doing more with less: pr tools, tips and resources

DOING MORE WITH LESS – TOOLS, TIPS AND RESOURCES

Kellye CraneFounder, Solo PR Pro

@KellyeCrane | | soloprpro.com

Shoot the Messenger – Me! Sharing my personal thoughts and experiences

with these tools.

We’re here to learn from each other!

Quick Poll

Are you…

Independent/consultant Boutique agency Large agency In-house

Avoid “Shiny Object Syndrome””

Strategy

When to Invest What is your time worth? How much time will the tool save you? How much does the tool cost?

Mathematical!

Not the answer

Productivity Power!

Dropbox – Anyone can access any document in any folder you give them permission to view and/or edit

Google Apps for Business –Google Apps for Business is a paid version of Gmail and Google Drive, where you can use your own domain.

Productivity

Microsoft Office 365 - Online version of Microsoft suite.

Gmail add-ons Boomerang for Gmail- Another Gmail add-on, Boomerang enables you to

pre-schedule emails for later delivery, and also schedule reminders to follow-up on emails.

Wisestamp – Makes it easy to include a graphically rich email signature, with links and icons.

Yesware – Find out when someone opens your email and clicks on the links. Especially useful for media relations!

Productivity

Evernote –It’s a notes app + clipper on steroids, allowing you to easily capture and sync information across platforms.

Pocket- A browser extension that allows you to save a website for future reference with one click.

Newsle – Find out when your friends and colleagues make the news - sends you an email once a day with links to all the articles/blogs where they appear.

Blogtrotter- If you like to subscribe to blogs by email, this tool allows you to easily signup for multiples at a time.

Diigo- Free social bookmarking tool that makes it easy to save and share content.

Productivity

Traditional PR

Inkybee – Terrific tool for blogger outreach.

MuckRack – Lower cost online database, has good relationship with journalists.

Help a reporter out (HARO) – Most PR pros know about HARO - just sign up and you’ll receive emails of press queries, organized by industry/interest for easy scanning.

Mention.net and Talk Walker – When Google Alerts stopped being actively supported, these two services became the most widely-used free tools for monitoring alerts via email.

Who Shared my Link- Enter a URL and see how many times it was shared on social media, and by which journalists and bloggers.

Traditional PR

SumAll- Connect and compare data from your social media, e-mail, ads, Google analytics and more, all in one dashboard.

Cyfe- Another all-in-one data-monitoring dashboard that allows you to collect and analyze data across popular online services (many features are free).

SocialCrawlytics- A free tool that lets you identify your competitor's most shared content. Tagboard- A page that lets you track hashtags across all major platforms, including

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Google+. AP Stylebook Ask the Editor – Can’t find your Stylebook? This online Q&A is searchable, and

you can often find the answers to your style questions here.

Traditional PR

Visuals

PicMonkey- By far the easiest and most powerful image editing tool out there for non-experts

Canva- This is an amazing service to help the design-challenged among us create stunning designs

Visuals

FreeDigitalPhotos.net- My favorite source of free images.

Compfight - Use this Flickr search tool and turn the “Creative Commons: Commercial” qualifier on.

Wordswag- Easily add text to iPhone photos for modern-looking graphics.

Photo Peach- Use this digital tool to create a slideshow with photos, music and captions that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or a blog.

Dafont- A powerfully searchable archive of more than 17,000 fonts you can download for free.

Visuals

Powtoon- Online presentation tool that lets you create animated videos or explainers.

Animoto- A web-based service that provides a quick and visually appealing way to share photos and create videos.

gifboom- Express yourself in motion with animated GIFs made with your iPhone or Android.

Swipe- A web application that allows you to create web-powered slideshows and share them.

Piktochart- DIY infographic creator that offers a number of tools and templates to make the process easier.

Infogr.am- Another well-known DIY infographic app.

Visuals

Social Media

Social Media Buffer- Space out your updates so you aren’t sending

multiple links in rapid succession.

BuzzSumo- Discover trending stories across all the major social networks on a given topic.

ManageFlitter – My favorite tool for managing Twitter followers/following.

