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Smoking Gun’s PR pocket tools to help with your digital PR strategy this 2016

Here at Smoking Gun PR, we’re constantly keeping an eye out for new trends and tools that can help us deliver the best results for our clients. From discovery apps to quick fix photo gadgets, we will be sharing some of our favourites every month to help with your digital PR strategy. 

Below are four digital tools that we’ve been playing with this week, saving you time as well as shaping your skills, so you can be the best digital guru out there!

Coverage Book

What’s the value of your press coverage? How much website traffic is it actually driving to your client’s site? This simple tool brought to you by Coverage Book can help you determine just that. 

Step one: connect your Google Analytics page here, paste in your online coverage and in one simple click you can see if anyone has visited your site from the link or if they’ve completed a call to action. 

Without having to be SEO savvy or a Wizard of Google Analytics this brilliant tool will help you find the information that is important to measure success / brand awareness. 

Freepik.com

iStock photos getting you down? Do you struggle to manipulate images on photoshop? Whilst trying to find a ‘quick-turn-around’ photo tool we stumbled across freepick.com.   

Giving you access to hundreds of icons, this ‘leading search engine of free vector designs’ might be your answer to hours of photo frustrations. 

Without giving up your data, users can have access to 62,000 vectors, icons and photoshop files which can be used across social media. You can download up to 60 files a day with freepik.com’s only ask being to credit the original author. This usually appears as a watermark at the bottom of the file. 

There are upgrade and paid options available ($89.99 per year or $9.99 a month) which allows users access to a wider range of royalty free images. 

This service is perfect for someone with little design skills, allowing you to create high quality professional images just by adding text/icons into templates you’ve downloaded from their website.

A definite recommendation for anyone in a creative environment. 

Quartz

Quartz is a digital only news outlet which started in 2012 as a news source for global business people with a focus on international markets. Quartz has launched a new platform whereby the user receives news in a ‘chat-like’ style. 

Using the messenger graphics that we all know (feels / looks like Facebook), the Quartz app interacts with the user, offering up news stories which they can choose to get more information about. Stories and links are displayed in ‘chat bubbles’, as well as the use of emojis and gifs.

The app challenges the conventional way we absorb news. It will be interesting to see if other outlets follow this style in 2016.

Alexa

It describes itself as ‘your complete web analytics tool’. Alexa – an Amazon tool, allows users to benchmark their website against their competitors. You can view a website’s global and UK rank, as well as engagement rates such as bounce rate, daily page views and time on site.

The actionable analytics site offers a selection of information for free, with the option to sign up and benefit from wider access, including comparison of multiple websites.

Pop any URL into the site here: alexa.com.

So there you have it! Quick and easy solutions to help with your digital PR strategy.

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