The importance of building relationships with key influencers as part of any successful PR, influencer marketing or outreach campaign has never been more important.

Over the past decades, marketing and PR professionals and anyone ‘accidentally’ involved in marketing and PR like entrepreneurs and business owners will have seen their roles change. And these changes are accelerating amidst continual rapid changes brought about by new technologies and social behaviours.

Our job as PR professionals is usually to enhance the reputation of the organisation that we are supporting. According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), that reputation is “the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.”

An organisation’s reputation is a core component of its brand, and it is so important because of the effects it has on an organisation’s bottom-line. Here are some of those effects:

• Increased new business acquisition rates
• Increased customer and employee retention rates
• Lower costs of new business acquisition
• Lower costs of customer and employee retention
• Increased volume of sales from new and existing customers
• Increased average order values from new and existing customers
• The ability to charge premium prices
• The ability to recover from negative publicity

The bottom-line?

BIGGER PROFITS!

There are many factors that build a reputation, such as having a great product and providing fantastic customer service to name just two. If these factors are generally good, then PR professionals can use this foundation in many different ways to build relationships with and organisation’s publics.

Publics are audiences that are important to the organisation. They include customers – existing and potential; employees and management; investors; media; government; suppliers; opinion-formers (CIPR).

The focus of this list and all of its different parts is on helping you to build relationships with the final member of the CIPR’s list of publics; the opinion-formers.

Opinion-formers are the influencers.

Day-in-day-out the team here at Polkadot Communications works tirelessly towards building and maintaining relationships with the key influencers that can make or break our clients’ brands and businesses.

But why are they so important?

To help explain this, I’m going to approach this from two angles:

1. The influencers’ role in the Diffusion of Innovation
2. The influencers’ role in the customer decision-making process

I’ll now cover these concepts and show how they relate to each other.

The influencers’ role in the Diffusion of Innovation

If you’re not familiar with Everett Rogers’ (1976) Diffusion of Innovation model you can see it here in this illustration from a great SmartInsights blog post by Annmarie Hanlon:

Essentially, when an organisation (typically a commercial business) launches a new product (a ‘product’ can be a ‘service’) or new way of doing things, its aim will most likely be to get people in its target audience/market to trial, purchase and use it in order to make a profit.

The Diffusion of Innovation model categorises the people in the target audience as follows:

And it notes the typical percentage of the population that they represent as shown above.

The number of people in the target population adopting (trialling, using, purchasing, etc.) the product can increase over time as people within the categories defined by the model. This adoption is sequential (1-5).

I have marked the Early Majority in red as it is not until the people in this category/group adopt the product that the organisation will make a profit. This is because of the expense involved in creating and marketing it.

Now, remember, the adoption is sequential. Therefore, unless the people in the Early Majority have seen Early Adopters and Innovators using the product in a positive way then they won’t want to use it.

The same this goes for the Early Adopters, they need to see the Innovators using the product in a positive way before they want to use it.

I have emphasised ‘in a positive way’ to reflect the type feedback gained. For example, if Early Adopters were using the product but were saying that the product wasn’t very good and they wouldn’t use it or buy it again, then the Early Majority would pay attention to that not want to use it.

This happens because of the types of people that fall into the categories. Very basically, the Innovators are risk-takers and want to be the first to use something new and be seen using something new. So they’re people that actively look for new thing to try, and then often show-off that they are using the new thing before anyone else.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Laggards don’t use something new unless they have to – for example, they might only buy a smartphone when mobile phones with buttons are no longer available.

So if you are risk-averse, you need your perception of the risk involved in adopting the new thing to be lowered enough for you think it’s safe and would be of benefit to you in some way.

The people in the Early Majority, the people that the organisation needs to reach to be profitable, are fairly risk-averse.

So if they’re seeing positive feedback from the people whose opinion they value and that they pay attention to, they will be influenced to adopt the new thing.

And that’s the golden ticket right there!

The Innovators and the Early Majority are THE INFLUENCERS.

The influencers’ role in the customer decision-making process

So now we know why we need to build relationships with influencers so that they use our products and advocate, endorse and promote.

Because if we don’t, profits will be non-existent or rubbish.

Now let’s look at where influencers fit into the customer decision-making process. This is really important because if this is not understood, we won’t identify the influencers that will affect our target audience and we won’t craft the right messages and use the right channels that the influencers and target audience use.

We must be customer-centric to do a good job here.

Typically, customers (buyers) can move through a thought process that results in them doing something that the seller wants them to do, usually to buy something. And beyond that, to repeatedly buy something from the seller and become a loyal customer that also tells people how amazing the seller is and how awesome their products are.

A simplified linear way of looking at this can be seen using the classic AIDA model below:

The image used above is from another great blog post from SmartInsights that I’d recommend you read.

An organisation’s marketing and communications efforts should be geared towards moving customers down/along this path or funnel as quickly and cheaply as possible in order to maximise their return on marketing investment (ROMI).

In reality, this process is very complex and involves multiple online and offline communications channels (e.g. direct mail, TV ads, printed editorial content, websites, social networks, email campaigns and so on) and multiple devices (e.g. desktop PCs, tablets and mobiles).

If you’d like to understand more about multi-channel customer journeys and the role of mobile in that journey, I’d highly recommend checking out the free Think with Google tools.

Take a look at the diagram below from McKinsey and SmartInsights that focusses on Google Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) concept and you will that at every stage the customer is affected by their relationships and the sharing of information and opinions; whether they are sharing themselves or digesting the thoughts and opinions of their influencers.

In a B2B context, this still applies. But it is a little more complex as often more than one person is involved in the decision-making process (e.g. the Marketing Manager, the Financial Controller, the business owner, the Sales Director, etc.). Together, the people involved in a business purchase for the decision-making unit (DMU).

Consequently, the added challenge in this situation is to find and engage the influencers that relate to each of the individual members of the DMU.

Firstly, remember to find out who is in the DMU and work out whose opinion they value. Who are their influencers?

Often, due to a lack of research, organisations will target top-level senior staff thinking that they are mostly responsible for the business purchasing decisions. Of course, this can be the case. But take a look at this very interesting article from Think with Google about the unlikely suspects.

Probably the most important thing to take away from this is that…

Influencers drive action, they don’t just generate awareness.

The link between PR, influencer marketing, blogger outreach and search engine optimisation (SEO)

Public Relations (PR), influencer marketing, blogger outreach and search engine optimisation (SEO) are closely related and boundaries between them are blurry, to say the least.

The broadest areas here are PR and SEO, as numerous sub-disciplines and activities fall under them. Take PR for example, It can cover:

• Brand Public Relations
• Product Public Relations
• Employee Relations
• Financial Relations
• Community Relations
• Crisis Communications
• Government and Political Relations
• Consumer Education

SEO covers technical work relating to the optimisation of a website for the benefit of the search engines (mostly Google), the optimisation of the content of the website (e.g. URLs, metadata, copy, images and videos) and the off-site content including the links back to the website.

It is this last area that we see the overlap with PR, influencer marketing and blogger outreach.

For example, influencers can be bloggers (who are generally active across multiple social networks) people active on one or more social networks, celebrities, online and offline journalists and feature writers that create content for newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. Many influencers are a combination of these things.

As part of brand and product PR campaigns, PR professionals build relations with influencers like these in order to get them to use, endorse and promote their clients’ products.

