You’re Not Alone: Zude’s (#PRstack) Top 4

This post was published today on the #PRstack website. It first appeared two weeks ago in the ground-breaking crowd-sourced My #PRstack ebook which you can download for free here.

A few years ago I felt like a dinosaur.

Afraid of the way my industry was changing, I had the digital fear.

A few years back I used none of these tools.

#PRstack

Now I use my huge personal Chrome #PRstack each day.

If only I’d known then what I know now: they help me work smarter and less.

With a #PRstack you’re not alone. You’re not relearning how to walk over and over again.

Here are my personal favourites, split into four sections, an alternative Zude’s Top 4. They are mostly free.

1. Search Engine Optimisation

You know the importance of a keyword report, right? Yeah? This assumes you’ve got one. If not, try this.

When producing content for clients I always have a keyword phrase in mind. Taken from the keyword report.

I benchmark and check the effect of my content marketing and SEO on clients’ Search rankings.

Whatsmyserp

Register. You can check up to 25 keyword phrases against four competitors. You can do this for 20 domains. No catch and the data’s exportable. Magic.

MozBar

A Chrome extension. Go to Google Search. Tap in the keyword phrase you’re targeting and check out the competition’s authority. If your website’s a minnow, go for a longtail keyword phrase. MozBar also shows you social shares.

2. Headlines First

Public relations practitioners know the importance of a good headline, yeah. I spend 30 minutes playing around with headlines every time I produce content. HubSpot writers pen 25 before choosing.

But did you know there are two brilliant tools to use once you know the difference between a power verb and a colourful adjective?

CoSchedule Blog Post Headline Analyser

For blog posts, but use it for any communication. It scores you 1-100. 60s: decent. 70+: amazing. New out and effective. My go-to tool.

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyser

I use CoSchedule first then insert the highest-scoring headlines in the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) tool. Anything over 50 per cent in EMV is pretty damn good.

3. Images

So you’ve written the headline. The second (some might say first) most important aspect of any piece of communication is the image.

Particularly in digital public relations engagement.

But what about copyright, compressing, resizing. My top-three tools are:

Foter

A 228 million-strong image search engine. Dead easy to use. And supremely simple to attribute (just cut and paste the code). Choose your size and download.

Unsplash

Beautiful hi-res non-stocky, free-to-use, no-need-to-attribute pics. Comes with a search facility too. You don’t need to spend time leafing through the image library.

Tip: use Compressor.io so you’re not affecting your page load speed.

Pablo

A little gem that Buffer’s just taken out of beta. Its development stemmed from this post. Upload your image, insert your headline and subhead and Hey Presto! You have a featured blog post image which looks good when shared across all social media networks. Useful for memes too. I used Pablo to create the feature imaged for this post.

4. Writing

Grammarly

A Chrome extension. It goes everywhere online with me. Email, web forms, word processing docs. The best spell and grammar checker I’ve found.

Hemingway

Never publish/hit send on anything important without running it through Hemingway first. Never. Ever. It’s that good. I’m writing this text now in Hemingway.

 

That’s the cream of my #PRStack. It’s helped me transform my practice, saved me time, and made me money.

If you’re using all these already, go to the top of the class and give the nibs out. If you pick up one of these tools after reading this post, please let me know. I’m interested. You’re not alone.

The My #PRstack ebook comprises 18 case studies by public relations practitioners explaining how they use online tools to help them get their work done. I talk about why I got involved in the #PRstack project here.

My name’s David Sawyer and I founded a Glasgow PR company last year.

I am always learning and read around two hours of content every day. I share the four best bits in my weekly (Thursday evening) newsletter. If you want to join my Mum, Matty from Cub football, and my old mate Kenny on my list, sign up here. Never salesy, just valuable, helpful content.

If you like the cut of my jib and are thinking: “This is someone I could trust. Let’s get him in to sort our comms,” then I’m honoured. Here are the services I provide, here’s my chops, and here’s how to reach me.

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