I'm a web strategist and aspiring know-it-all with a passion for all things digital. I've worked in PR, advertising and not-for profit industries, and now I run a creative agency. These are the things I think about, and am sometimes compelled to write. More...

Public Relations Tools

Jan 08 2007
5

A bit of a question for my media relations contemporaries. I’m reevaluating the media relations tools that we’re using, and I’d like to get some suggestions from the community to supplement my own research.

I’m looking for suggestions on a media clippings / research service as well as a media contact research database based on accuracy, usability, completeness, etc.

We currently use Bacon’s Mediasource, and it’s adequate, though local contacts are sketchy and usability is pretty weak, especially since it’s IE only and I use a Mac in my home office.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

  • http://www.creativetraction.com Duane Brown

    Ryan, if you wanted to find bands still in school. It would almost be faster to just call/e-mail them. The campus radio station would or should at least know of some local bands on campus. I find many play frosh week at schools. I’ve a list of radio stations at college/universities, if you are interested in it.

    Also, Facebook might be of help through their advance search. Most people would put they are in a band in their interest section and combined that with their network being the school. You should be able to find some that way, I think.

    http://www.projectopus.com

  • http://www.prworks.ca David Jones

    MediaNetcentral for media database. MediaMap is pretty good to, but we’ve just switched from it to MediaNetCentral. Infomart for clippings…they’ve added the Globe, TV and blogs, though I can’t say how complete the TV and blog coverage is as yet. I’ve been poking around CustomScoop recently as well, but the jury’s still out.

  • http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

    Thanks David! I’ve not used MediaNetCentral, but it has been suggested to me by others as well. Most of the PR we do is US-based, so I need something that (ideally) does both Canada and US.

    Infomart is good – I’ve been using that for a while. I’ll likely stick with this for Canada. I’ve tried a couple of databases for the US publications… I’m going to keep poking around.

  • http://www.worldnomads.com Chris Noble

    Although we haven’t used any clipping service, we have used PRWeb as a means to push our releases out to a global audience. You can select which countries you want to go to and the tracking is good. Everything is set-up online and you can upgrade to get a podcast recorded on your release. Not really what you asked for but I thought I’d throw it in anyway.

  • Tommi Wallace

    I’m using Vocus at my current company. Used to use Media source, and I agree, it was clunky and contacts were out of date a good portion of the time. Vocus is a lot easier to use, but I do miss the scanned clips that Bacons used to deliver. Now I get them in a text format, which is fine, but I gues I still like to see the actual article. Overall, much more user-friendly, and it’s all in one system. Data seems better, and I’m not a very technical person, but it is a real help for me.