At Polkadot Communications, we specialise in brand and product PR, and over the last 10 years, we harnessed the incredible power of influencers to generate awareness, desire, interest, action and loyalty for our clients.

Where these endorsements result in links from websites, blogs and social networks to the organisation’s website, the direct SEO benefits can also be seen.

Blogger outreach has spawned from SEO and is really a form or product and brand PR with a purely online marketing focus.

And influencer marketing broadly speaking covers all of this.

Where influencers influence

We have covered why it’s important to build relationships with influencers and how that relates to various marketing and communications disciplines and activities.

But where exactly are these influencers influencing?

This can be illustrated using the rather useful PESO model created by Gini Dietrich:

So basically…they’re potentially everywhere!

They’re all over our owned, earned, shared and even paid media.

However, the particular focus for PR and any outreach programmes is generally in the earned and shared media spaces. Klout explains why it helps to target and use influencers, whatever your business does:

Why Earned Media Matters Earned media isn’t new. Consumers have been talking about your brand for years on social media, and because 92% of people trust their peers, it’s had a major impact. In fact, earned media provides 4x the brand lift of paid ads.

Earned media channels are where we can find the influencers relevant to our target audiences, and this is where our journey through this awesome mega-list of free tools for PR, influencer marketing & blogger outreach begins.

As paid media channels become more expensive, it’s never been so important to connect with the influencers that matter to you in order to create authentic brands and messages that will stand the test of time.

Whether your business is brand new, or just trying to compete in an ever-noisier marketplace, you need to get noticed! After all, customers can’t contact you if they don’t know you exist!

A good PR strategy can help you to achieve that initial burst of interest and traction without breaking the bank, and it can be relatively quick and easy to implement a basic plan. The following steps are a good start:

1. Set your PR strategy goals
2. Define your key messages
3. Know your target market/audience
4. Set your budget
5. Make Sure It’s Relevant to Your Target Audience
6. Find the Right Opportunities
7. Make a start!
8. Measure results
9. Keep learning and improving

With those basic steps, you can get started on public relations, right now, to start building your audience and target market.

1: Set Your PR Strategy Goals

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals or goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound, but you might not be aware that countless studies have proven that when anyone has defined goals, they are significantly more likely to achieve them and much more productive than when they do not have defined goals.

Your goals don’t have to be written in stone. You can review and revise them when you need to. But you should definitely set some at the beginning of your PR strategy and campaigns so that you have an overall direction to follow.

Everything you plan and do from this point on should support these SMART goals. If it doesn’t then essentially you’ve lost your way and you are probably going to waste lots of time and money.

If you’d like to learn more about setting SMART objectives, take a look at this great post from the SmartInsights team.

2: Define Your Key Messages

We live in a noisy world. TV. Radio. Devices. Family. Friends. Work. Everything demands our attention all the time, so it’s no wonder we don’t have much room for anything else!

That’s exactly why an effective PR strategy is based on a handful of core messages. People might not have time to take everything in all the time, but if they see the same messages repeatedly, they will take note. It’s why advertising is more effective if you have a big budget to run ads more frequently!

3: Know Your Target Market/Audience

Have you ever received junk mail that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and got annoyed or frustrated? You’re not alone. None of us enjoys having our time wasted by irrelevant issues.

What you say is a big part of the battle. Who you say it to is an even bigger part!

Knowing whether your ideal customer is a consumer or a business, who they are, what interests them, what they read and where they “hang out” online is a huge step in creating a successful PR strategy.

Content marketers are masters at defining their audience, and organisations like the Digital Marketing Institute have some great tools and tips to get you started.

Not only should your campaigns relate to your buyer persona, they should also consider their needs at each stage in the buyer journey.

Here are some great content ideas for each stage of the buyers’ journey that you could promote with PR.

4: Set Your Budget

If you’re in business, you deal with budgets and numbers all the time. Your PR strategy is no different. You need to know what you have to work with.

Sometimes, particularly for new businesses, there is no budget at all. That’s okay too, as long as you’re honest about it, and understand that you can still “do” PR, but that there will be a lot more time and effort involved!

If you’re in that situation, you might find this article useful: Three Ways To Get Great PR Without A PR Budget

As part of this, you can utilise some really handy free PR tools further within the guide.

If you do have a budget to spend on PR, monthly or annually, and you do want to outsource, most good PR firms will be honest and upfront about what your budget will cover. Once you know those details, you’ll have a defined starting point.

If you need help deciding on your budget, a great rule of thumb is to allocate between 5% – 10% of the business turnover you are aiming for.

So let’s say your SMART goal is to “double turnover from $1m to $2m in the next 12 months” you could do the following calculation:

$2m x 10% = $200k

$2m x 5% = $100k

To work out your monthly budget, simply divide by 12:

$200k / 12 = $16,667

$100k / 12 = $8,333

Then based on this budget, work out how you can allocate it to your marketing and communications efforts with our handy PR budgeting template.

5: Make Sure It’s Relevant to Your Target Audience

Unlike advertising, when you can pay an ad agency to say whatever you like, PR relies heavily on public interest. Press releases, for instance, must be newsworthy. They must be interesting. They must be timely, and most importantly, they must be relevant.

From the topic of the release to the publication you send it to, always ask yourself if your news is relevant. If not, you may want to backtrack and rethink your strategy!

6: Find the Right Opportunities

To be successful in PR you need to be relentless in your pursuit of PR opportunities.

Once you’ve followed the steps above you’ll have defined exactly who you are targeting and what problems and challenges they are trying to solve that your organisation can help them with.

This sets the context for the opportunities you will look for, but how do you find those opportunities?

Obviously, we can help you with that. It’s our job as the leading communications agency in Sydney to constantly find great PR opportunities for our clients and land great online and offline media coverage that increases their profitability.

However, if you’d like to have a go yourself, take a look at our handy post about how to find more of the right PR opportunities for free.

7: Make a Start!

Planning is great, but don’t let your PR strategy get stuck in the planning stage too long!

You’ve heard the saying “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”? Well, that’s not entirely true, but it can be said that any mention you manage to get in the media, even if it’s not perfect, is a step towards PR success.

Public relations is cumulative. It’s a marathon, not a spring. Even if you manage only one successful piece of PR a month, you will see the effects over time, but the important thing is to make a start!

The good news is that you can start small too. Get ready…

Go!

Right now, sit down and create three newsworthy titles about your business that you can pitch to the press. Then list five news outlets who might be interested in your news.

Write a press release for each of those titles, find the news submission area on the websites of the outlets you’re targeting, and submit them.

If your press releases are interesting, relevant and timely, and you’re pitching them to the right people, there’s a good chance your release will get you the media coverage you want. Repeat this as often as you have news to share, and you should build a good foundation PR strategy without breaking a sweat.

8: Measure Results

The final step in any kind of marketing, advertising and PR strategy should always be to measure results. Did your piece get media attention? How many people contacted you because of each piece? What sort of feedback did you get?

If your PR strategy and campaigns are working, over time you should see positive impacts on your profitability. If you are serious about business, here are some things that directly impact your bottom-line that you should be monitoring where relevant:

• Number of website and shop visitors
• Number of sales leads
• Number of orders/sales
• Average order/sale value
• Number of repeat orders/sales
• Customer retention rates

A successful PR strategy will help to increase all of these things.

