We live in a fast-paced world where instant communication and news monitoring are a key to maintaining a brand’s relevance. That also means that the majority of work that brands do – both behind the scenes and customer-facing – happens online and that’s why it is important to be on the top of the game when it comes to choosing the best tools for a digital PR campaign.
There are countless tools that PRs use to help them navigate through clusters of information, discover shareable content and search databases to find the relevant contacts for effective content distribution. Here at Passion, we’ve got our personal favourites that help us with our content creation and outreach strategy, and we feel they’re too useful to keep to ourselves.
Read on to discover what digital PR tools can help boost your brand’s visibility and earn your website quality links.
Gorkana
Gorkana is the holy grail when it comes to sourcing journalists’ contacts, making it a very popular tool among digital and traditional PRs. This tool can also be used to create outreach lists and also offers an integrated press release distribution option. One of the most reliable tools on the market, Gorkana’s team is constantly updating its impressive database to make sure that its exhaustive list of contacts remains up-to-date.
BuzzSumo
A tool that shows what content works and how shareable it is, the insights available through BuzzSumo can be used to generate ideas, create content, identify influencers and monitor the progress of a digital PR campaign.
SimilarSites
A Chrome extension that enables you to discover websites which are similar to those you are currently browsing, SimilarSites provides insights into the content from those competitors. You can also see monthly site visits and compare these with your own website.
HARO
Short for “Help a Reporter Out”, HARO is a platform used by journalists who are looking for expert sources to provide commentary to include in their articles. By directly responding to journalists and providing expert opinions and tips on behalf of their clients, PRs can get valuable media coverage from high-traffic websites and boost their link-building opportunities in the process.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free tool that allows you to track specific keywords or topics. You will then receive an alert whenever one of these terms has recently been mentioned online, giving you an easy way to track mentions of your brand, industry and competitors.
Ahrefs
Although Ahrefs is predominantly used for SEO, it can also assist Digital PRs in finding content ideas for their next campaign. Ahrefs lets you see who is linking to your competitors, what content gets the most backlinks and how it ranks, as well as helping you identify potential prospects for your own outreach list.
Majestic
Much like Ahrefs, Majestic can help you find content ideas with the potential to generate backlinks. One of its most valuable features is Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) detector, which can make it easier to identify quality sites with the best opportunities for acquiring backlinks.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another SEO tool which can also be used to track the success of your PR campaign, and you don’t need to be an SEO guru to use it. Even at beginner’s level, you will easily be able to see the popularity of your content, how people are engaging with it and where the traffic is coming from.
Answer The Public
A helpful social listening tool to discover which related phrases and questions people are asking related to your keyword. Once you enter the keyword, Answer The Public will collate an insightful and interestingly presented list of topic and keyword clusters, giving you a better understanding of what content is trending.
MozBar
MozBar is an excellent Chrome extension which can be used to find out the Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA) and Spam Score of a page or website. You can also use this tool for tracking Follow or No Follow links.
As you can see, between identifying and monitoring all of the right tools, planning a digital PR campaign can be a time- and labour-intensive process. When done right and coupled with some killer creative content, you’ll reap the rewards in no time, but it takes a lot of work to reach that point. If you feel more comfortable seeking advice from the experts, get in touch with the team at Passion Digital to start planning your next digital PR campaign.