A Polkadot PR Guide · #2 Hootsuite #3 HARO #4 Pitchrate Conclusion About Polkadot PR Free PR...
Transcript of A Polkadot PR Guide · #2 Hootsuite #3 HARO #4 Pitchrate Conclusion About Polkadot PR Free PR...
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How to find more of the right PR
opportunities for free
A Polkadot PR Guide
Contents
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Purpose of this guide
How this list has been organised
List of free tools (clickable links)
#1 JournoRequests.com
#2 Hootsuite
#3 HARO
#4 Pitchrate
Conclusion
About Polkadot PR
Free PR Consultation Details
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This guide is Part Three of my Ultimate
Expert List of Awesome Free PR Tools, which
is an ongoing project designed to help you get
more out of your marketing campaigns. If you
would like me to get in touch when more of
the incredibly useful sections are available,
click the registration link below.
This section of the guide is all about how to find more of the right PR opportunities for free. It contains one of my best kept secret
methods for spotting PR opportunities in real-
time so that you can respond to journalists
and bloggers quickly in order to bag the
coverage.
So shhh! Don’t share this with your
competition ;-)
Also, you can read the previous sections of
this incredibly useful series of guides here:
#1) What you need to know about the importance of influencers in PR
#2) 13 Free PR Tools You’ll Love for Influencer Identification
The following tools and methods will help you
to find PR opportunities. Just so you know, if
you really want to get more PR coverage and
be given more opportunities to get it, nothing
really beats building strong relationships with
relevant influencers, journalists and bloggers.
When you have these strong relationships,
the influencers will often directly seek help
from you, perhaps often not even asking
anyone else.
Purpose of this guide An introduction by Polkadot PR
founder and PR expert, Dionne Taylor
Register Today
They will also willingly speak to you over the phone and they will
actually read your emails and social media messages.
This is why we are so successful at Polkadot PR; generating
hundreds of pieces of media coverage for our clients. We’ve got
the right contacts and the strong relationships, and it’s this that is
the foundation of our success.
This might sound tough …. well building strong relationships in
order to develop great reputations is hard work. So you need to
put a lot of time and effort into doing this if you really want to be
successful. I’ll cover techniques for doing this in another section
in this mega-guide.
However, the tools and methods outlined below will help you to
find PR opportunities and respond to them. From there, you can
build your relationships for more effective PR. These tools are a
must-have for your PR arsenal.
Hold onto your seat, let’s roll!
Dionne Taylor
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How this guide has been organised
For each PR tool and method in the guide, I have written notes on what the
tool does and my thoughts on it. Where applicable, I have also included
screenshots and instructions for setting up the tools.
On this page you will see the summarised list of free tools.
My overall tip for getting the most out of these free tools and avoiding the need
to pay for them is to combine their power. Often features are limited in the free
version of the tool but the limitations can be overcome by using other tools on
the list.
To make this even more effective, combine the methods and tools covered in
this guide with the methods and tools covered in my previous guide: 13 Free
PR Tools You’ll Love for Influencer Identification
The free tools:
1. JournoRequests.com
2. Hootsuite
3. HARO
4. Pitchrate
Read about each
of the free tools on
the following pages
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#1 JournoRequests.com
What does it do?
This tool helps journalists urgently connect with sources. It’s a freemium product with an awesome free level of
service, which is basically a daily digest email that you never have to pay for. The email contains every single
request based on the #journorequest hashtag on Twitter.
Polkadot PR Verdict
It’s currently UK-focused, but there are international requests, and in the inclusive international digital world in
which we live, coverage from overseas can still be extremely useful. After all, the big ticket in PR is gaining
social proof from influencers. It often doesn’t matter where those influencers are.
The company running this service does have plans to roll this out beyond the UK, so I’d recommend using it
right away so that you don’t miss out on any opportunities.
The email breaks down requests the requests from journalists made on Twitter into categories, which is great,
and you can hit a ‘reply on twitter’ link to respond quickly.
Take a look at the ‘Fashion & Beauty’ section of one of the emails:
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Continued…
With the pro version, you can access a variety of useful features, but the free version is still fab.
BIG TIP!
Respond as quickly as you can to the requests, journalists don’t hang
around!
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#2 Hootsuite
What does it do?
