If there’s one challenge that covers almost every area of PR, it’s this: not having enough time. From reporting to engaging with influencers to measuring campaign performance, many teams often wish they could hit a button that stops time and lets them catch up on their work.
You’d think PR pros would fervently search out time-saving tools, but curiously, many are adamant about sticking with spreadsheets and other tedious systems that eat up hours. So let’s be clear about this: Manually managing every PR process is not a solution. It’s part of the problem. Think about the billable hours wasted on maintaining a spreadsheet every week. Even then, the team is likely to miss deadlines, blast out ill-targeted pitches and spend hours researching answers to their bosses’ questions.
What is the solution? The cloud. Specifically, collaborative tools that accelerate productivity, help marketing leaders work wherever and whenever they want, and boost PR results in the form of greater ROI.
If you don’t have your head in the cloud yet, it’s time to start. You won’t need any advanced tech skills; in fact, you’ve probably already used cloud-based tools like Docusign, SurveyMonkey or Google Drive for basic administrative needs. Most other cloud tools are just as intuitive and user-friendly, and some can help you take PR performance to another level.
Why Cloud? Collaboration and Creativity
PR teams that ignore cloud tools are squandering opportunities to drive both better efficiency inside the team and stronger results for their leaders and clients. And that’s something that should concern them, given that many brands are on the prowl for faster and budget-friendly options. Companies offering big budgets won’t settle for a sluggish team that can only report on basic media hits. They want a team that offers quick turnarounds and insightful data that shows both high performance and smart budget allocation.
Another factor to consider: the rising leadership of millennials. These young professionals have grown up accustomed to the flexibility and convenience of cloud solutions. As they begin to helm marketing communication teams, they refuse to accept the wasted time and effort involved in manual processes.
And that’s a good thing. PR is a service industry, and we owe our leaders, bosses and clients the highest level of service we can deliver. Cloud tools help you build the PR team everyone loves—the team known for their great media connections, creativity, and results that wow C-suite leaders.
If you’re not sure where to start, the below options are affordable (sometimes free) and can be incorporated with little strain on the business. Be assured they’re easy to learn and designed to fit seamlessly into your day, enhancing your productivity rather than interrupting it.
Building Your PR Tool Kit
Project management. A good PM tool like Basecamp, Trello, or Asana is essential to keeping a busy PR office on track. My team loves Basecamp for its intuitive navigation and clean document sharing; we can see where projects are at any moment. Trello is also a great option as it’s structured to mirror the flow of project management, from idea to completion. You can comment on projects, attach documents, vote, manage deadlines and use checklists. Asana also offers a dashboard that can track tasks, projects and conversations to ensure no deadline or campaign slips between the cracks.
Media contact databases. There are free or inexpensive cloud options like Anewstip which lets you search through all the real-time and historical tweets from its media contact database, Contactable which categorizes writers for easy selection, and Muck Rack which offers great search features.
Chat. Tools like Slack or Ryver can reduce emails and even meetings by maintaining a steady flow of communication and collaboration within the team. Slack offers a great API that lets you search conversations based on context, and integrates with popular applications like ZenDesk, Google Docs and Dropbox. Ryver also helps teams of any size collaborate, exchange files and organize emails—for free.
Design. It may not be a daily task, but sometimes you might be asked to design an asset or presentation. Canva is a handy design tool that offers great-looking templates for non-designers, while Playbuzz lets teams create fun assets like flip cards and quizzes without any design experience at all.
Influencer relations. With the rising number of digital influencers, solutions like Find Your Influence can be invaluable in terms of offering a self-service tool that connects PR pros with influencers. Teams can manage their own campaigns from distribution to performance measurement, giving them more control in deciding which influencers offer a real advantage to the brand.
PR management. This is another space that’s changed radically in recent years. New public relations software tools like my own company IrisPR are helping PR pros shave hours off their day; teams can automate tedious tasks like capturing results, recording pitches and measuring return, and evolve out of mass pitching to build better connections with media contacts.
Convinced to give cloud tools a try yet? Remember you can always take advantage of free trials to see if a solution is right for you. It’s a safe bet that once you see the increased team efficiency and media wins, you’ll be a cloud convert forever.
Aly Saxe is founder and CEO of IrisPR. She founded Ubiquity Public Relations in 2007. You can follow Aly at: @aly_saxe