If you don’t know how to track some or all of these things, get in touch and we can help you to work out a bespoke measurement and tracking system for your business.

By taking this step at the end of any marketing and media outreach campaign, you can figure out what works, and do more of it. You can also stop wasting time and money on strategies that don’t work as well.

9: Keep learning and improving

Of course, public relations strategy is a huge topic, and fully developed campaigns have an enormous amount of moving parts that can’t be covered in just one post. It also changes all the time. That’s why PR professionals study their craft and continue to learn new tactics and strategy throughout their careers.

The beauty is, you don’t have to know everything to get started, and there are resources (like our blog and newsletters) that can help you to get started on your own PR strategy, no matter what stage of business you’re at. We’d love to hear about your triumphs or challenges too, so be sure to sign up and comment!

Public relations is, without a doubt, a very specialised branch of marketing and communications, and it’s always a good idea to trust the pros with your company’s public image and PR tactics.

That having been said, there are a few PR tactics that are so effective and so universally successful that nearly anyone can use them to gain traction in the marketplace and to make your brand famous fast. They’re quick, they’re dirty, and they get the job done! (Often free!)

Here’s our list of can’t miss PR tactics you can use today:

Focus on Relationships

In case you missed it, the age of the hard sell is over! The era of the relationship has begun, and it’s become the most important element of customer relations. Instead of telling your customers what you want them to know, switch your approach to asking what they want and need.

How do you know what they need?

Well, rule #1 is not to assume anything. When you’re working on your PR Strategy be sure to get to know your target audience by creating a buyer persona like the one mentioned in our article Stunning PR Strategies that can Help Every Business Now.

Here are 20 Questions to Ask When Creating Buyer Personas from the awesome HubSpot blog:

Personal Background

1) Describe your personal demographics.

2) Describe your educational background.

3) Describe your career path.

Company

4) In which industry or industries does your company work?

5) What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?

Role

6) What is your job role? Your title?

7) Whom do you report to? Who reports to you?

8) How is your job measured?

9) What does a typical day look like?

10) Which skills are required to do your job?

11) What knowledge and which tools do you use in your job?

Challenges

12) What are your biggest challenges?

Goals

13) What are you responsible for?

14) What does it mean to be successful in your role?

Watering Holes

15) How do you learn about new information for your job?

16) Which publications or blogs do you read?

17) Which associations and social networks do you participate in?

Shopping Preferences

18) How do you prefer to interact with vendors?

19) Do you use the internet to research vendors or products? If yes, how do you search for information?

20) Describe a recent purchase.

Do Things That Don’t Scale

This is a very popular “new marketing” phrase for a very good reason – it works. Many of the world’s biggest startups used this exact idea to gain early traction. From personal invites to join Facebook back in the early days to Uber’s ice cream promotions, doing things that are out of the ordinary will help you stand out early on.

Claim Your Expert Status

There’s a reason your customers choose you over the competition: you really know what you’re doing! But they won’t necessarily know that unless you prove it to them.

There are a variety of marketing tactics that can grow your personal and business credibility, and entrench your brand as the go-to in your field. These include:

• Write articles or blog posts about your knowledge. There’s something about having your knowledge down “on paper” that lends even more credibility and clout.
• Take advantage of speaking engagements. Even if it’s just a short talk in front of the local chamber of commerce, if you present your expertise to an audience well, you’ll make an impression!
• Use case studies on your website or in your marketing materials. Explaining what your other customers’ problems were (and how you solved them) goes a long way to building trust with prospective customers.
• If the media are looking for a professional opinion in your field, make yourself available to answer!

The more the public sees and hears you speak competently and knowledgeably about your industry and field, the more they will start to see you as the professional and expert that you are, and everyone wants to deal with the experts at the end of the day.

Pitch News Stories Like a Pro

The media is one of your best PR resources, but you need to know how to say the right things to the right people if you want to leverage this resource!

Start by looking for media opportunities in the right places. Journalists are under enormous pressure in the internet age. They need to get the next big scoop, and they need it fast. Registering for services like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) can be one of your best PR tactics because it helps you to find the reporters who want your news.

Keep it short, sweet and factual. With the rise of “fake news” it’s become more important than ever to make sure your stories and news are above question.

If you are considered an “influencer” in your field, leverage that status. Reporters will always choose to talk to the best-known voice in a particular arena, so become that voice!

Use email and social media to reach out. It’s quick, it’s instant, and it is the modern journalists’ communication method of choice.

Stay Focused

You know Uncle Bob who tells those long, rambling stories at family gatherings? You tune him out around the ten-minute mark, right?

Uncle Bob doesn’t tailor his message to his audience, and he doesn’t stick to the facts. Make sure that your PR tactics are targeted to your ideal customers, and that you stay on topic.

Who are your ideal customers?

Again, this comes down to doing your homework.

For example, if you have an existing website you could follow the instructions in this post titled How to Create Profitable Buyer Personas in No Time to use Google Analytics to mine some very useful insights.

Once you’ve got started with that, you can start quizzing people in your target audience with the questions listed above.

Then you can tailor your messaging to helping your target audience to overcome their challenges and achieve their goals.

It’s a winning combination that we use time and time again with our clients.

Images Do Speak A Thousand Words

When market research companies analyse social media accounts, they consistently find that status updates and tweets with images perform better in terms of retweets, mentions and clicks than text alone.

Articles, blog posts and marketing materials are no different, so make sure that your PR tactics include sourcing or creating relevant photographs, infographics or other types of visual media. Bonus points for using video!

Need help sprucing up your images?

Check out Canva, it’s an awesome tool!

Be Controversial

There’s a very old saying about any publicity being good publicity. While that’s not exactly true, it is true that in some cases, doing something controversial can get you big media attention!

Examples of this tactic would be to ban something (often something seemingly unimportant, like ties in your office or the use of the word “no”), or to make a statement on a hot topic to get the debate going. Declaring your own “holiday” is another great way to do something controversial without stepping on toes.

Be respectful and steer clear of political hot potatoes, but having a bold take on something can get you a lot of press!

Be Available to the Media

Call press conferences when you have big news. Offer insider insights on big stories. Follow up with media contacts who have published stories about your company in the past.

The more available and approachable you are, the more likely journalists will be to contact you.

Manage Your Reputation Actively

The internet is great. It really is. Until people start saying things about you online that aren’t flattering.

The best way to manage your online reputation is to delight your customers, and ensure that every review you get is a fawning love-fest… but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, someone drops the ball. Sometimes, a competitor posts a fake review. Whatever the cause, you need to know about it, and take appropriate action.

Monitor any pages where your customers can leave reviews, and react respectfully and with concern for their happiness whenever you get a less than perfect review. Respond quickly and helpfully, don’t get embroiled in a public argument!

Create a Google alert for your company and or product name, so that you get a notification when you are mentioned in the news. If your PR tactics are working, it’s likely to be a good mention, but if not, the sooner you contact the journalist to correct the problem, the better!

Learn from Other Peoples’ Mistakes

This one is pretty straightforward. Keep an eye on what’s going on around you and think about what worked and what didn’t work.

Things that did work – could you imitate the campaign in some way?

Things that didn’t work – don’t do anything like them!

