Communications Tool No.8: AutoCrit

AutoCrit is an invaluable tool. This is the website for you if you're not a born writer. Web content writing is a serious part of Public Relations online, and useless english can really effect your bottom line. AutoCrit lets you know when you're over using words, when your sentence structure needs to be changed and when your spelling is off. You may be thinking that Word does the same, but this is 100 times better!

AutoCrit offers free analysis, it's a great way to read over a mountain of work you have jut done and you don't have the head to read over the material over and over again, and pick out corrections. Treat it just like your english teacher, but you're not scared of them!

If you're a member of AutoCrit there is a number of options you can ask to analyse for, such as, repeated words, dialogue, names and pronouns, repeated phrases and even a cliche finder!

AutoCrit also provides a free trial and unlike other similar websites you do not have to download or install any software. You get your results straight after you sign up, which is very quick and easy. There is no password confirmation on your email, which can be off putting. Although the free trial only can use 800 words per time and limits you to 7 submissions per day, it is well worth it.

This sort of webiste analysis is paramount for a communications and PR professional. Maybe you're writing a blog for your business, articles, website content or even a book, AutoCrit gives you the low down on your writing skills very fast and evaluates every nook and cranny of your work! Another A+ communications tool!

^^ Teehee!!

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa x

Communications Tool No.7: Hootsuite

Yes, it's Hootsuite, this should a PR professionals technical best friend, after their smart phone obviously! Hootsuite lets you schedule and post Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn updates and a few more. Also lets you monitor Twittervers for keywords related to your company/industry, check the popularity of the links you tweet and more. Out of all the free online PR tools in the list, Hootsuite is the one that I personally love the best. As long as you're managing one account, Hootsuite is free to use. If you're using social media to market, this is a must-have.

Everything today is about social media, even if you're not a blogger and you could not care less about blogging you're more than likely using at least Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously when running loads of different media sites, you have to constantly monitor each site and have regular updates and so forth, because this is the only way to gain and keep followers.

Hootsuite has numerous brother features to add on at a price, such as, Hootsuite Social Analytics, which obviously analysis your feeds etc. This is a free package with some added on features at a price.

Hootsuite Teams is a great feature, it allows a team of the business, to work together online, and all the team can see  all the scheduled posts on your company's Facebook fan page so you won't have posts going out at the same time. 

I feel Hootsuite is a management system that is highly recommended to a PR professional. With their app directory constantly growing and Pro package for a very low price, you can not go wrong.

Hootsuite also has a 30 day free trial, so you can see how easy it is to manage each of your social media sites in one area. It will let you handle so many tasks in one place that you may never need to use another tool. Until, which probably will happen, a new mega-management system takes over with even better features. But for now Hootsuite rules the roost of media management systems!

^^^ Yes again, another picture that just made me laugh!!

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa x

Communications Tool 6: Frrole

Frrole is definitely my favourite communications tool I have discovered! 'The Social Newspaper' basically sums up the whole website. We all know print media is dwindling away before our very eyes, and this is the new way of news. Based entirely off Twitter feeds, it is the worlds first social news source.It currently provides separate news editions for 55 cities, 6 countries and the world. 

Frrole has an interesting aspect, that it allows news to come from anybody in the world, ensuring that you are always the first to hear it irrespective of where it comes from. Frrole has the ability to select news from general social chatter and then break and then break it down by cities and countries, and categories like sports, travel events, world business, entertainment, etc. Just like a lot of your normal printed news papers in one. 

It's a good website to have on your phone to quickly browse through headlines in the category you're interested in and then read all about it, all in the palm of your hand.

You can also request for updates on specfic stories and get notifications on your phone about new headlines, which is great on the go when you hop on the  train in a rush and didn't have time to buy the paper. This is the revolution!!

^^ This has obviously nothing to do with Frrole, but I thought it was funny!

Thanks for reading

Vanessa x

Comunications Tool No.5:We Name You

I found this website fantastic and innovative. If you are a blogger, or run your businesses social media websites or even articles etc,WeNameYou helps you with the all important headline to grab your specific target audience attention.

We all know how incredibly important a story headline is, if it's not eye catching or interesting enough, people will just move on to something else.
 I found an interesting quote on a website called www.salesbenchmarkingidex.com;
 "The headline is the most important element in all advertisements  It is the telegram which decides whether the reader will read the copy . On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar"

WeNameYou uses various crowdsourcing technologies to quickly survey large groups of people in order to find the text that will have the most impact.

How it Works (ref from the WeNameYou website)

1: We use multiple testing channels in order to get a variety of data for your tests

2: Each tester can only see two headlines in a random order to reduce bias

3: Each option gets tested vs. each other option

4: The results are then combined in order to get the winning result

WeNameYou is a great way for any writer to get help if they have the most annoying writers block. Even if you are thinking of a new name for your business or carrying out a revamp, the website can also put together names for your new business. Simply place in the words that your business is about or if you ant a specific words but don't know what to add to it, WeNameYou does that after a click of a button, and registration of course, and then TA, DA! You have a creative new business name or the headline everyone is talking about.

