Effective PR is all about monitoring buzz, following media trends and publicising your product, service or business when the opportunity strikes. The right media monitoring software can help to make this process significantly easier, helping you get measurably better results. Today, a wide range of tools are available to make tracking media mentions, competitors and news easier than ever. Below, we’ve listed five of our favourites, complete with information on how each works and why it’s a good addition to your public relations toolkit.
TweetDeck
Designed specifically by Twitter (it’s actually Twitter’s official dashboard), TweetDeck is one of the few truly must-have social media tools if your business is active on Twitter. Although it only lets you track activity on one social network, TweetDeck is an invaluable tool if your business is a frequent topic of discussion on Twitter. Using it, you can stay on top of more than one feed at a time, monitor trending posts and manage your direct messages all at once. TweetDeck also provides a useful search tool that expands on Twitter’s built-in search options, with features such as negative keywords, location filtering and the ability to filter tweets using a range of engagement criteria.
Awario
Inexpensive and easy to use, Awario is a great media monitoring tool for small businesses that want to grow through digital PR. Priced from $29 per month, Awario includes all of the features you’d expect from a social media monitoring tool. There’s the ability to track brand mentions, monitor discussion about competing businesses, track down unlinked mentions of your brand and more. Add a backlink monitoring feature and Awario is a great tool not just for conventional online PR, but also for tracking down link building opportunities and enhancing your business’s visibility for related search queries.
BuzzSumo
Designed specifically for content marketers, BuzzSumo also doubles as a great tool for digital public relations campaigns. BuzzSumo makes it easy to track down top-performing content online. This makes it a fantastic source of inspiration for your own content campaigns and press releases, as well as a great tool for staying on top of your competitors’ most effective content. Used by countless content-driven businesses (BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone and the Telegraph are all BuzzSumo clients), this results-focused content research and analysis tool is a must-have if your business uses content marketing and digital PR to grow.
Brandwatch
A social media listening tool, Brandwatch makes it easy to stay on top of coverage of your brand online. It also includes a range of features to help you analyse competitors, plan a results-driven content strategy and track the results of influencer marketing. In short, it’s as close as you can get to an all-in-one listening tool for tracking brand visibility on social and conventional online media. Unlike the other tools we’ve listed, which are primarily designed with small businesses in mind, Brandwatch is packed with tools for mid-size and enterprise employees. Of these, the ability to export data to PowerPoint is a must-have for those who report campaign data to stakeholders.
Keyhole
Another great tool for social media marketing and digital PR, Keyhole lets you track mentions of your brand across social networks and news media and automate the content you share online yourself. Key features of Keyhole include the ability to monitor social activity related to your brand in real time, measure and analyse the effects of influencer marketing and use social listening features to gain insights into trends, themes and audiences related to your business. Like many other media monitoring tools, Keyhole is primarily built to track Twitter activity. It can also track brand mentions on news and blogs, making it a great tool if you’re aiming to promote your business through media coverage and content.
