Our Top Digital PR Tools for Any Public Relations Professional

Being able to not only use, but navigate and master digital PR tools is essential for the success of any business. These PR tools can help you reach massive audiences, get timely news coverage, connect with journalists and media outlets that are looking for stories in your niche, and expand your network and thus your reach and influence, on top of so many other game-changing qualities. 

The efficacy of a digital PR strategy lies not only within the message but also in its reach and resonance. Digital PR tools empower communication professionals to pinpoint the right audiences and curate content that speaks to them directly. From social listening platforms that catch the pulse of public sentiment to analytics tools that dissect campaign performance, the digital realm is rich with resources.

We put together a list for digital PR professionals and broke down the best digital PR software you should be using to drive engagement and see real results.

Categories of Digital PR Software 

1. All-in-one
2. Media Monitoring Analytics
3. Curating Media Lists
4. Content Creation
5. PR Distribution
6. PR Reporting Software

All-in-one

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop, here are some tools that can make your life a little easier.

All-in-one PR tools are designed to streamline and enhance digital PR efforts, offering a range of functionalities such as media monitoring, press release distribution, influencer outreach, and analytics.

This way you don’t have to learn or manage multiple different tools to enhance your digital PR efforts. 

Cision

Cision might just be the most popular tool among PR experts with a database of over one million contacts. You can sort through these contacts to find and connect with journalists, bloggers, and influencers in your niche. 

With real-time monitoring of news, social media, blogs, as well as other online sources - this helps companies track their brand mentioned, industry trends, and competitor activities across different channels. After all, keep your friends close but enemies closer.

The mastermind behind every successful company is always analytics. You must use analytics to measure the effectiveness of your PR campaign to decide what is and isn’t working. Cison tracks key metrics such as reach, engagement, and sentiment analysis to provide a detailed report that can help refine your PR strategy going forward.

Cision also allows users to distribute press releases directly from the platform to a targeted list of media contacts- making news coverage easier than ever! All that’s left for you to do is write an irresistible pitch that no journalist, blogger, or news outlet could resist. 

Best for: 

Any PR professional or agency looking to revamp their strategy, increase brand visibility, and see a massive difference in their company’s or client’s success. However, because of the extensive database and offerings Cison has, their prices will likely be higher compared to competitors. It may be out of reach for small businesses.

Pricing: 

Pricing varies and is based on the individual needs and requirements of your company. 

Meltwater

Similar to Cison, Meltwater users can stay up-to-date on brand mentions in the news and online, helping you understand your media coverage; as well as monitoring social media hashtags and trends. 

This platform focuses mainly on social media and influencer outreach as opposed to the extensive media database Cison has. But, it is praised for its user-friendly dashboards and visualizations for social media metrics- so for someone less tech-savvy and social media focused, this may be the better route. 

Best For:

Meltwater is a great fit for businesses that want to focus on social media and influencer engagement, in addition to keeping an eye on traditional media. It's particularly useful for companies that want to understand and interact with their online audience, track their brand reputation, and leverage influencers to extend their reach.

Pricing: 

Varies, if you would like to learn more you request a demo online.

Prowly 

Out of all the all-in-one options we’ve discussed so far, Prowly might be the most cost-effective, without having to sacrifice a large database of contacts. 

Prowly comes with built-in AI tools that can help you craft and send personalized pitches to journalists and media outlets, not only provide you with the contacts. It also includes a CRM system tailored for all of your PR activities like managing contacts, tracking interactions, and organizing outreach efforts.

Best For:

Small to medium-sized businesses or agencies that need a cost-effective tool for PR management.

Pricing:

There are two options for a payment plan, both include a free 7-day trial.

1. Basic Plan: €349 per month for individuals looking to strengthen PR efforts by finding contacts, sending pitches, and monitoring the media 
2. Professional Plan: €549 per month for agencies and in-house teams with multiple projects, seeking complete workflow access and multiple resources. 

Prezly

Prezly is a fantastic platform for companies looking to spice up their storytelling and manage their media relations more effectively.

One of the standout features Prezly offers is its focus on storytelling. Users can create multimedia-rich content, such as articles with images, videos, and other interactive elements, to tell their brand's story more effectively. Similar to Prowly, the platform also includes a CRM system to help manage outreach and track interactions. 

Best for: 

In-house PR teams in mid-sized to large companies, PR agencies with diverse client portfolios and non-profit organizations looking to engage their audience through rich multimedia content.

Pricing: 

Out of all the all-in-one options we’ve discussed so far, Prezly is by far the most cost-effective. Starting at just €50 per month for a basic plan and only €150 for their most advanced, it’s a deal you shouldn’t pass up. 