Give Back

Finally, when it comes to PR tactics, there’s one that always works, without fail: being kind and giving back.

Volunteering to help out a charity, walking shelter dogs or a Christmas party for local orphans is a guaranteed way to get a positive mention in the local news, and you get to do something great for the community while you’re at it.

Whatever your final PR tactics are, mix it up. Try a few, and monitor your results. Any of these tactics should get you rock solid results, but you should find that a few really stand out. Do more of those, and less of the others, and keep growing that brand!

If you are not sure how to get started with any this, or if you don’t have the time. We’d love to talk with you and see if we could help.

Get in touch! (We don’t bite. Much.)

Once you have defined your target audiences, probably a group of customers, you need to then find which influencers they pay attention to AND that might be willing to work with you in order to promote your business, products and brand.

So you might find an influencer, a blogger for instance, that writes about organic beauty products, and they may review and recommend them in order to provide value to their readers. 

If you’d like to take your business to the next level, then check out our awesome PR Playbook for lots of great PR strategies, tactics and tools!

Let’s say that your business sells beauty products that are not organic. 

Do you think that you should spend time researching how to make contact with this blogger and then send them a carefully crafted bespoke message, in order to build and nurture a relationship that hopefully leads to a positive review for your brand and products? 

The answer is no. 

Your products aren’t organic and the blogger will probably think you’re disingenuous and haven’t bothered to read any of their posts or about the purpose of the blog. 

This could then damage a potentially fruitful relationship with them, that you might need in the future if you were to produce organic beauty products. Additionally, they might tell other influencers in their network what you have done, potentially damaging relationships with a whole group of influencers that could have been useful. 

The lesson here is to be careful and do your research. 

Identify influencers, but only target the relevant ones. 

Otherwise, you risk wasting time, money and your reputation. 

Enjoy the read, 

Dionne Taylor

HOW THIS LIST HAS BEEN ORGANISED

For each tool in the list, I have written notes on what the tool does and my thoughts on it, a series of mini-reviews. I have also summarised some key points and features in a table that indicates the paid options for the tool (if available). Some of the tools are totally free (at the time of writing this). 

Just below, you will see the summarised list of free tools. 

My overall tip for getting the most out of these free tools and avoiding the need to pay for them is to combine their power. Often features are limited in the free version of the tool but the limitations can be overcome by using other tools on the list.

THE FREE PR TOOLS:

1. Buzzsumo
2. Anewstip
3. Google Alerts
4. Followerwonk
5. Klear
6. Quora
7. LinkedIn
8. NinjaOutreach Lite
9. Ubersuggest
10. Tweetreach
11. Feedly
12. AllTop
13. Hunter.io

Read about each of the free tools in detail below, click on the tool names to go to access the tools:

#1 BUZZSUMO

WHAT DOES IT DO?

This tool helps you to research and analyse what content performs best for any topic (e.g. keywords, brand names, industries and competitors) so that you can find the key influencers to approach to promote your content.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This tool is very useful for finding relevant influencers across a wide variety of sectors. When using the tool for free, you are limited to a handful of searches for most shared content, trending content and Twitter influencers. The number of results shown for each search is limited to 5. 

The results for either type of search result links to the shared content and stats relating to the number of shares on some of the main social platforms: 

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Reddit

It also shows the number of links back to the page/post from other website pages/posts (AKA ‘backlinks’). This is another indication of how well shared and influential the content is. Backlinks are typically much more difficult to get than social media engagement though, so expect to see fewer backlinks. 

From a promotional perspective for your content, a backlink building strategy is highly recommended as there’s a massive SEO benefit, as well as the benefit of having influencer endorsement that drives traffic to your site. 

You could run this as part of your PR strategy, or alongside it as part of your SEO strategy. 

Despite the limited number of results in ‘most shared’ content, this is still very useful as you can click through to the resulting articles and follow-up with other research to uncover relevant influencers. You can also filter the trending content by pre-set curated feed categories, and as part of the free account level tools, you can create one custom curated feed yourself. 

Here’s what you could do next: Open twitter and copy and paste the URL of the highest shared article you have discovered on Buzzsumo into the ‘search Twitter’ box in the Twitter header area. 

There are various search options within Twitter and we would recommend using the search ‘All’ search. You will then see the Tweets that have mentioned the URL you are looking for, even if the URL is embedded in another link such as in a shortened link (e.g. from bit.ly, bit.ly Pro, ow.ly, etc.). 

You will then see all of the users and their Tweets that contained the link. Fabulous! 

Let’s see this in action in relation to the rather broad ‘beauty tips’ keyword as an example. Pop it into Buzzsumo and click on the topmost shared link:

Copy the URL from the search bar: 

Go to Twitter and paste it into the search box (e.g. https://guidewomenhealth.com/15-beauty-tips-for-women/) and then search. 

You will get the search results and now you can see all of the people that shared the content! 

However, one major drawback with the free version of Buzzsumo is that you can’t filter by location. So if you’re looking for local influencers, it’s not so good. 

BIG TIP! 

Use this tool in conjunction with the other free tools in this guide. If you’re looking for local influencers (e.g. influencers in a specific country) try using Ubersuggest – also covered in this guide. 

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://app.buzzsumo.com/

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions available from $79+ per month

Free Features: 

• Most shared content searches
• Trending content discovery
• Find Twitter influencers

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid version – 5/5

#2 ANEWSTIP

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Anewstip helps entrepreneurs, PR professionals and marketers connect with relevant media influencers. 

The tool helps you to search for relevant media contacts from what looks like the world’s largest database containing millions of Tweets from the birth of Twitter to the present day. 

It can also monitor news articles and Tweets from global media influencers so that you can keep track of what is being said about your own brand, competitor brands or any other brands you are interested in. 

Additionally, you can get organised with the tool and create media lists and pitch to influencers directly through the platform.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is a very useful tool for finding relevant influencers, especially as the number of searches is unlimited even at the free account level. Unfortunately, the free account does not allow you to access the influencers’ contact details.

BIG TIP! 

The lack of access to contact details can be overcome by paying for the tool or by simply searching for the influencers’ names in Google and by adding ‘Twitter’ or another media platform to your search term (e.g. ‘joe bloggs Twitter’ or ‘joe bloggs LinkedIn’). Normally this results in quickly being able to match the Anewstip research with the influencers’ media channel. From there, you can add their details to your database and make direct contact.

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://anewstip.com/ 

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions available from $200+ per month

Free Features: 

• Unlimited influencer searches
• Create media lists (limited)
• Create alerts (limited)

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 3/5
• Paid version – 5/5

#3 GOOGLE ALERTS

WHAT DOES IT DO?

A totally free tool from Google that allows you to set email alerts relating to keywords that are of interest.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is a great tool for several reasons. In relation to identifying influencers, I would recommend that you create alerts for keywords linked to your brand or business to help you identify people who are actively creating content (e.g. written articles, videos, images and infographics, etc.) about those topics. 

As Google seems to scour the whole web for content, this tool often picks up potential influencers that other tools can miss. 