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa x

Communications Tool No.4: Pinterest and Curalate

There is not many people around that don't know what Pinterest is, but for those of you who don't, here is the 'down lo' on Pinterest.

Basically Pinterest is a like a pin board on your bedroom wall where you pin up your favourite photos or magazine clippings, etc. Pinterest is an online version of that but it also can include videos. You have your own board to 'pin' up anything you want. 

Other Pinterest users can then also 'pin' your photos/videos, but it also traces back to their source.

On your board you can organise your different photos or videos into different categories, such as, your favourite recipes, clothes, brands, etc. I think you get my drift! 

Pinterest uses the same theory of 'following' other users if you enjoy what they post, and also a homepage.

Curalate is a website I think should be essential for any business for measuring the popularity of your brand and products. Curalate measures Pinterest activity, hence why I told you a bit about Pinterest above.

Businesses have thought of a fantastic idea of how to monitor their customers on a personal product specific level. As an example, a consumer may like a brand on Facebook, but they might not like every product that the business offers.

Basically Curalate have developed image recognition technology to find out who is liking their specific product online. It always traces back to the original poster also (as I have said above). It allows you to develop a more personal product based relationship  with your brand loyalists, pick out who doesn't like your products and identify how influential they are and engage with them all in one dashboard.

You can see the new trend in marketing and monitoring your businesses activity is changing dramatically, online monitoring seems to be the way to go!! Thanks to computer engineers who are able to pull off these amazing new websites to keep us all happy!

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa x

Communications Tool Number 3: Things that make you go hmmmm..

I'm really glad I came across this application online, called Lanyrd ! It's definitely something I think people working in the PR and Communications world should be looking at.

Lanyrd 'The Social Conference Directory'

The website and phone application has got a worldwide scope. Anyone can sign up to the website or download the application  the theory behind the website is to follow conferences and events that are going on ALL around the world. The world wide aspect is a huge advantage for PR professionals that travel around for various events and want to catch up on a series of conferences they may have missed.

It is as easy as searching the name of the event along with the country it is being held in, and the same goes for a conference. You can then 'track' the event or conference and get notifications to your phone. You can then browse to see who is attending the event, etc.

Lanyrd is a British website but covers world wide events, it is similar to USA's Plancast in that its theory is the same along with the easy set up and fairly plain design. The website and app is integrating Twitter which helps get the events and conferences viral. Clicking on an event will also bring up their Twitter account and related hashtags and also their website, if there is one.

It is definitely a website with a difference! This is definitely a good way to promote an event and get people talking about it, especially when it has the help of Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa x

Communications Tool No.2: Social 'Media' Butterfly part3

So my last two entries on Social 'Media' Butterfly was on Twitter and Instagram. I think by now Facebook is no doubt an obvious choice of discussion.

It's no doubt that we all know Facebook is the largest used social media site used. PR professional and marketers crave the promoting on Facebook as it is clearly a successful way to advertise. I am nearly sure the phenomenal social media site takes up a lot of time in an average persons day, getting your daily 'fix' of the craze is just normal at this stage.

'Facebook was launched in February 2004, and as of September 2012 has over one billion active users, more than half of whom use Facebook on a mobile device (wikipedia).' Facebook was founded by Mark Zckerberg and his college roomate from Harvard University. 

It should be inportant to know that any business thinking of marketing their service or brand on Facebook, should always have a marketing strategy, to see what exactly you want out of the social media site and also how your'e going to do it.

A huge advantage of Facebook, especially for small businesses, is that it is free. The social media site provies a webpage for you to promote your business, and create relationships with your customers and also the media. Even if you think the audience of Facebook will not be helpful to your business, it is a free way of promoting, so don't know the opportunity down. Facebook have over 500 million users that access the site daily. This definitely should not be overlooked.

Facebook can really be a quick way to market your company. You will have to have someone constantly monitoring the posts and also the relationships you make on the social media site. Feedback is extremely important on Facebook, monitor this regularly to correct any changes, or get ideas from your customers on Facebook of a new idea or service you are thinking of doing, this will help you see if the idea will be successful, without investing money into something that was never going to take off.
Make sure to reply to customers queries on facebook, building a personal relationship is key to success.


Make sure to add lots of photos on your Facebook page, of maybe press releases or even new products coming out on the market Online competitions are always a win too.

There is also no harm in creating a seperate fan page on Facebook, when someone 'likes' the page then unltimitely more than likely their friends will.

Also help out other businesses on Facebook by commenting on their posts, this will create more business relationships and also maybe create some credibility for your business.