Choosing the Best All-in-One Digital PR Tool For You

Media Monitoring Analytics

Analytics are the backbone of every company. It provides a clear picture of your digital PR campaigns' effectiveness. By offering real-time data and insightful analytics, these tools help you track and optimize every aspect of your digital PR efforts. From there, you’re able to measure the reach and impact of your messages, understand audience behavior, identify industry trends, and benchmark your performance against competitors. 

BuzzSumo - Social Media Monitoring

There’s no better digital PR tool for social media monitoring than BuzzSumo. They have recently released a media database giving you access to over 700,000 journalists and authors, 7,000 media outlets, 2 million contact details, and more. 

With AI content generation to help you with specialized pitches and a built-in social monitoring tool that allows you to connect your team’s Slack account with real-time alerts, BuzzSumo is a vital tool for any PR professional.

It’s vital to understand that creating content that resonates with your audience is the first step in any marketing strategy and BuzzSumo can help you do just that. 

Best for:

Content marketers and social media managers who are looking for impactful ways to measure their engagement, discover trending topics, refine PR strategies, and just understand their audience on a deeper level. 

Pricing: 

Pricing starts as low as $199 per month, but plans vary depending on the features included.

Talkwalker - Media Monitoring

Talkwalker is a lively and comprehensive social media analytics and monitoring platform, perfect for businesses and marketers eager to stay informed about their online presence. It tracks conversations and mentions across various platforms, ensuring you're always in the know about what's being said about your brand.

By using language processing techniques, Talkwalker can gauge how people feel about your brand. This unique feature can help aid any PR professional in understanding how their brand is being perceived and rebranding accordingly. Remember - image is everything for a company. 

Using AI-powered image and video recognition technology, Talkwalker allows you to track visual mentions of your brand even when your brand name isn’t directly mentioned in the text. This is a vital tool in today’s digital landscape.

Best for:

This digital PR tool is best suited for large enterprises and brands with a significant online presence that would like to monitor their reputation across multiple markets and hopefully acquire more backlinks to sites that may mention but do not directly ink their company. 

Pricing:

Contact Talkwalker directly for prices.

Moz - Linkbuilding Monitoring 

Moz is a valuable tool for digital PR professionals focused on acquiring high-quality backlinks as part of their marketing strategy. One of the platform's standout features is its link analysis capabilities, essential for understanding and improving the backlink profile of a website. Backlink tracking helps measure the effectiveness of your PR campaign by ensuring that efforts are translating into increased links.

With its competitor analysis, businesses can examine the backlink profiles of their competitors and through that discover new linking opportunities for themselves. You’ll also be able to see what websites are posting these links- and if we know anything about digital PR- while quantity is nice, it’s quality that matters in the long run. Additionally, if there are backlinks to your site on websites that could harm your SEO, Moz can help you identify and remove those. 

Best for:

Individuals or teams responsible for optimizing websites for search engines will find Moz's comprehensive suite of SEO tools invaluable for keyword research, site audits, and link analysis. Digital Marketers looking to improve their online visibility and drive organic traffic to their websites will also benefit from Moz's insights into search engine rankings and competitor analysis.

Pricing: 

30-day free trial and then starts at $99 per month.  

Which Digital PR Tool for Monitoring Analytics is Right for You?

Curating Media Lists

Building a high-quality media list is a cornerstone of effective digital PR. While there are ready-made lists available, a customized list tailored to your specific needs is far more valuable. 

These tools are designed to help you:

1. Identifying Key Media Figures: Locate journalists, bloggers, and influencers who cover topics relevant to your industry.
2. Discovering Media Platforms: Find publications, blogs, and websites where your target audience engages with content.
3. Gathering Contact Information: Collect email addresses and other contact details for outreach purposes.

Muck Rack

Muck Rack’s extensive database lets users locate journalists, bloggers, and media outlets with ease. With its advanced search features, you can filter contacts by beat, location, and publication- ensuring you connect with the right contacts that align with your brand.

What makes it special? This platform gives you real-time alerts when journalists mention keywords tied to your brand or industry. This makes it even easier for you to become part of the story either through newjacking, reactive PR, or backlinks. 

Best For: 

Public relations specialists looking to build and manage media lists, pitch stories, and track coverage will find Muck Rack particularly useful. Additionally, reporters and writers can use Muck Rack to showcase their work, connect with PR professionals, and stay informed about industry trends.

Pricing: 

Varies, but you can request your online demo here.

Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a popular tool for building media lists, particularly when it comes to finding and verifying email addresses of journalists, bloggers, and media professionals.

Whether you’re in the business of sending cold emails or not, everyone who’s run a business knows finding verified email addresses is one of the most challenging parts of working in PR. While some people may prefer to purchase media lists or scavenge online for hours, Hunter.io has put an end to all of this meaningless suffering by allowing users to find contacts at desired domains FOR FREE. 

Not only that, but it also verifies the authenticity of email addresses you already have so you can make sure you don’t end up caught in a scam or emailing people who don’t exist. 