With regards to creating ‘useful alerts’, I would recommend setting up separate daily summary alerts for the following, using a fictional organic beauty (cosmetics) product business as an example: 

• Your brand name (e.g. Totally Natural Beauty – fictional name)
• Your direct competitors brand names (e.g. Lavera – a real natural cosmetics brand)
• Other competitors in your industry (e.g. L’Oreal – a global cosmetics brand)
• Relevant keywords (e.g. “beauty tips”, “cosmetics review”, “natural cosmetics”, “organic cosmetics”, “beauty brands Australia”, etc.)

When you get your emailed alerts, you can then click through to the resulting articles and videos etc., and then assess whether the author is worth targeting as an influencer. You could do this by looking at the type of content they publish on their website and/or social channels to see if it’s relevant. You can then also see how active they are and how influential they are from the number of shares, likes, followers, etc. that they have. 

This kind of research can be enhanced by finding the prospective influencer within tools like  Anewstip for example (also covered in this list).

BIG TIP!

You can see in the screenshot below that I have previewed an alert for “beauty tips” and I have actually used speech marks (“”) in the search box. This makes sure that the results contain that exact phrase, which is handy if results in the preview look too broad.

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://www.google.co.uk/alerts

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Totally Free!

Free Features: 

• Get alerts for keywords related to your business directly into your inbox

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 5

#4 FOLLOWERWONK

WHAT DOES IT DO?

This tool scours Twitter for users’ profiles or just their bios for keywords that you search for. The results list Twitter account and profile information that includes names, Twitter handles, bio info, geographical location, no. of Tweets, no. of followers, no. of following, the age of the Twitter account (in days) and ‘social authority.’

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is an extremely useful tool. You can use some of the key features of the tool for free in exchange for your Twitter details. A bargain! 

To find influencers, all you need to do is search for keywords that relate to your business. If we stick with the beauty brand example then you might search for “beauty blogger” and the results will show Twitter users with that in their profiles (see screenshot below). You can also see how influential they are from the stats, and the ‘Social Authority’ measure is particularly useful here. This is basically how influential the user is.

‘Social Authority’ is composed of: 

– The re-Tweet rate of users’ last few hundred Tweets 

– The age of those Tweets 

– A re-Tweet-based model trained on user profile data 

To read more about the ‘Social Authority’ measure, take a look at this Moz Blog post. 

So this will help you to determine which users are worth targeting and adding to your database. 

BIG TIP!

Combine using this tool with other tools mentioned in this list. For example, you might have found a potential influencer using Google Alerts because they have produced some relevant content. But are they worth adding to your database and targeting? 

Well, you could search for them in Followerwonk and Klear (see later in this list) to check out their stats.

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://followerwonk.com/

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions available from $29 per month

Free Features: 

• 50 Twitter profile searches per day
• 100 Results per search
• Analyze accounts with up to 25k followers
• 20 Analyses per day
• Compare to others with up to 150k followers
• 20 Comparisons per day

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid version – 5/5

#5  KLEAR

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Find (some for free), monitor and analyse (paid features) influencers by searching in relation to their ‘skill’ and location. This is based on Twitter influencers and if you pay, then bloggers, and Instagram and YouTube influencers are included too.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is a great tool for discovering the top influencers in relation to topics, industries and keywords. The free tool for searching for influencers by location is so limited that it’s basically useless though.

This tool also shows you the influencers’ handles/presence on other social networks and enables you to connect with them, so it’s helpful for productivity and for opening multiple channels through which to make contact with the influencer…and helps you to assess the opportunities for content promotion through multiple social channels.

BIG TIP!

This is a wonderful tool for combining with other tools such as Buzzsumo and the Twitter search function, also mentioned in this list. Again, you may have discovered potential influencers that have posted and/or shared content but you are wondering who to prioritise with your outreach efforts.

In Klear, you could then find the influencers by searching for their Twitter handle (obtained from another tool like Buzzsumo for example), so that you can note their influence scores in Klear based on activity, popularity and responsiveness.

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website:

• https://klear.com/
  

Industry:

• All

Cost:

• Free tools available with limited usage
• Paid versions available from an unknown amount – you need to talk to their
• sales team to uncover the pricing info

Free Features:

• Search for the Top 10 twitter influencers in a niche
• Search for the Top 10 twitter influencers in a location
• Get some basic analysis on a twitter account

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 2/5
• Paid version – 5/5

#6 QUORA

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Quora is a question-and-answer website tool/platform where the questions and answers are user-generated.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

You might have come across Quora before when seeking answers (for anything!), but Quora is actually a great free tool for helping with your influencer search and assessment. You can search for questions and answers relating to relevant keywords. Users with good answers on the site tend to receive ‘upvotes’ and get lots of views. Using this knowledge you can then spot potential influencers in their capacity of acting as an expert in this forum. 

In the screenshot below you can see that I searched for ‘beauty tips.’ I then clicked on the ‘Most Viewed Writers’ link in the results menu to see a list of potential influencers. I then clicked through to Emma Brown’s Quora profile to view her profile information including all of her answers (see overleaf). As part of this there is a link to her Twitter account (see overleaf), so that could be used for further research and finding contact details. Some influencers enable the direct contact functionality within the site and so you can message them directly. 

Other features include setting up alerts and notifications for topics and following members. So this can help with your research efficiencies.

Click through to Quora profiles to view profile information including all of the influencers’ answers. 

Find further information for influencers by clicking on their listed details, which can include social media profile links: 

BIG TIP!

To further assess how influential the potential influencers are in Quora, you could find them in  Followerwonk and check out their Social Authority score.

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://www.quora.com/

Industry:

• All

Cost: 

• It’s free!

Free Features: 

• Search for influencers by topic using keywords
• Find influencers’ social media accounts, personal websites and contact details (when available)
• Directly message influencers (when available)
• Create alerts for topics
• Subscribe to influencers’ feeds

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 5/5

#7 LINKEDIN

WHAT DOES IT DO?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than 575 million members, with more than 260 million monthly active users in 200 countries and territories around the globe. It does rather a lot of things really; by building your profile and network through the site it can help you to land your dream job, grow and nurture your network, unlock sales opportunities and find and hire talent. 

Free accounts are available and come with many useful features. Paying for an account (there are different membership levels) enables you to contact and connect with more people more easily, and gain access to insights about yourself, your business (if you manage a business profile) and other LinkedIn users.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is a great tool for finding influencers; some LinkedIn users are so influential that they are classified by LinkedIn as an ‘Influencer’, but there are not very many people at this level in relation to the number of LinkedIn users. However, even if someone isn’t classified as an Influencer by LinkedIn, you can easily find thousands of them. 

Probably the easiest way to do this is to use the main search box in the header menu are of the site and use keywords relating to your business. 

In the screenshots below, you can see I did a Boolean search for “beauty” AND “influencer” OR “blogger”. 

I then filtered the results by location to just see LinkedIn members based in Australia. 

Then you can look down through the results and find relevant influencers by exploring their profiles and also by checking them out on the platforms where they say they have influence. Similarly, you could look them up on other tools in this list like Followerwonk. You can also see how many followers they have on LinkedIn, and if you start noting these stats down you can build up a picture of who is influential for your business niche on LinkedIn.

BIG TIP! 

If you are unable to contact them directly because you have no current network connection with them, then you could find them on a different social network (e.g. Twitter) and contact them through that channel. If you can see their profile details (this depends on the users’ privacy settings) you can also see what LinkedIn groups they are members of. If you join those groups too, that can be a good place to get on their radar and build a relationship with them. 

