Doing More with Less: PR tools, tips and resources

DOING MORE WITH
LESS – TOOLS, TIPS
AND RESOURCES
Kellye Crane
Founder, 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!

 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

 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

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!
Solo PR Pro Free Resources:
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Blog: soloprpro.com
Twitter: @SoloPR
@Kellye Crane
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