Best for:

Any PR professional who’s looking to build their network can benefit from Hunter.io. After all, your network is your net worth. It can also be particularly useful for sales teams seeking to find and verify the email addresses of potential leads or contacts within target organizations.

Pricing:

You get 25 monthly searches for free and after that the lowest cost option is $34/month for 500 searches.

ContactOut

With instant access to 300 million professionals from 30 million companies with the right contact details, ContactOut stands out as an industry leader for anyone looking to grow their network. Plus, you can personalize emails automatically using its AI features- getting 4x the response rate. 

One of its most useful features might be its integration with LinkedIn. With a simple browser extension, users can access contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles, which is a game-changer for PR professionals looking to quickly build media lists and establish connections.

Best for:

Those in public relations who need to build and maintain media lists, reach out to journalists, and secure coverage for their clients or organizations can benefit from these offerings. As well as sales and business development teams looking to connect with potential leads, partners, or industry experts to grow their business; and HR managers looking for potential candidates.

Pricing: Lucky for you, ContactOut has a free option that gives you four emails and 2 phone numbers per day. Their paid plan is $79/month for 6,000 emails and 600 phone numbers per year, but they offer team discounts. 

Choosing the Right Tool for Curating Media Lists 

Content Creation

Digital PR tools for content idea generation are incredibly useful as they help you stay in tune with trending topics, understand what your audience is interested in, and identify gaps in your competitors' content.  By leveraging these tools, and creating engaging content that resonates you can enhance your content strategy, improve your SEO, and drive more traffic to your website.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a range of features that help users optimize their websites, analyze their competitors, and improve their online visibility. Its all-in-one SEO toolset includes an analysis of competitors, audit, and optimization of your website; as well as helps you identify specific keywords your target audience is already searching for. You can then start creating content using these keywords, which may increase the number of backlinks to your site.

Ahrefs' SEO Toolbar can be a handy tool for exploring various content ideas across different industries. For instance, if you're delving into health and wellness topics, you might search "nutrition trends" in Google. With the toolbar activated, you can easily see the number of backlinks each search result has received, right there in your Google search results. This quick access to backlink data helps you identify which posts are gaining traction and could inspire your own content creation in the health and wellness space. 

According to their website, every minute they “crawl” 5 million pages!

Best for:

Anyone looking to spice up their content and level up would benefit from Ahref’s SEO advantages. It’s great for SEO professionals like bloggers, writers, website owners, and content creators who want to improve their Google rankings. 

Pricing:

Plans start at $99/month and go up to $399 for an advanced plan. Custom pricing is also available upon request. 

Google Trends 

When you run a website, own a business, or are in the world of content creation as a PR professional- you likely eat, sleep, and breathe Google SEO optimization. Google wants to make your life a little easier with its completely free Google Trends tool. 

Google Trends allows you to explore the most popular topics at any given time as well as search topics to how well they would perform depending on geographic location. This can be crucial for tailoring your content to different regions or target markets. For SEO purposes, it's a goldmine for keyword research, offering a wealth of related keywords and queries to enhance your content's visibility.

Best for:

Google Trends is good for anyone in the content creation industry looking to produce relevant and timely content that will resonate with a large audience. This way, as your account grows, you have continued inspiration for your content generation.

Price:

It’s a FREE online tool - making it all the more appealing. 

SEMRush

SemRush is a powerful content creation tool that allows you to create and manage your content, build a community, and analyze data all with their SEmRush social feature. This feature schedules and posta content across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. It also provides social listening tools that help you monitor brand mentions, track competitor activity, and engage with your audience.

Need help monetizing your website? Their on-page SEO checker provides you with tangible actions you can take to improve your Google rankings based on competitor blogs. There’s also a writing assistant that can truly help you bring your text to life - after all, we all struggle with writer’s block from time to time. 

Best for:

SEMRush and Ahrefs are similar in the sense that they both help promote SEO strategies to get your website rankings improved on Google. Making it good for any PR professional managing multiple clients or individuals looking to drive sales and traffic.

Pricing:

Packages start at $127/month for the pro plan and go up to $499/month for a business plan.

Choosing the Best Content Idea Creation Tool for You

PR Distribution

While it’s vital to create content that resonates with your audience, if that content isn’t reaching the right audience you’ll never experience massive growth. Effective PR distribution techniques are vital to the success of the company in order to expand visibility and build brand awareness. 

PR Newswire 

PR Newswire is Cison’s new release platform which helps you get your content out to journalists, consumers, and investors. Its network includes thousands of media outlets, journalists, and online platforms globally ensuring that your press releases can reach a broad and relevant audience. This includes national and international news agencies, industry-specific publications, and key influencers in your sector.

The platform allows you to target your distribution based on various criteria such as geography, industry, and demographics - helping your content reach relevant audiences. This will help increase your chances of engaging and therefore getting your content pushed out to more like-minded people. Growing your audience is vital to enhancing the monetization of your content. 