Also, use Boolean searches wherever possible, they are sooooo powerful! You can use them on other platforms too. For example, you could enhance your Google Alerts with them! 

PRICING & FEATURES SUMMARY 

Website: 

• https://www.linkedin.com

Industry:

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions start at $29.99 per month but pricing varies depending on which country you are accessing the site from

Free Features: 

• Create a profile
• Search for influencers using a variety of content parameters
• Make direct contact with influencers
• Find other ways to contact influencers (e.g. through their websites and other social networks)

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid versions – 5/5

#8 NINJAOUTREACH LITE

WHAT DOES IT DO?

NinjaOutreach lite is a Chrome extension that lets you pull up a website’s social media stats, SEO metrics, and contact info. The makers of NinjaOutreach has designed this extension to: 

(1) help people find a way to validate the authority, ranking metrics, and engagement of any site, page, or influencer, and 

(2) reach out to them in a faster and more convenient way, using a single tool.

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This extension is really handy and a great timesaver when you’re doing some content or influencer prospecting and outreach. For example, you’re looking for topics to write about so you click on some articles to draw ideas from. Once you find a web page that catches your eye, you can just click on the chrome extension for some fast background research. 

The extension shows a drop-down where you can easily check the engagement level on the website, the number of followers they have, and their SEO metrics. 

Under the Website Data tab, you can immediately view from the drop-down menu include the domain and page URL, and other basic page info such as page title, meta description, and meta title. 

Note that the upper part of the website owner’s picture and the option to add to organised lists is only for Pro users who can integrate the lists with their more comprehensive web accounts. 

Scroll down further and you can also see email addresses, available podcasts, latest articles published, as well as links to the about and resource pages on the site. 

Even further down, you can view the site’s average monthly site visits, Alexa rank, Moz rank, backlink profile, number of shares on social, domain, and page authority. 

If you click the Contact tab, you can then send an email directly to the blogger or website owner, and even use some pre-made templates that you can just modify to fit what you need. 

BIG TIP!

Although some design elements could use a bit of a refresh, upgrading to the web app yields a lot of features such as mass email outreach, campaign management, a log of your whole communication history per outreach, automated follow-ups, and organised lists.

You can get a license key from the web app that you can use to activate the pro version of the chrome extension, which opens up more features you can’t get from the lite version. You can then sync some settings from the web version to the pro chrome extension, such as your saved lists and notes. You can also export your data points into a spreadsheet as needed.

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ninja-outreach-lite/ggafbfbbholjabenemjoimkkkookgbam

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions start at $49.99 per month

Free Features: 

• Full Name
• Location/Address
• Links To Social Pages (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, G+, Youtube)
• Follower Counts for all social pages
• Domain Name
• Page URL
• Page Title
• Links To Key Pages (About, Contact, Resources, Infographics, Podcasts, Interviews, Giveaways, Sponsored Posts, Product Reviews, Guest Posts, Press)
• Monetization Techniques (banner ads, email lists)
• Meta Description
• Email Addresses
• Phone Number
• Alexa Rank
• Average Visits Per Month
• Average Comments Per Post
• Average Social Shares Per Post
• Backlinks
• Page Authority
• Domain Authority
• Page Rank
• Moz Rank
• Klout Score
• Social Shares of page

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid versions – 5/5

#9 UBERSUGGEST

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Ubersuggest helps you generate keyword ideas for your content marketing strategy and production. It’s essentially an amazing free SEO and content marketing tool. 

With Ubersuggest’s free keyword tools, you can generate an unlimited number of suggestions for free and take your content creation to the next level while increasing your website’s chances of ranking against the competition. 

But what’s this got to do with influencers? 

Read on… 

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

Well, SEO tools don’t just belong to people doing … erm… SEO! 

We can use this tool to find influencers that have basically created their own content hubs away from the usual social media channels. 

I’ll give you an example where we imagine that we’re a beauty brand in Australia again. 

Firstly, and this is very important, put yourself in the shoes of your target consumer/buyer. Think about what they might Google that would end up relating to people that might influence their buying decision. 

A great place to start is with the challenges they face (pun intended). For example, they might suffer from dry skin, blotchy skin, allergies to certain ingredients, acne, etc. 

When they start searching for help and answers to their questions, they’ll probably do so with these challenges in mind. 

They might start off with a broad search term like “skin care tips” – let’s check that out: 

First of all, we see the overview for that keyword and it’s helpful as a quick check here to notice the “SEARCH VOLUME”: 

This is the number of people searching for this search term each month on average over the last 12 months. And in the graph, you can see the search trend for this search term over the last 12-months. 

This helps us to understand if people are searching for this search term and also what the outlook for the search term is. This will vary wildly depending on your industry and how niche your products/services are. 

The example above looks healthy to me, so I’ll use it to find some influencers. 

Go to the “Content Ideas Tab”: 

Now you can see a list of links to content (web pages and blog posts) and the website domains they are on. I don’t know how the tool selects what to show here but I suspect that it’s showing us content that has been shared a lot on Facebook and Pinterest, and/or… has gained backlinks. Backlinks are much harder to get than social media shares so where you see a number of backlinks for a URL it’s a good indication that the content is very good. 

This list you see before you is essentially a list of influential websites. You should explore theses websites, the content and social media channels to see if it’s the kind of content that your target audience would value. If so, add them to your influencer outreach list, particularly if you’re looking for Facebook and Pinterest influencers. 

You might find that there are several writers posting content on these sites. If that’s the case, start looking up their individual social channels too as you might be able to find several influencers all from a single website. 

Next, find additional influencers by repeating this process by looking at content ideas from other relevant keywords. You could try more niche searches like ‘dry skin makeup tips’ (a challenge-based search) and also see what other related searches the tool provides in the ‘Keyword Ideas’ tab: 

BIG TIP!

I mentioned looking at the search trends earlier because it’s a good idea to use search terms that are stable over time or trending upwards. You can get a longer-term view by using Google Trends (another free tool) to look at the search terms you’re testing out in Ubersuggest. Google trends will also indicate related trending breakout search terms you could try out. 

Also, try using the filters in the content ideas tab in Ubersuggest to find the most shared content on social media or the content with the most backlinks. 

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• It’s free!

Free Features: 

• Domain Overview
• Top SEO Pages
• Keyword Suggestions
• Content Ideas
• Backlink data

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 5/5
• Paid versions – n/a

#10 TWEETREACH

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Tweetreach is a twitter analysis tool that part of a suite of tools made by Union Metrics. Union Metrics paid subscriptions provide in-depth analytics on social posts across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, including reach, engagement, content performance, competitive analysis, and more. You can monitor all the topics and profiles that matter to you. 

The free Tweetreach tool as part of this provides some great overview analysis of twitter hashtags, keywords and twitter accounts/users. 

What they provide is enough to help us find some twitter influencers! Hooray! 

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is really useful for finding the top twitter influencers. 

Here’s how. 

First, you need to create a free Tweetreach account and connect it to your Twitter account. 

Now let’s imagine we’re a beauty brand again. I’m going to see what the score is for #makeup as that’s what I’m selling. 

So there’s plenty of tweets with this hashtag. Let’s see who’s getting the impressions (eyeballs on their tweets) by scrolling down the report to the “All Contributors” section: 

I’d recommend checking out all of the contributors on the lists shown in these results to see if they look appropriate for your brand.

