Let’s cut to the chase with this one. Humans have never spent so long at work, or so much time travelling for these jobs. What this means is that there’s an awful lot of time when you’re not by-desk but technically on task, meaning many minutes are potentially being wasted.
Not so for marketing and PR professionals. Nor modern social media experts. Like all our peers, our devices are brimming with great apps and tools for getting things started, finished, or analysed, on the move, and whether you consider yourself within those demographics or not chances are if you’re involved in business these digital hacks will be right up your street, too.
Let the parade begin…
 

1. Chartbeat
Blow us down and call it Sunday, this is one heck of a powerful weapon to have in your bag. Chartbeat tracks activity on your website, providing users with a break down of everything from traffic, and where that traffic is coming from, to social sharing including shares with no use of your brand Twitter handle, allowing you to follow so-called ‘dark social’ sharing, which is less scary than it sounds. There are also some great comparison functions in here, so you can keep an eye on month-by-month or year-on-year site progress.
2. Slack 
The idea here is to cut down on those long email chains full of one line messages that become standard whenever a project gets underway that requires more than one team (or more than one person, in some cases). You can automatically liaise with members of your Slack thread, share files and details in real time. Better yet, this can all be observed by others who are not actually having direct input- for example clients, to show them how much goes into realising that big idea.
3. Buzzsumo 
Let’s face it, the world runs on trends, and as marketing, social and PR professionals we need to know about those trends almost before they really become a trend. As impossible as that sounds Buzzsumo is here to help, providing a detailed breakdown of what is being shared, who is sharing it and where they are sharing it, effectively plugging you in to a goldmine of influencers- all you need to do is work out how to fit your brand into the conversation.
 

4. Hootsuite
This isn’t the first time we’ve written a list like this, and it isn’t the first time we’ve included Hootsuite. The ultimate social media management tool, it allows you to post to and monitor multiple channels at once, so you can send updates across several platforms simultaneously, giving a comprehensive overview of the whole digital conversation landscape- from Twitter to Instagram and back to Facebook.
5. Upitch 
You know how Tinder lets you swipe through people that might be potential love interests, flipping right or left depending on whether you want to digitally pursue them? Well, Upitch is like that, only for PRs and journalists- the former uploads a pitch or announcement in brief, the latter vote with their fingers as to whether they want to receive more information on it. Reassuringly simple.
6. Flipboard 
News aggravating apps are ten-a-penny and have been for ages, but the difference with Flipboard is that it presents stories from your trusted sources beautifully, making it feel more like you’re leafing through a well designed digital magazine. Those already familiar with the News app in the latest versions of iOS will already know how important aesthetics are when it comes to experience, but this example actually supersedes Apple’s attempts to make feeds look lovely.
7. Hemmingway App 
To be successful at public relations, marketing and social you need to be pretty good at writing, if not excellent. Nevertheless, we could all do with some feedback and the most honest feedback in the world usually comes from computers, with their microchips so wonderfully free of loyalty and emotion. Hemmingway is an astute example of this in practice- advising on where copy and be cut down, and altered for clarity or structure.