Social Media in Public Relations Workflow - PR Newswire's Agility Platform
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

PR Newswire's Agility platform aims to help PR professionals to monitor mainstream and social media coverage, identify relevant journalists and other key influencers, communicate with them and track the impact of their communications efforts, all within a single service. It is a fascinating case study of how to integrate traditional and social media monitoring into a very specific user workflow.

Item

PR Newswire is well-known in the public relations world as one of the world's leading distributors of press releases. From Austria to Australia, Ireland to Indonesia, Pakistan to Peru, it can help PR professionals to get their message out to mainstream journalists, specialised commentators and wider print, broadcast and online audiences.

Like other leading providers in this space such as NASDAQ OMX-owned GlobeNewswire or Canada's Marketwired, PR Newswire is increasingly looking to provide additional services to its target users, beyond press release distribution.

Press Release Distribution and Beyond

The PR Newswire Agility service was launched in 2012 to help PR professionals to link the sending of press releases with the related processes of identifying and contacting journalists and other key influencers and monitoring and measuring media coverage.

It is a fascinating case study of how to integrate traditional and social media monitoring into a very specific user workflow.

Traditional and Social Media Monitoring in One Service

A proprietary media contacts database with over 700,000 records - both traditional and social - is allied to a monitoring tool combing over 54,000 online sites, plus millions of blogs, forums, review sites and social media mentions. These features are then allied with tools to distribute press releases, either by email or via PR Newswire's many local, regional or global media distribution circuits.

In FreePint's view, the product treats traditional and social media content on an equal footing, providing the PR or corporate communications professional with tools to identify key influencers and communicate with them in the most appropriate way for each individual - whether that be by email, phone, press release or social media interaction.

A Fast-Changing World

FreePint is currently profiling a series of social media monitoring services, shedding light on how different kinds of tools aim to add value to different kinds of users.

The marketplace is evolving rapidly and many vendors, like PR Newswire, are making frequent enhancements to their services as social media developments impose changes on the world of business, as users in established professions adapt to changing requirements and as new job roles spring up to undertake tasks which simply did not exist a few years ago.

Watch out for further updates on the fast-changing world of social media.

Editor's Note

Read Chris Porter's introduction to FreePint's focus on social media monitoring tools, which runs during March and April 2014, in Social Media Monitoring: the Options.

Editor's Note: Full Review

PR Newswire's Agility platform has a host of interesting features. The full FreePint Report: Product Review of PR Newswire's Agility Platform is now available to those with a FreePint Subscription.

Articles in series:

• PR Newswire's Agility Platform: Introduction and Contact Details
• PR Newswire's Agility Platform: Sources, Content and Coverage
• PR Newswire's Agility Platform: Technology - Search; Outputs & Alerts; User Interface
• PR Newswire's Agility Platform: Value, Development & Pricing

Full report (PDF) contains all of the above content, in a convenient package for reference and sharing:

• Product Review of PR Newswire's Agility Platform

Editor's Note: Beyond Aggregation

FreePint readers may be interested to read more about news products in our FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which ran from October to November 2013. You can still register your interest to receive a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content published in early December.

« Blog