BIG TIP!

Check the influencers you find in Followerwonk and Klear (also in this list) to get further information on their activities and levels of influence. I’d also recommend that you monitor these reports on a regular basis to find more influencers as the results will change regularly. 

Also, if you want to discover good hashtags to analyse take a look at these free tools: 

• https://hashtagify.me/
• https://www.tagsfinder.com/

They’ll help you to see trending and related hashtags. They’re also great for finding what’s popular in different countries which is important because you should find influencers that relate to your target market which could be geographically restricted (e.g. you sell just in Australia). 

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://tweetreach.com/

Industry:

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions from $99 per month

Free Features:

• Free snapshot reports include:
  • Limited Twitter-only data
    • Snapshots will include up to 100 tweets
  • Summary analytics
    • Top-level metrics including reach and Tweet activity
  • 7-day snapshot
    • A static view of only the most recently posted Tweets
  • Analyse single query
    • Report on just one query at a time

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid versions – 5/5

#11 FEEDLY

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Feedly is an RSS feed aggregator. In plain English that means that you use it as a central place to subscribe to the content you are interested in whether they come from the news, blogs, social media posts, RSS feeds, or other sources. 

What’s brilliant is that you get to see all of this information one place which saves a lot of time and hassle. 

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

Beyond using it as a tool for finding influencers, which we’ll look at shortly, this is a great tool for monitoring industry trends, your own brands, competitor brands and the news. It works well on desktop and mobile devices and it’s free! It’s easy to categorise content too, so it’s easy to browse your content subscriptions by the topic/category feeds/folders you’ve created. 

Here’s how to use it for finding influencers using our beauty brand example again. 

Firstly you need to create a free account. 

Once created click ‘Add Content to Your Feeds’: 

And then start typing in keywords that relate to your brand. In this example I’m going to look for “makeup” again and select the hashtag that Feedly has identified:

Then, on the results drop-down box, I’m going to look at the stats for the content sources provided – number of followers, the relevancy of the content to my search, and the number of articles published per week. Feedly automatically lists the sources by ‘Feedly Score’ which is basically an order for influence as far as we’re concerned. 

Work your way down the list checking out the sources to see if they are influencers that you could add to your outreach list. 

Also, check out the related topics to find more influencers.

BIG TIP!

Cross-reference the influencers you find with other tools on this list! 

For influencers that you want to approach, follow them in Feedly so that you can monitor their activity and look for opportunities to engage with them so that you can get on their radar and nurture relationships with them. 

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://feedly.com/

Industry:

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions from $6 per month

Free Features: 

• Find and follow lots of feeds
• Categorise your feeds

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid versions – 5/5

#12 ALLTOP

WHAT DOES IT DO?

This is a tool that’s a lot like Feedly, it’s an RSS feed aggregator. So basically, you subscribe to content and view it in one place and you can create a free account to do this. 

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

This is a great tool for the same reasons as Feedly. 

How do we find influencers with it though? 

Easy. 

Look up your target category (e.g. “Beauty”): 

And then check out the sites of the top publishers listed to see if they are worth adding to your outreach list: 

BIG TIP!

Explore the publishers you find as you may be able to find multiple influencers on each site. Pay close attention to which influencers are posting the most popular articles and monitor this over time. Use other tools on this list to further verify how influential the influencers you find are. 

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://alltop.com/

Industry:

• All

Cost: 

• It’s free!

Free Features: 

• Subscribe to recommended RSS feeds and other feeds that you find and add into your account

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 3/5

#13 HUNTER.IO

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Hunter.io is basically an email hunter tool that helps marketers find contact information associated with a domain. The tool can also be used to verify emails (check that email addresses work) and do bulk tasks. 

I’m including it here as a bonus tool not so much as an influencer identification tool, but a tool that will help you to make contact with influencers. 

POLKADOT COMMUNICATIONS VERDICT

Sometimes getting in touch with influencers can be tricky, especially when you’re on their owned platforms (like their blogs and websites). Often there are no email addresses or contact details, or even an obvious indication of what social media channels they might be using too. 

That’s where this tool can help. 

Let’s imagine that I’ve just created a new PR tool app (I have actually, it’s called Story Match) and want to promote it and as part of that I’d like the folks at HubSpot to write about it. If you’ve never been on the HubSpot blog, you should take a look. It’s possibly the most helpful blog for marketers, comms professionals, sales professionals and customer service professionals in the world.

If I go to the HubSpot blog and search for PR I can find this post: The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations in 2019. 

As part of the post, there’s a list of PR tools. In my opinion Story Match should be on there!  

I can see that the post has been written by Ali Decker. If I click on here name I can see a link to her own website and her twitter and LinkedIn profiles:

I can go to those channels to read more and possibly make contact with her through those channels too. But I’d like to email her… 

…so I run HubSpot.com through the Hunter.io app and find 675 emails listed! 

Take a look at the results and also look out for some of the results containing social media links and even telephone numbers. Great! 

But I want to find Ali, so I put her name in the “Find Someone” search box and hey presto – there’s a 70% chance that this is Ali’s email address. 

I can now use this and the other channels to reach out to her. Fingers crossed! 

BIG TIP!

I find this tool particularly useful for finding email addresses for people at larger organisations where they don’t list their email addresses on the website. It’s a great tool for sales as well as influencer outreach. 

Once you’ve got an email list you can use the Hunter.io Outreach tool for emailing your influencers (or sales prospects) and include automated follow-up emails. Emails will be tracked and you can see if they’re delivered and opened. Awesome! I can’t believe this is actually free!* 

*It’s free at the time of writing this list…it might not be forever. 

PRICING AND FEATURES SUMMARY

Website: 

• https://hunter.io/

Industry: 

• All

Cost: 

• Free version available
• Paid versions available from 49€ per month

Free Features: 

• Do up to 50 email searches on domains each month
• Send cold email outreach campaigns – see https://hunter.io/outreach

Usefulness: 

• Free version – 4/5
• Paid versions – 5/5

This part is all about how to find more of the right PR opportunities for free. It contains one of my best-kept secret methods for spotting PR opportunities in real-time so that you can respond to journalists and bloggers quickly in order to bag the coverage.

So shhh! Don’t share this with your competition 😉

The following tools and methods will help you to find PR opportunities. Just so you know, if you really want to get more PR coverage and be given more opportunities to get it, nothing really beats building strong relationships with relevant influencers, journalists and bloggers. When you have these strong relationships, the influencers will often directly seek help from you, perhaps often not even asking anyone else. They will also willingly speak to you over the phone and they will actually read your emails and social media messages.

This might sound tough …. well building strong relationships in order to develop great reputations is hard work. So you need to put a lot of time and effort into doing this if you really want to be successful.

However, the tools and methods outlined below will help you to find PR opportunities and respond to them. From there, you can build your relationships for more effective PR. These tools are a must-have for your PR arsenal.

Hold onto your seat, let’s roll!

The free PR tools:

1. JournoRequests.com
2. Hootsuite
3. HARO
4. Pitchrate

#1 JournoRequests.com

What does it do? 

This tool helps journalists urgently connect with sources. It’s a freemium product with an awesome free level of service, which is basically a daily digest email that you never have to pay for. The email contains every single request based on the #journorequest hashtag on Twitter.