Best for:

While Newswire is an extremely useful tool for any PR profession- it does come at quite a price. That’s why large corporations and enterprises with an international presence as well as PR and marketing agencies looking to gain more exposure for their clients might benefit more compared  to small businesses or brands looking for visibility. 

Pricing:

Plans start at $349 a month. 

Business Wire

Business Wire stands out in the PR industry for its comprehensive press release distribution services, catering specifically to PR professionals seeking extensive reach and visibility for their clients' news. Unlike platforms like Qwoted, which focuses on connecting journalists with sources, Business Wire specializes in the distribution of press releases to a vast network of media outlets, investors, and consumers globally.

The site has over 100,000 outlets in over 160 countries, plus 200 industry and trade categories - making it an essential resource for anyone in the financial space. 

Its global reach and focus on security and multimedia integration make it an ideal choice for organizations looking to make waves with their press releases. While the cost may be higher than some other platforms, the value delivered in terms of visibility, compliance, and engagement can justify the investment for PR agencies and large corporations seeking to maximize their media exposure

Best For: 

Its ability to handle sensitive financial information and regulatory filings is useful for anyone handling publicly traded companies and organizations in regulated industries. 

Pricing: Custom pricing is available via their website. 

Choosing the Best PR Distribution Tool for You

PR Reporting Software

Similar to every other industry, as a PR professional clients want to see results. Since tracking analytics can be a daunting task that isn’t the highlight of anyone’s job - PR reporting software can help you measure your results to keep your clients happy. 

Onclusive 

Onclusive provides public relations professionals with the necessary tools to takes to evaluate your PR efforts. With its media analytics platform, which uses smart dashboards, and core metrics including sentiment, impressions, and media impact- you’ll be able to see what posts made an impact.

It’s important to know where you stand in order to improve, and with so much competition it can be easy to lose your brand within the noise. Oneclusive highlights the features that your brand lands in each campaign, making it easy to target tangible changes that can be done to maximize growth. 

Best for:

PR professionals juggling a set of clients looking for a way to improve their marketing and content strategy. It can also be used by anyone who needs to show tangible results of their PR efforts, as well as refine current stragies. 

Pricing:

Varies, contact them directly for more information.

Releasd 

Releasd is a PR reporting software that offers a visually appealing and user-friendly platform for creating and sharing PR reports. Among its standout features is its ability to create interactive and multimedia-rich reports.

Releasd doesn’t only help you create reports- it allows for artistic control which may sound silly in the world of PR, but graphs, charts, and visuals can go a long way. This site allows you to include images, videos, social media posts, and other multimedia forms to make them more engaging and help clients and stakeholders better understand the effects of your hard work. 

Best for:

Releasd is best suited for PR agencies and in-house PR teams looking for a modern and efficient way to create and share PR reports. 

Pricing:

Starts at $119/month with more advanced options costing up to $619/month. 

CoverageBook 

Similar to Releasd, CoverageBook focuses on presenting media coverage in a professional, yet visually appealing manner. 

CoverageBook automatically calculates key metrics such as online readership, social media shares, and estimated coverage views. This saves time and provides a standardized way to measure the impact of your coverage. Their automated metrics feature is a significant time-saver, as it eliminates the need for manually calculating and inputting data for each piece of coverage.

Best for:

It’s best suited for PR professionals and agencies that need a straightforward and efficient way to create and share media coverage reports. It's particularly useful for teams that prioritize speed and ease of use in their reporting process, without sacrificing the quality and professionalism of their reports.

Pricing:

Starting at $99/month, CoverageBpok offers a more cost-friendly solution for those looking to ramp up their PR deliverables. 

How to Know Which Tools Are Right For You

1. Assess Your Requirements: Clearly define your PR objectives and the specific tasks you need the tools to accomplish. Consider whether you need tools for media monitoring, content creation, influencer outreach, analytics, or reporting.
2. Research and Compare: Explore various digital PR tools available in the market. Look for reviews, case studies, and testimonials to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Compare features, usability, and pricing to see which tools align with your needs.
3. Consider Integration: Check if the tools can integrate with your existing systems, such as CRM platforms, social media management tools, or analytics software. Seamless integration can enhance efficiency and streamline your workflow.
4. Test the Tools: Many digital PR tools offer free trials or demos. Take advantage of these opportunities to test the tools in real-world scenarios. This will give you a better sense of their capabilities and how they fit into your workflow.
5. Review Pricing and Contracts: Compare pricing plans and check for any hidden costs. Consider the value each tool brings and ensure that it fits within your budget. Review contract terms and conditions to avoid any unwanted surprises.

Need help weighing your options? Here at Cupid PR, we’re a team of digital marketing professionals and we know what works. Let us help you reach success.