Public relations has certainly gotten more sophisticated with the addition of technology. PR professionals now have access to enormous databases of media and clips and sleek distribution tools. One advantage of this is that it makes things faster and easier. But the disadvantage is that having a huge database means it's tempting to blast a ton of people at the same time. We build massive media lists, sometimes with hundreds of names. But sometimes it's better to keep it simple.
These are some of the tools I have experience with:
Vocus
Vocus is definitely not the most user-friendly program -- everything is named vaguely -- "projects," "activities," and it's tough to figure out how to do something on your own. But Vocus has a giant database of media contacts that's updated frequently, and users can add new contents, expanding the database. Also, Vocus lets you keep private contacts private. Distribution is fairly easy, although you can't edit a distribution once it's been sent out or use it as the basis for a new distribution, and its HTML editor is sketchy.
Pros: Big database.
Cons: Usability, sub-par news tracking, and bad name among journalists. At a recent Media Relations Summit, a New York Times reporter called Vocus a prime purveyor of PR spam before an audience of 500+ PR pros (including the company's sales reps), and four of his colleagues publicly echoed the same. "I get more inappropriate pitches through Vocus than any other way," tweeted Vindu Goel, the Times's deputy tech editor.
MyMediaInfo
MyMediaInfo is similar to Vocus and slightly more usable, including an easy way of looking up editorial calendars. The database is not as large and it's more difficult to figure out how to send a distribution. In Vocus, you can scroll over the media outlet in a list and get a real description of the outlet, and a real description of the reporter, but MyMediaInfo just has stubs.
Pros: Includes reporters' Twitter handles and personal blogs in contact info. Inexpensive.
Cons: Inconsistent customer service. Some speculate that MyMediaInfo gets a lot of its data by scraping, and some of the info supports this -- for example, Katie Couric is listed as the main contact for CBS. I also noticed some reporters in misplaced categories -- for example, a well-known DC writer who writes about politics and nothing else, except occasionally comic books, was listed as a food writer. This does not give me a high degree of confidence in pitches I send through MyMediaInfo. Also, they have some quirks due to the wall between edcal contacts and media contacts -- you can't do a distribution to edcal contacts, for example -- but they say they are fixing this.
**UPDATE: More frustrations with MyMediaInfo have arisen. Most egregious: 1) The "self-service" versus "supported" distribution options. MyMediaInfo will not let you include an image in the distribution if you are doing it yourself. And they ask for 24 hours notice to do it with their help. And 2) The system crashes and logs you out randomly.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is good for newsletters and well-laid out, complex HTML emails.
Pros: Works well, affordable at $150/month for 25,000 contacts.
Cons: Wish there was some easier way to import contacts from a PR database. Also, it doesn't have that much functionality so it's tough to justify having it on top of a PR database like MyMediaInfo.
Meltwater News
Meltwater News is a clipping service that has great functionality with metrics. You can organize the clips and generate info-rich reports for clients in easy-to-read formats with graphs and charts.
Pros: Metrics.
Cons: In my experience, Meltwater News only collects about 1/2 the clips. Recently, it missed a big story in the Washington Post. Also, it doesn't save a copy of the story, only links to it -- so you only have the first sentence if the story is no longer live. If there was a way to add stories from outside sources and crunch them into the metrics, this would be a great service. As it is, it's not nearly as useful, and I use it mostly to supplement my clip-searching in Google and Lexis Nexis.
-Adrianne (@msfener)