Hootsuite is a social media management tool. You can link it to your various social media accounts (although not
YouTube or Google+ yet) and manage them from a single place. This is, therefore, a great tool for making
influencer marketing and PR more efficient and effective. I will cover this in more detail in a later section of the
guide.
So what is this tool doing here in this section of the guide?
Ah ha!!!
It’s because you can use it in a really clever way to pick-up journalist, blogger and influencer requests –
INSTANTLY…For free!
I didn’t mention it before JournoRequests.com because this method of using Hootsuite that I’m about to cover
relates to the JournoRequests.com hashtag system, and so it gives some background context.
How to set up your Hootsuite journalist request monitoring system
This is my secret source method that I’m sure you’re not going to tell anyone about…
…well not your competitors anyway.
You need to actually set this system up, rather than just sign-up for alerts, like with the other tools covered in this
guide.
Firstly, the basis of this sneaky method is to monitor hashtags associated with influencer, journalist and blogger
requests. They are:
1. #Journorequest
This is used by journalists looking for things like information on a topic, potential case studies, quotes from
experts or products to review for articles/posts they are writing.
It’s the foundation of the JournoRequests.com service, see the relevance now?
Again, remember that this hashtag currently has a UK focus, but it is expanding.
2. #Prrequest
This hashtag is very similar to #journorequest as it was created for journalists to source stories etc. Most of the
requests on this hashtag are now from bloggers, particularly useful for blogger outreach campaigns and gaining
social proof through reviews.
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Continued…
3. #Bloggerrequest
No surprises here, this hashtag is similar the previous two, but it really is focused on blogger requests.
#HelpAReporter
Help a Reporter Out or HARO, is an online tool for connecting journalists with sources. It’s a great tool and I will
cover it next in this guide (scroll down to section #3 for more information).
The system post requests from journalists using this hashtag, so we can tap into them here.
4. #UrgHaro
#UrgHaro is an abbreviation of ‘Urgent Help a Reporter Out.’
Tweets with the hashtag #UrgHaro, therefore, indicate that the journalist is looking for a source URGENTLY!
So respond to these requests very quickly if you can.
Secondly, you can monitor only relevant requests to your brand or clients if you combine the hashtags above
with topic, industry and product-related hashtags. For example:
• Beauty = #beauty
• Fashion = #fashion
And you can get more specific within a category like #beauty with a hashtag like #makeup.
You could also use location based hashtags in combination with all of the above. We work with numerous
restaurants and hotels and as part of that, we seek opportunities relating to the physical locations of the
business outlets.
So for a restaurant client based in Sydney, we could monitor #restaurant and #sydney.
This hashtag combination monitoring method is very important as it makes it far easier for you to spot relevant
opportunities.
BONUS TOOL TIP: Use Hashtagify to find the best relevant hashtags for this monitoring technique and for
using in your own social posts.
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Continued…
Now here’s how to set this up…
In this screenshot you can see the Hootsuite feeds I have created as an example of monitoring journalist and
blogger requests for ‘fashion’ and ‘beauty’:
The following steps will help you to do this yourself:
1. Create free (or paid) Hootsuite account if you don’t already have one.
2. Link your social media accounts to it.
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Continued…
3. Create a new tab for monitoring PR opportunities by clicking the [+] button in the tabs area. You can
see I already have tabs for managing our social networks and MailChimp e-newsletter system (have you
subscribed yet?):
4. Give your new tab a name, I’ll type in ‘PR OPPS’ for this demonstration:
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Continued…
5. Click the ‘Search’ button in the stream adding area:
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Continued…
6. Add your hashtag monitoring combination into the search box. In this example I have added:
#fashion AND #journorequest OR #prrequest OR #Bloggerrequest OR #HelpAReporter OR #UrgHaro
Note that I have used ‘#fashion AND’ at the beginning. This is so that I can see the topic clearly at the top of the
feed when it’s activated.
The ‘AND’ part of this ensures that all of the search results for the various journalist requests contain #fashion.
This is very important because I just want fashion related requests in this feed.
The ‘OR’ function allows the search feed to include any of the four different request hashtags, so I get requests
from all sources in relation to my fashion topic.
If I wanted to be more specific, I could include additional AND/OR related hashtags.
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Continued…
7. Hit the ‘Search’ button and see the feed:
8. Create additional feeds for different topics, products, industries, locations, etc.
Polkadot PR Verdict
This an awesome method as it allows real-time filtered monitoring of requests (you don’t have to wait for the free
periodic emails from the other tools mentioned here). It also allows for direct responses through the Hootsuite
system.
