PR ON THE GO April 29, 2022

PR Hacks: 16 Recommended Tools to Build Your Public Relations

What are the best tools for DIY PR?

This is the question we asked our PR and growth experts to support entrepreneurs in their PR efforts. Our experts reveal which tools, platforms and software they you use, and how creators and startups can make use of these for their DIY PR.

Here are 16 recommended PR tools:

Revue

Melanie Marten, PR Consultant and Owner of The Coup

"Creators and brands should consider launching an editorial newsletter to build a loyal audience. Revue is a newsletter tool that makes it easy to create beautiful newsletters and to grow your audience e.g. by letting your followers subscribe to your newsletter directly from your Tweets and Twitter profile."

Qwoted

Chandra Gore, Publicist & Principal Consultant of Chandra Gore Consulting

"One tool that I would recommend for a startup to use for their PR needs is Qwoted. If you do DIY PR this is a great resource to use to garner a placement that will showcase your expertise and boost your visibility. I highly recommend this tool as a way to begin building a profile in the media. Those top tier placements can possibly also boost your business as well."

Twitter

Tonya McKenzie, Founder, PR Consultant & Trainer at Sand & Shores

"The best tool for positive public relations results might surprise you. It's a platform, but not necessarily built for public relations professionals. However, Twitter is a winner when it comes to PR gains, increasing your brand awareness and that of your client. It is a place where you can make quality contacts based on your knowledge and personal network along with being able to immediately reach out to journalists and experts. The biggest developments of the platform have a direct impact on the public relations industry. Twitter Spaces is the best social audio tool in the market. PR Pros can start or join a room with a subject based on a pitch they are working on. We now have #PRLunchHour which runs weekly specifically for PR pros. Communities is a new feature for Twitter. There is a Communications and PR Community just to have the conversations and exchange resources for pros by pros. The best part about it is that the information that is shared, discussed, and exchanged is useful to any business owner, entrepreneur looking to build brand awareness or startup founder."

Rachel Escio, Digital PR & Content Specialist at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

"For DIY PR, especially for start-ups, I would recommend reaching out via the hashtag #journorequest on Twitter. Engagement on this channel with the use of your human voice allows for possible mention or media coverage, authentic relationships as we use personal accounts, and at the same time, an opportunity for community building and growth, across different markets."

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

Daniel Foley, Director at SEO-Audits.io

"HARO is one of the most popular tools for public relations and SEO specialists.. It's great for small enterprises with specialized knowledge and a desire to be featured in relevant publications. Consider HARO as a two-sided marketplace, with sources (like you) asking for press coverage on the one hand and journalists looking for sources on the other. Despite the fact that HARO has subscription options, you can start with a free account to see what the tool can achieve. As a PR solution to get you started, I definitely suggest it."

MOZ

Marco Genaro Palma, Head SEO Manager at PRLab

"One PR tool that brings great benefits to your brand is Moz. Moz gives an idea of how much traffic websites have, how popular they are, and which areas of your web page grab the attention of your audience the most. It is a great tool to track the success of your digital content and the campaigns you release, and additionally track how much reach you actually have through your stories and media relations. Moz is easy to use and we’ve experienced a much more successful data-driven approach when it comes to PR campaigns."

SparkToro

Daniel Hedegaard, Head of Press at CoolParcel

"Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, created SparkToro, a software tool. Rand, of course, requires no introduction to the marketing world.. However, the PR world may be unfamiliar with this technology. For marketers, SparkToro is a market research and audience intelligence tool. Of course, the technology isn't exclusive to or targeted at marketing experts; everyone may benefit from it. The unique feature of SparkToro is that it allows you to run searches and identify audiences based on their online behaviors. To be honest, there isn't anything like it out there right now, and if there is, it doesn't have the same level of data quality as SparkToro. You'll need SparkToro if you want to make lists of media connections and opportunities that you can connect with and reach out to."

Anewstip

Kavin Patel, Founder & CEO of Convrrt

"Anewstip is a search engine that helps you find journalists and has a cool feature that shows how influential you are based on the number of tweets, keywords, time, topic, and language you use. Alerts can also be set up. You can then make a media list and export it to use when pitching. It costs money to use Anewstip's paid plan, but you can pitch and track how many people respond to you. It was a good idea for me to look for journalists on this platform. I'm always looking for people who write about my investment business and my start-ups. This is a good way to keep track of what's going on and get involved."

MuckRack

Yuvi Alpert, Founder, Creative Director & CEO of Noémie

"While there are many channels that provide access to publication questions, what makes MuckRack one of the most popular and unique PR tools is that it actually provides the ability to search for journalists. In this new world of SEO algorithms, businesses have become more inclined to wait until the journalist comes with an opportunity rather than to seek them out.