Polkadot Communications Verdict 

It’s currently UK-focused, but there are international requests, and in the inclusive international digital world in which we live, coverage from overseas can still be extremely useful. After all, the big ticket in PR is gaining social proof from influencers. It often doesn’t matter where those influencers are.

The company running this service does have plans to roll this out beyond the UK, so I’d recommend using it right away so that you don’t miss out on any opportunities.

The email breaks down requests the requests from journalists made on Twitter into categories, which is great, and you can hit a ‘reply on twitter’ link to respond quickly.

Take a look at the ‘Fashion & Beauty’ section of one of the emails:

With the pro version, you can access a variety of useful features, but the free version is still fab.

BIG TIP!

Respond as quickly as you can to the requests, journalists don’t hang around!

#2 Hootsuite

What does it do?

Hootsuite is a social media management tool. You can link it to your various social media accounts (although not YouTube or Google+ yet) and manage them from a single place. This is, therefore, a great tool for making influencer marketing and PR more efficient and effective. I will cover this in more detail in a later section of the guide.

So what is this tool doing here in this section of the guide?

Ah ha!!!

It’s because you can use it in a really clever way to pick-up journalist, blogger and influencer requests – INSTANTLY…For free!

I didn’t mention it before JournoRequests.com because this method of using Hootsuite that I’m about to cover relates to the JournoRequests.com hashtag system, and so it gives some background context.

How to set up your Hootsuite journalist request monitoring system

This is my secret sauce method that I’m sure you’re not going to tell anyone about…

…well not your competitors anyway.

You need to actually set this system up, rather than just sign-up for alerts, like with the other tools covered in this guide.

Firstly, the basis of this sneaky method is to monitor hashtags associated with influencer, journalist and blogger requests. They are:

1. #Journorequest

This is used by journalists looking for things like information on a topic, potential case studies, quotes from experts or products to review for articles/posts they are writing.

It’s the foundation of the JournoRequests.com service, see the relevance now?

Again, remember that this hashtag currently has a UK focus, but it is expanding.

2. #PRrequest

This hashtag is very similar to #journorequest as it was created for journalists to source stories etc. Most of the requests on this hashtag are now from bloggers, particularly useful for blogger outreach campaigns and gaining social proof through reviews.

3. #Bloggerrequest

No surprises here, this hashtag is similar the previous two, but it really is focused on blogger requests.

3. #HelpAReporter

Help a Reporter Out or HARO, is an online tool for connecting journalists with sources. It’s a great tool and I will cover it next in this guide (scroll down to section #3 for more information).

The system post requests from journalists using this hashtag, so we can tap into them here.

4. #UrgHaro

#UrgHaro is an abbreviation of ‘Urgent Help a Reporter Out.’

Tweets with the hashtag #UrgHaro, therefore, indicate that the journalist is looking for a source URGENTLY!

So respond to these requests very quickly if you can.

Secondly, you can monitor only relevant requests to your brand or clients if you combine the hashtags above with topic, industry and product-related hashtags. For example:

Beauty = #beauty

Fashion = #fashion

And you can get more specific within a category like #beauty with a hashtag like #makeup.

You could also use location-based hashtags in combination with all of the above. We work with numerous restaurants and hotels and as part of that, we seek opportunities relating to the physical locations of the business outlets.

So for a restaurant client based in Sydney, we could monitor #restaurant and #sydney.

This hashtag combination monitoring method is very important as it makes it far easier for you to spot relevant opportunities.

BONUS TOOL TIP: Use Hashtagify to find the best relevant hashtags for this monitoring technique and for using in your own social posts.

Now here’s how to set this up…

In this screenshot you can see the Hootsuite feeds I have created as an example of monitoring journalist and blogger requests for ‘fashion’ and ‘beauty’:

The following steps will help you to do this yourself:

1. Create free (or paid) Hootsuite account if you don’t already have one.
2. Link your social media accounts to it.
3. Create a new tab for monitoring PR opportunities by clicking the [+] button in the tabs area. You can see I already have tabs for managing our social networks and MailChimp e-newsletter system (have you subscribed yet?):

4. Give your new tab a name, I’ll type in ‘PR OPPS’ for this demonstration:

5. Click the ‘Search’ button in the stream adding area:

6. Add your hashtag monitoring combination into the search box. In this example I have added:

#fashion AND #journorequest OR #prrequest OR #Bloggerrequest OR #HelpAReporter OR #UrgHaro

Note that I have used ‘#fashion AND’ at the beginning. This is so that I can see the topic clearly at the top of the feed when it’s activated.

The ‘AND’ part of this ensures that all of the search results for the various journalist requests contain #fashion. This is very important because I just want fashion related requests in this feed.

The ‘OR’ function allows the search feed to include any of the four different request hashtags, so I get requests from all sources in relation to my fashion topic.

If I wanted to be more specific, I could include additional AND/OR related hashtags.

7. Hit the ‘Search’ button and see the feed:

8. Create additional feeds for different topics, products, industries, locations, etc.

Now you’ve got a real-time request feed filtered to your business needs, and because it’s in Hootsuite, you can respond directly to the requests through Hootsuite. 

Polkadot Communications Verdict

This an awesome method as it allows real-time filtered monitoring of requests (you don’t have to wait for the free periodic emails from the other tools mentioned here). It also allows for direct responses through the Hootsuite system.

BIG TIP!

This big tip could actually be applied to all of the tools mentioned in this guide.

Before responding to requests, make sure that the request is worth responding to. Avoid giving expensive products and services away for review to people with no influence who are just fishing for freebies.

You have been warned!

#3 HARO

What does it do? 

HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories, and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage.

You can join the 475,000+ HARO users already using the service to connect with journalists. All you need to do is register for your free account and then check your inbox three times a day (5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m. ET), Monday through Friday. Look out for source requests relevant to you or your brand or client’s industry, expertise or personal experience.

You can then pitch to the journalist by clicking on the masked HARO email address listed in the source request email. You should include answers to the journalist’s questions, any specified requirements and a bio with you or your client’s contact information. If the journalist is interested, they’ll reach out!

Polkadot Communications Verdict

Great free tool for getting regular journalist requests.

BIG TIP!

When setting up your ‘source’ account remember to tick the topic boxes that are relevant to your brand or clients so that you get more relevant pre-filtered and grouped requests.

You could also use the request information to create a database of contacts that you could contact directly to build relationships with and pitch stories to at a later date.

#4 Pitchrate

What does it do?

This tool does basically the same thing as the other tools, it matches journalists with sources.

Polkadot Communications Verdict

It’s a good tool just like the others. Once you’ve registered you will get a daily email but you can also be more proactive with this tool because you can navigate to the ‘requests’ section and actually search for relevant keywords (e.g. ‘food’).

You can then pitch directly through the tool interface very easily.

Also, you can register as a publicist if you want to use this tool to pitch on behalf of your clients. Once registered as a publicist you can then add clients to your profile and pitch on their behalf.

BIG TIP!

Unlike the other tools, you can create a profile for yourself. It’s important to do this well because it’s sent to the journalists with your pitches. It helps them get a feel for your background, experience and expertise so that they can essentially vet you before responding to your pitch.

So write a compelling bio for yourself, and for each of your clients, if you are a publicist.