Top Resources to Help Save Time and Improve Your Results
Want to know which marketing and PR tools I use to help save time, give me inspiration and help me focus on the key areas of my business?
I have compiled a handy checklist of my top recommended free PR and marketing tools (or low cost) and websites that you can apply to your marketing and Public Relations (PR) campaigns to take them to the next level. There are also some tools to help with the organisation side of your business, too.
Who is this list for?
This guide is ideal for companies or charities that carry out their marketing or PR (or elements of them) in-house. I will be updating this list when new, useful apps or websites become available – to keep up with the latest information, click here.
How can this list be used?
You can use this list for a variety of items, including researching blog topics if you’ve run out of ideas, or creating your own media list of journalists to send your press releases to. Whatever your use, these tools will be invaluable to your business or charity. There are plenty more tools available, although these tools have made it into my top list.
Do let me know which ones you find useful too!
Emma
Emma Estridge,
Director, Mushroom Marketing & PR
(Link with me here on LinkedIn)
Best Free PR Tools
1. Anewstip: Find relevant media contacts
You can find relevant media contacts based on what they tweet and build your own media lists. So, if you are looking for journalists that have a particular interest in a subject matter, type in the keyword in the search box, and the site will come up with a list of relevant contacts. With a free option, this is an invaluable tool. There are also upgrade options to enter your pitch or press release content; create an alert to monitor what’s being talked about in the media; and create media coverage reports.
2. AwarenessDays.com: Check for Awareness Days to tie in with your PR Campaigns
The Awareness Days website is a great free tool to check for any relevant upcoming awareness days that you could potentially tie in with your PR or marketing campaigns. For example, if you produce healthy food products, you could potentially tie in with ‘national cholesterol month’ , highlighting how your healthier products could potentially help to lower cholesterol levels, or perhaps creating some fundraising or awareness for the cause.
3. Readly or Pressreader: Press Coverage Tools
Readly (one month free trial, then £9.99 per month) or pressreader (7 day free trial, then £27.49 per month, although this may be viewable at your local library for free – please contact your local library for more information) are tools where you can check for your press coverage in newspapers or magazines. Or you can take a look at the types of articles the specific title writes about, so you can get in touch about a possible feature or news piece they may be interested in (readly covers magazines; pressreader covers 7,000+ newspapers and magazines)
Best Free Marketing Tools
4. Moz.com : Check out how Search Engine Friendly Your Website is
There are several free tools from moz, which help you work out how search engine-friendly your website is. If I were to recommend just one tool, it would be to download the free Moz Bar in your Chrome browser, which gives you page metrics for any website you visit (or your own website), giving you the PA (page authority) and DA (domain authority) details. It’s great for comparing the value of your own website score against your competitors’ sites!
5. Google Business Profile: Create a free online business profile
This free tool lets you create a free google profile for your business, helping your business and website be more visible on google searches. You can add photos, offers and updates (such as links to blogs) to your profile. You can also ask customers to leave a review about your company, which will be visible on google. It also comes with handy stats on how many clicks and views your profile received, so it’s a good way to gauge which posts receive the most engagement.
6. Answerthepublic : Discover content Creation ideas
The free version lets you discover content ideas based on autocomplete data from search engines. So, if you’re short on ideas for your next blog, just type in a relevant keyword, and you’ll discover a whole raft of ideas! It also helps your business to answer the questions that people have already been searching for online.
7. Google search console : Find out which keywords your audience is using
You may already have google analytics set up to track activity on your website. However, when you add google’s search console details to it, the data becomes even more useful. For example, find out the exact phrases and keywords where your website has appeared in searches, which you can then work on to improve the click rate.
8. Kapwing : Create professional videos with this video editing tool
This free editing tool can trim your video, add subtitles, resize and add audio. So, if you are creating videos up to 7 minutes long for your social media, websites, emails or YouTube Channels, this is a really useful website for you. You can also create memes and remove a background from an image (to make it a transparent PNG). The free version includes a watermark on exports. The next step up is $24 monthly.
9. Publer: Social media management tool
This free social media management tool is a time-saving tool to upload your posts to most platforms (up to 3 profiles, which also includes Google Business Profile, although not Twitter with the free version). Publer also offers monthly tips on social media content, like this one for June 2023. Later offers a 50% discount on their annual and monthly subscription payments to qualified non-profits. They also offer a 100% discount off their Growth plan for organizations fighting to end racism and social injustice. Another great social management tool is later.com, which offers social media management for more social media platforms (up to 6).
10. Authoredup for LinkedIn
This tool is currently free at the time of writing (6.23) as it’s in beta mode, so it’s worth trialling this nifty app now before the payment options kick in. This app helps you to create the best LinkedIn posts by suggesting powerful hooks and endings to your post, gives you the ability to save multiple drafts, and preview/ format the posts before they’re posted. This also includes adding emojis directly, which can otherwise be time consuming in LinkedIn. It also has analytics on your post’s performance. Plus, you can save your own snippets/ footer details with your contact info on here, which is an increasing trend on the platform. Worth a trial!
Best Free Organisation Tools
11. ToDoIst : Manage Your To Do List
This free tool is my favourite! You can categorise your projects (or in my case, my clients) into nifty groups and add deadlines for each task. It even automates the deadline when you start typing in the calendar date or other keywords such as ‘tomorrow’ or ‘every month’. Plus, it’s really satisfying when you reach your daily task completion goal – there’s even a gratifying sound when you tick a completed item on your list. You can also filter tasks by day/ today/ upcoming, and you can give tasks a different priority level, so you never miss a deadline again!
12. Airtable : Project Management
This is a free organisational tool that includes help with project management, a content calendar and a sales CRM. It even includes a new job hunting section to record all the companies contacted.
13. Evernote : Organise your notes in one place
Here, you can organise all your notes in one place. The handy mobile app and webpage sync so that all your information is saved in one place. Plus, the handy Chrome toolbar makes it easy to save useful web articles to your evernote at the click of your mouse, which can then be sorted by tag. I regularly use it to quickly save useful articles I want to refer back to, so that they are all in one place.
Notes for Free Marketing and PR Tools: All details and prices for the low cost or free marketing and PR apps correct as at 14.6.23 (checked and updated version) – I will be updating the details and prices in this article, as well as adding new resources when I can. Please check back for updated information or sign up to our updates. I am not being sponsored or paid to promote any of these tools – they are genuinely ones that I think you’ll find useful.
Written by Emma Estridge, Founder of Mushroom Marketing & PR. Contact me for a free 1 hour consultation.