MuckRack provides an extensive media database, alerts, pitching apparatuses, and reporting, to create the most comprehensive PR tool available. By giving access to this information, you not only have an extensive PR opportunity list, but have the ability to monitor your efforts to create the best campaign. MuckRack is a tool for those who wish to maximize their PR efforts and success."

LinkedIn

Matt Lee, Founder of Innovative Building Materials

"A strong LinkedIn network and membership in relevant industry groups on LinkedIn may be a terrific low-cost PR strategy. An excellent strategy is to maintain a strong network of LinkedIn business contacts and to participate actively in LinkedIn group conversations. These relationships and organizations will subsequently be more responsive to press releases and public relations announcements about news and products. Make sure your company profile includes detailed product information and product highlights. Whenever I'm marketing for a small business, I always start with LinkedIn since it connects these small businesses to potential clients and competition. It's basically digital networking and has proven to be very effective in building industry links."

Submit.co

Steve Anderson, Owner & CEO of Junk-Yard-Near-Me

"I utilize Submit.Co to promote me as a resource for entrepreneurs seeking press attention. It essentially offers several sites, such as startup directories, review sites, and communities, where you may acquire coverage or develop startup profiles. It's completely free, obviously a significant benefit, and somewhat explains the website's archaic appearance. It is, however, simple to use and does not need any work on your behalf other than the actual submission."

ResponseSource

Annie Everill, Digital Marketing Executive at Imaginaire

"One of the main tools I use for public relations is ResponseSource. This platform is a place where journalists and reporters reach out with a query for you to respond to and offer expert advice for. When responding to these queries, it's also a great opportunity to insert a backlink whilst also hopefully forming relationships within the industry."

Flourish

Kristen Klepac, Content Marketing Specialist at Green Flag Digital

"One of my favorite tools is Flourish. Employing eye-catching and shareable Flourish data visuals transforms ho-hum blogs posts into visually compelling content and streamlines overwhelming data analysis into easily digestible and professional-looking data stories.

This can be a game-changer in getting coverage.

For a DIY piece, all that is required is a functioning website, some writing know-how, and Flourish. Flourish is not just free, it also has a variety of user-friendly templates for visualizing data in tables, maps, scatterplots, and more. If you have data on hand from your business, you can simply drop it into Flourish to create stunning and easily shareable graphics. Once you've published your piece featuring these visuals, keep an eye on journalists or writers who cover the topic and send them an email to share the report you put together highlighting the data visuals."

Prowly

Kachelle Pratcher, Owner at K. Pratcher Media

"I would recommend Prowly as a necessary tool for DIY PR for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The features are top tier and it’s well in the budget for those not ready to invest in an agency. Inside of Prowly software you can create and distribute press releases, create a newsroom to house all your business news, create and manage a media list/contacts, and they just recently added media monitoring and custom alerts. These robust features are all inside your portal, so you don't have to use multiple websites. This is definitely my go-to to manage my company PR campaigns."

Terkel

Zach Goldstein, CEO & Founder of Public Rec

"I recommend using Terkel to boost your online ranking and media presence. You can join for free and submit up to five pitches per month for your business, or pay a premium for unlimited submissions.

Terkel has a wide selection of organizations with varying specializations that can help your business gain publicity for free. I recommend buying the premium subscription for the added functionality of seeing journalist organizations’ Domain Ratings and pitch as much as you would like.

Using Terkel has helped our company gain backlinks in several publications, many of which have a Domain Authority above 50. We use their dashboard to see our average pitch-to-publish ratio, which in our case is over 23%!"

BrandMentions

Victoria Mendoza, CEO of MediaPeanut

"I highly value using BrandMentions. It is a popular tool in digital PR.designed to track and measure mentions of any clients or brands. We often use this tracking and monitoring client/brand mentions including our own clients' in-house coverage and stay on top of media mentions. Any smart digital marketing business recognizes the value of competitor analysis, and BrandMentions is an excellent tool to have in your toolbox for doing so.

As a digital marketer and PR, I've been using BrandMentions to keep track of our client's brand name, keywords, and how much mentions and attention it gets from online news portals and sites. What I really like about BrandMentions is that it makes it so simple to observe how a term or brand has performed over time with corresponding graphs and charts. BrandMentions has a wide range of applications in our daily work activities, including research, competitive analysis, content marketing, and reputation management. I really recommended serious digital marketers should invest or be a part of the company."

SourceBottle

Veronica V. Sopher, visibility strategist and public relations practitioner, veronicavsopher.com

"I recommend SourceBottle as a great way to DIY your public relations strategy! It is a cost effective platform and it reaches several international markets. The process to submit your pitches is fairly easy and you also get a copy of your submission to review. This can be very helpful next time you are in need of a similar pitch. Having your bio, photo, social media assets and pitch are important to get the most out of your pitches. Always being ready with key words and being timely with responses helps alot. The key to DIYing your PR is to be consistent with your pitching and your message."