As per the definition from Hubspot, “Public Relations (PR) professionals help a business or individual cultivate a positive reputation with the public through various unpaid or earned communications, including traditional media, social media, and in-person engagements. They also help clients defend their reputation during a crisis that threatens their credibility.”

In the most basic sentence, PR helps generate publicity to promote a business. These PR campaigns targets magazines or news articles or getting some coverage on a television show, podcast, or radio show.

However, it is not that easy to get featured. According to Prezly’ The Global PR Survey 2020; 80 percent of PRs still search manually through newspapers for journalists. Most PRs can save about two hours a week by switching to CRM. This is where PR tools come into the picture to assist PR professionals.

Apart from sourcing media opportunities, a PR technology tool also helps in tracking media relations. It can also assist to find influencers and journalists and get their contact details.

Cision

This online PR tool is a must-have to embark on public relations campaigns that bring in desired results. This tool allows you to target relevant media platforms and reach the target audience group. Users can take advantage of features such as creating personalized emails and messages to reach out to influencers and journalists.

Business Wire

A company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Business Wire is a press distribution service and offers other services such as EDGAR filing or XBRL regulatory filings. It has been running for over 60 years now. With offices in 22 countries and 100,000 media outlets, Business Wire is a prominent name in the press release distribution.

JustReachOut

JustReachOut is a PR software with the expertise of outreach strategists to get the right media exposure to grow the business. JRO aims to develop a comprehensive PR strategy and an action plan. It has a huge amount of articles written on diverse topics, industries, and organizations. It also offers the service of finding the relevant journalist on their past writing and contact them with a perfect pitch.

NinjaOutreach

A PR tool that helps connect PR professionals to influencers and bloggers. It offers a quick search of their email addresses and automating a PR outreach strategy. It provides access to millions of leads, social media influencers, and bloggers.

After searching for PR professionals, users can set up email outreach campaigns to reach out for content promotion, digital PR, guest posting, etc. Contacts can also be managed through the contact relationship manager that helps in scheduling and keeping track of interactions or follow-ups.

Awario

A social media and web monitoring tool which is useful for PR professionals to managing press and media coverage and building relationships. It works by building relationships with people who have mentioned the brand on social media to find journalists and bloggers to partner with.

After signing up and setting an alert for the relevant industry, Awario starts searching for mentions of the industry on social media. It will find social media influencers relevant to the service/product mentioned and combine them in the influencers list. PR professionals, then, can use it for news monitoring and for monitoring press coverage of anyone in the mentioned industry.