10 Yetis Insight Blog: The Toolkit of The Digital Public Relations Agency

Sometimes, when you’re having a particularly good week or month, it’s all too easy to get a little carried away with the excitement of securing fantastic coverage for a client that you can forget that it takes A LOT of elements to ensure that we are doing everything we possibly can to ensure successful, measurable results.

As a digital agency operating in a fairly saturated market in 2015, it is even more important than ever to consider the different tools needed to successfully cater to all different PR needs. Here are just a selection of those which we rely on every single day here at 10 Yetis headquarters:

Cuttings tools/SnagIt
When you are working across an average of seven PR accounts at any one time, it would be virtually impossible to try and monitor all magazines and newspapers that you sell in stories to, in order to see if any coverage comes through. That’s why cuttings services that monitor all of our clients are an absolute god-send. We can relax and get on with other jobs for clients safe in the knowledge that our cuttings service, Precise, is collecting and sending us all the up to date pieces of print coverage for us.

Media Database
The media database that we use here at 10 Yetis is called Features Exec, and at the risk of sounding dramatic, I would be LOST without it. Not a day goes by where I am not checking it to see if a particular journalist I’ve spoken to still works for the same publication, or has the same number and email address. It is also extremely handy when compiling specific media lists for our more niche clients saving us HOURS worth of time that could be spent on something much more productive! Finally, media databases also come in very useful when compiling our weekly coverage reports, as we like to include the circulations and monthly visitor numbers of publications and websites for clients to see.

Trello/Google Documents
When you have a client that you are overseeing a lot of projects for at the same time, keeping an up to date shared google document or trello board is a great way to multitask and make sure that both the clients and any colleagues also working on the task are all on the same page, with no confusion or overlapping. We often use google documents for ongoing internal projects, such as generating new business and journalist call sheets amongst more than one PR practitioner on the team.

Smartphones
Ok, so this might be an obvious one, but iPhones are crucial for all of us here at 10 Yetis Digital. We pride ourselves on being contactable by our clients 24/7 and having instant access to our emails through our work phones means that they can reach us during any potential crisis during weekends and evenings. Smartphones also give us access to our social media platforms no matter where we are; because sometimes something is just too funny to wait to tweet about!

Google Alerts
One of the first things I do whenever I begin working on a new clients account is set up a google alert; not just for their name, but also for any related search terms within their industry. This helps us as a digital agency to be able to react to breaking news that a spokesperson from our client might be able to comment on in a piggyback reactive statement to the media. For example, I have previously used the information sent to me in a google alert at 9:00am to secure a client an interview live on Sky News later that day!

Moz Bar/Google Analytics
When reporting on a piece of coverage for a client, we also need to be able to show them how beneficial it will be for them in terms of SEO value, and downloading a free MOZ bar allows us to report on the DA (domain authority) of a website, as well as giving us knowledge of whether or not a link to a client’s website is a follow-link (GREAT thing) or a no-follow link (NOT such a great thing).

Skype
As a digital agency based in Gloucestershire with many clients based in London and others spread out across parts of the UK and beyond, it is imperative that we are able to keep in constant communication with our contacts there. Skype conference calls are vital for this, and give a little more of a professional feel to a meeting/update that a simple phone call would.