Rebelmouse- Allows you to connect multiple social networks and profiles, hashtags, etc., onto one unified dashboard that can be branded and shared.

GroupTweet- Transparently combine the voices of multiple contributors into a single Twitter account (pricing based on number of followers).

RoundTeam- Another tool that allows multiple users to contribute to a single Twitter account, this time with a different subscription plan.

Social Media

Facebook Debugger- If your link is not expanding properly to include details and thumbnails on Facebook, this tool can help.

GramFeed- This photo search platform shows images and accounts that are trending on Instagram.

OneLoad- A video distribution tool with both free and paid plans that allows users to quickly upload video content to a multitude of sites at one time.

YouTube Capture- An app that lets you record, edit, and upload videos on your phone to YouTube, and post to Google+, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.

Feedly – Quickly scan the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs and websites.

Social Media

Still with me?

Collaboration

FreeConference.com – I use this service, though there’s also the comparable FreeConferenceCall.com.

Skype - Make free calls with audio and/or video over the internet to other people on Skype.

AnyMeeting- Provides free web conferencing and webinar software for up to 200 attendees (ad-free versions available for a fee).

Collaboration

Box.net- Allows you to store up to 5GB for free, so you can access your files from anywhere, and easily collaborate and share.

MindMeister- Online mind mapping and brainstorming tool.

Screencast tools Screencast-o-Matic Jing Screenr

Collaboration

Project Management

Toodledo – Simple ToDo app with excellent mobile capabilities.

WorkFlowy- A minimalistic-style task management tool.

Asana- A favorite of many, Asana is one of the most full-featured free tools for project management.

Backpack – One of the original cloud-based management solutions.

Trello- This free tool uses “cards,” which you can group and organize to stay on track.

Project Management

Time Savers

Rescue Time- Tracks the time you spend on applications and websites and gives you a detailed report of your activity.

theSkimm- Quick-hit overview of the day’s news, every morning in your inbox.

SoundGecko- Turn your favorite websites, blogs and documents into audio.

Time Savers

gTrax- A Google application that allows for simple time-tracking with the integration of Google Calendar.

Lastpass – Not only does Lastpass make your passwords more secure, but it remembers them for you so you save time.

Zapier – Similar to the popular IFTTT (which stands for “if this then that”), this service allows you to automate a variety of tasks between a large number of online services.

Time Savers

Cool Tools

Visible Tweets- Animate tweets for public display. Clickto Tweet- The easiest way to add ‘Tweet This’

for specific pieces of text. Embed Code Generator- Quickly create embed

codes so others can easily repost your images, infographics, etc.

Wordle- Create word clouds based on the content of any website.

Get It In Writing! Ebook- Not a tool per se, but if you’re looking for examples of commonly used contracts, download this free 45-page guide from Solo PR Pro.

Cool Tools

Kayak- Crawls multiple travel sites and returns all the results on one screen.

MilelQ- MileIQ automatically remembers your drives for mileage reimbursement or taxes.

Bust A Name- The easiest way to find a domain name. Wufoo- Create forms online that can be embedded in a web page or

blog. Audacity- Audacity is the go-to audio editor for recording and mixing

digital tracks. Pingdom- A free website monitoring tool.

Cool Tools

Doodle- Find a good meeting time for multiple people across organizations, no registrations needed.

InternetSlang.com- Search for the meanings of abbreviations, acronyms and other slang.

HighTail – Circumvent email when sending very large files - just send a link to the downloadable version instead.

7-Zip- Easy-to-use, no-cost alternative to WinZip. PrimoPDF- Create PDF documents using your computer’s print

function – no Adobe Acrobat required. JotNot- Turn your smartphone camera into a high-resolution scanner.

Cool Tools

SurveyMonkey – Create and share your own online surveys quickly and easily.

Wedgies- Create a question and share it via text-sharing and social platforms.

FaxZero – Free faxes include the FaxZero logo on the cover page; logo-free versions cost just $1.99.

Zamzar – Easy online file conversion between a multitude of formats.

Cool Tools

My New Fave - CoSchedule

Thank You!

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