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Continued…
BIG TIP!
This big tip could actually be applied to all of the tools mentioned in this
guide.
Before responding to requests, make sure that the request is worth
responding to. If you read part 2 of this mega-guide; 13 Free PR Tools
You’ll Love for Influencer Identification you’ll find free tools that will
help you to establish how influential the influencer is (e.g. Kred, Klout,
Followerwonk, LinkedIn).
Avoid giving expensive products and services away for review to
people with no influence who are just fishing for freebies.
You have been warned!
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#3 HARO
What does it do?
HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories, and daily opportunities for
sources to secure valuable media coverage.
You can join the 475,000+ HARO users already using the service to connect with journalists. All you need to do
is register for your free account and then check your inbox three times a day (5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35
p.m. ET), Monday through Friday. Look out for source requests relevant to you or your brand or client’s industry,
expertise or personal experience.
You can then pitch to the journalist by clicking on the masked HARO email address listed in the source request
email. You should include answers to the journalist’s questions, any specified requirements and a bio with you
or your client’s contact information. If the journalist is interested, they’ll reach out!
Polkadot PR Verdict
Great free tool for getting regular journalist requests.
BIG TIP!
When setting up your ‘source’ account remember to tick the topic
boxes that are relevant to your brand or clients so that you get more
relevant pre-filtered and grouped requests.
You could also use the request information to create a database of
contacts that you could contact directly to build relationships with and
pitch stories to at a later date.
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#4 Pitchrate
What does it do?
This tool does basically the same thing as the other tools, it matches journalists with sources.
Polkadot PR Verdict
It’s a good tool just like the others. Once you’ve registered you will get a daily email but you can also be more
proactive with this tool because you can navigate to the ‘requests’ section and actually search for relevant
keywords (e.g. ‘food’).
You can then pitch directly through the tool interface very easily.
Also, you can register as a publicist if you want to use this tool to pitch on behalf of your clients. Once registered
as a publicist you can then add clients to your profile and pitch on their behalf.
BIG TIP!
Unlike the other tools, you can create a profile for yourself. It’s
important to do this well because it’s sent to the journalists with your
pitches. It helps them get a feel for your background, experience and
expertise so that they can essentially vet you before responding to
your pitch.
So write a compelling bio for yourself, and for each of your clients, if
you are a publicist.
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Conclusion.Now that you’ve read all about these free PR tools and our tips on how to use
them, individually and together, it’s time to get started.
With these tools, you will be able to find great PR opportunities for free. If you
use this in combination with the free tools mentioned in my other guides you'll
be able to be more strategic when choosing the opportunities to go for.
So what are you waiting for?
We’d love to hear about how you get on with these tools and how they help
you to either get started, or enhance your current campaigns.
Soon we will create more useful guides and collections of free tools that will
support other areas of the PR and influencer outreach process, remember to
sign up to our newsletter to receive them when they are published.
We hope that these tools will help save you precious time and money, while
making your campaigns more effective, generating a really awesome return
on investment you can be proud of.
polkadot_pr
@PolkadotPR
PolkadotPR
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About Polkadot PR.Polkadot PR was set up by ex-journalist Dionne Taylor, over ten years ago
with a pocket full of change and a lot of ambition.
Today, Polkadot PR is a public relations agency with an expert team of
employees who are multi-skilled across all media platforms.
With a team who have worked in both PR and journalism, we are able to sit on
both sides of the fence, knowing exactly what journalists need to secure great
press coverage.
We strongly believe in the power of PR as a worthwhile investment to increase
awareness, sales, credibility and the overall image of any brand, product or
service. Our results speak for themselves, and we have watched our clients’
businesses flourish as a result of the press coverage we have generated.
Working with clients to achieve not only sensational press coverage, engaged
social media audiences and memorable events – Polkadot PR has formed a
reputation as one of the best boutique consumer PR agencies in Australia.
T: 02 8279 0664
F: +61 2 8569 0348
M: +61411 230 301
Suite 104, 282-290 Oxford Street,
Bondi Junction,
Sydney, NSW 2022
Australia
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Launch your brand
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For the last ten years we have gained literally thousands of pieces of media
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here with Dionne Taylor, Polkadot PR’s founder.
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