalists and influencers.
Cision is a great PR tool but always remember that it has a lot of outdated journalist contact information. It is also expensive software, which makes it a good choice for businesses with large public relations budgets.
#9. Crystal
This software provides insights that will help you adjust your communication with a particular person. Using the DISC model and a personality map, Crystal can analyze your public writings and social media content.
You can improve your PR outreach, and your messages will be tailored because of Crystal’s writer assistant and personalized communication features.
Crystal is also useful for marketing, sales, and HR.
Read also: 11 Insane Brand Tracking Tools Will Blow Your Company’s Profits
#10. SparkToro
This research tool was useful to my public relations actions. Through the analysis of data from many sources, the identification of top content channels for a particular niche is possible. By targeting the right audience, my campaigns can be more effective.
SparkToro’s attention is on the US market and it also offers reliable insights into high-profile niches.
Read also: Optimal Timing: Finding the Best Time to Send Your Press Release
#11. Brandwatch
At my early stage in Public relations, it was very difficult for me to discover when my brand was mentioned online. Most times, I will see it after several months and it almost cost me my job. But, when I started using Brandwatch, everything changed. This is a very good spy software that helped me to spy on my competitors which enabled me to improve my services and have a better strategy. BrandWatch is super good for PR professionals who work for enterprise companies.
#12. Mention
You may discover that this software has a feature that can help you track remarks about your company and also reply to comments without leaving the Mention app. You can also monitor your competitors or get notifications when they are mentioned.
Read Also: 15 PR Analytics Hacks That Will Change the Game (Detailed)
#13. TweetDeck
You can manage your Twitter account effectively with TweetDeck. You can create different feeds for the same account. TweetDeck helps track down competitors because of its advanced features.
#14. Awario
This software accommodates everybody Even if you have a small team and you want to grow your business with PR, then Awario is for you. This is less expensive than others and still has essential features. Awario helped me cover my brand mentions and spy on my competitors.
#15. Anewstip
Influencer outreach is a part of PR. With Anewstip, there is a lot of access to tons of influencers who helped with my campaign. This software can also recommend journalists who will be the perfect fit for your campaign. PR pitches sent early can be tracked while using this software.
#16. JustReachOut
This is a PR software that makes it possible to reach a targeted list of influencers and journalists. This software has a team that can effectively develop a PR strategy for you if you don’t have any. There was a time when my friend Mira didn’t know how to develop her PR strategy, and it was affecting her PR efforts. But when I introduced her to JustReachOut, everything changed.
#17. Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach gave me access to 25 million bloggers and journalists. Hence, the magic way was that I added keywords that described my company, and access was granted. You can create lists and manage conversations with Ninja Outreach.
#18. HARO
HARO is a PR tool that will help your clients and I earn media opportunities by answering journalists’ and reporters’ queries. Besides this, we were able to build our authority as thought leaders.
#19. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is also software that you can use to know what your audience is asking as a professional PR. The amount of content ideas you can get from this tool is enormous, and the content ideas can direct your PR campaigns.
#20. Grammarly
This is one of the favorite tools of any marketer, even though, as a PR professional, you can not use it for any outreach, monitoring of brand mentions, etc. This makes sure that your press releases are error-free because no audience will like to listen to a press release full of errors.
When you use Grammarly, your message tone is set, and your writing is free of errors. You can also integrate it into your browser, and you will use it anytime you are working online.
#21. Hemingway App
This is a writing tool that helps PR professionals pass their message across clearly. The tool helps me reduce the use of passive voice, adjectives, and difficult sentences. Also, this writing tool helps message reading levels, and it always suggests how to make them simpler.
#22. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
This tool always helps to craft headlines that gain attention instantly. you always use it to test the quality of your headline, and you will always get an audience for your press release.
#23. MailTrack
This tool tracks the open rates of my Gmail. If you have only a handful of people to reach, this tool is perfect for you. MailTrack has helped many people to know the relevant emails and also test different email subject lines to get the best open-rate ones.
#24. PrPropel
This is a management tool designed to simplify your PR efforts. With PrPopel, you can find important journalists and influencers, as well as manage your media relationships. There are features for personalized email outreach that will help you build strong connections with journalists and maximize your media coverage.
#25. Onclusive
Onclusive gives feedback on the rate at which my strategy is working and does it needs improvement or not. I used it when it was AirPR. Its analysis is advanced and the insights provided are to help you reach and influence your PR campaigns. Onclusive will track and analyze your media coverage, social media engagement, and other key metrics.
#26. One pitch
This software helps simplify your media pitching process as a public relations professional. This software will help you to create and send concise pitches to targeted journalists. One pitch helps reduce the time and effort spent on traditional outreach methods.
In 2000, when I read about OnePitch, I learned that one can achieve a greater success rate and that its journalist database is impressive. Additionally, its organized interface is user-friendly and can be mastered easily.
#27. CoverageBook
My brand is one of the over 12,000 agencies that trust CoverageBook to share the impact of our work with the public. In CoverageBook, there is no manual grabbing of the screen. An image will be automatically sourced for any URL I add.
#28. PressPage
Do you and your team want to do more? Then PressPage is the software for you. With an integrated media database of 900,000 journalists, you can manage your newsroom, distribution of email, etc. PressPage is a world-trusted leading brand that can help you design your newsroom, distribute content, and manage your database in one place.
#29. Nexis Newsdesk
In 2020, Nexis Newsdesk was an award-winning solution in which, on a single platform, you could analyze, search, monitor, and share insightful media intelligence. Also, you can monitor my brand and competitors effectively through the news alerts.
In Nexis Newsdesk, you can access and understand the performance of your campaigns, and your position with competitors.
Final Thoughts
Recently, the scope of public relations efforts has required professional tools and software. You have learned that public relations software serves so many purposes, which include monitoring the media, building relationships with journalists, and influencers, email marketing, etc. Therefore, when choosing PR software, calculate your budget, test public relations tools and software, and define your PR actions.
Tools like Prowly, and Muck Rack have enhanced my PR strategies throughout my career.
FAQs
What is CRM?
CRM is the system that knows the needs and requirements of customers and also tunes those needs to performance.
What is PR CRM Software?
PR CRM software is a tool that perfectly organizes all records of your press contacts. Without switching between tools and updating data manually, your media contacts and interactions will be organized.
What Is the Difference Between CRM and PR?
PR builds and promotes an organization’s public image, handles communication, and manages media relations, but, CRM centers on the relationship between a brand and its customers.
What Are the Major Types of CRM?
Collaborative, analytical, and operational are the major types of CRM.
Who Heads PR?
The Director of Public Relations oversees the PR department and leads the development and implementation of strategies. This role includes promoting the company and brand awareness by managing media relations.
This role involves managing media relations, crisis communication, and public affairs to enhance the company’s reputation and brand awareness.
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