doing more with less: pr tools, tips and resources
TRANSCRIPT
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.
@KellyeCrane | | soloprpro.com
We’re here to learn from each other!
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Quick Poll
Are you…
Independent/consultant Boutique agency Large agency In-house
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Avoid “Shiny Object Syndrome””
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Strategy
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When to Invest What is your time worth? How much time will the tool save you? How much does the tool cost?
Mathematical!
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Not the answer
Productivity Power!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Visuals
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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
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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
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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
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Social Media
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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.
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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
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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
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Collaboration
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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
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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
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Project Management
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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
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Time Savers
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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
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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
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Cool Tools
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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
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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
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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
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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
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My New Fave - CoSchedule
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Thank You!
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