Remember
1999?

These were our phones

Napster launched Transforming the music
industry

This was Britney Spears Asking
to hit her one more time

A lot changed in the
past 15 years. Yet our PR tools remain the same.

Managing thousands of contacts? Let’s
put them in Excel Emailing them? Let’s BCC them in Outlook and hope that our server doesn’t explode

Really?

We can automate many of
these old-school workflows by embracing our inner geek

This lets us focus on
what we do best: creativity & human connections

“ There needs to be
a large technology component inside the future successful PR firm. It needs technologies of promotion that can scale the work of its practitioners in the service of its clients. Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher

There’s an app
for that

! Most of the workflow
difficulties that you face aren’t unique. Google it and chances are big that a geek somewhere already built a solution. Here are 5 examples of tedious PR tasks we can automate

Enrich your influencer list with
social data Knowing the reach of influencers online can be valuable: how many Twitter followers do they have? Are they active? Saving this info manually is utter madness: switching back and forth between Excel and Twitter to update your data. And it’s immediately outdated.

Try FullContact. Using it feels
almost magical – enter an email address or Twitter handle, and get back a list of all the social profiles associated with that email or handle. You can also sync contacts from all your address books, fix duplicates, and correct formatting errors in your database. fullcontact.com

Publish & pitch multimedia press
releases Building a multimedia press release is hard enough. Making it responsive and email-ready is even harder – you need to get your contacts from Excel to your email provider, upload high-resolution assets to your press room, add image previews to your emails, make sure your assets look good on multiple devices… the list goes on!

Prezly combines email pitches with
online newsrooms. Create a multimedia press release in your newsroom, and Prezly generates a multimedia email version that you can pitch to journalists. Every email includes analytics to help you track response rates. prezly.com

And external communication Check a
recent cas ete satmudsy at brands

Craft relevant email responses When
an influencer emails you, you want to craft a response that’s as relevant as possible. So what do you do? Do you research this person on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google to see who they are and what they care about, and tailor your email accordingly? Or do you automate this tedious process with Rapportive?

Rapportive is a simple Gmail
add-on that automatically shows you important social data from people who email you, helping you to create a relevant response based on where they live, what they’re tweeting about, and any other recent online activity. The information appears right in your inbox. rapportive.com

Track who responds to your
emails If you send a lot of pitch emails, tracking them manually gets tricky in a hurry. It’s easy, though time-consuming, to keep a spreadsheet of everyone who writes you back, but for those who don’t respond, how do you know whether they’re reading your emails or ignoring them?

Yesware is a Gmail add-on
that was originally designed for sales professionals. Use it to monitor opens, clicks, and responses for every email you send to influencers. You can also create templates to automate your outreach and track which messages resonate best. yesware.com

Stay in touch with influencers
It’s a smart PR move to stay in touch with your influencers, even when you don’t have big news to share. Sending an occasional relevant link or useful article can build rapport with a journalist, establish your credibility as a reputable source, and increase your chances of getting coverage when you need it. But we’re all busy, and keeping in touch is easier said than done.

Contactually sends you automatic reminders
to contact people on your media list whom you haven’t reached out to in a while. The tool also provides helpful contextual information like social updates and recent conversations, as well as email templates to help you know what to say. contactually.com

There you go These 5
tips should help you save a lot of time

Wait, there’s more Get more
tips on PR innovation www.prezly.com/blog