There are a few statistics out there that show that working in PR can be pretty stressful. In a recent study conducted by CareerCast, Public Relations was no.6 in the top 10 most stressful jobs after the likes of working in the military, being a firefighter, an airline pilot or an events coordinator. So, if we can find a few helpful tools to make our life a little less traumatic then we should do so. I asked a variety of different folks working in PR to give me some of their favourites, these are in no particular order….

Google News Alerts

Set them up for your clients, their competitors, areas of interest etc. It’s free and an easy way to keep updated on when things of interest are being talked about – Andrew Bloch, founder and group MD at Frank PR

Great tool, particularly with artists/clients that have huge international success, it’s the quickest way to keep up to date on everything in their world – Ashlea Mackin, Senior Music Publicist at TWIST publicity

Twitter

With Twitter you are able to locate journalists fairly easy, find their contact details, figure out what media they write for, what kind of things they are writing about but also an easy way to connect with them. I feel you are able to do all this is a less invasive and more subtle manner – Daniel Theo, Founder and Press Officer at Theo PR

The micro-blogging site is a fast and easy way to keep in contact with and feel connected to a diverse set of interesting individuals and news sources. – Andrew Bloch, founder and group MD at Frank PR

Google Drive

Google Drive creates a central hub for all reporting and working documents. When you’re doing the PR for a number of different clients simultaneously, particularly when there’s a small team of you all working at once, this stops rework and the inevitable, “err do you have the most up to date … report or do I?” conversation. Everyone is on the same page, its all there to access and edit in real time and no one needs to ask where the … report is or freak out because the person with the important spreadsheet is stuck on the tube somewhere or on holiday having forgotten to send it over. – Aimi-Lewis Mattock, Account Manager at Zeitgeist Agency

Streak

Streak is an email add-on tool that’s a CRM system and great for scheduling emails. I often find myself up at 1am replying to or sending emails but I know that the journalist, client or receiving person may not want to have their smartphone buzzing after hours. With Streak I can sit and email until the early hours scheduling for them all to go out the next morning. It also has mail merge functions and a discreet tracking feature, both can be very useful. Another one that’s similar and also useful is Yesware. – Jenna Lee, Publicist at Jenna Lee PR

Topsy

Topsy is a great way to search, monitor and analyse content published on Twitter – Andrew Bloch, founder and group MD at Frank PR

Hootsuite

I have found Hootsuite invaluable. Enables updating across multiple social media channels from one dashboard, inbuilt URL shortened that also gathers click through stats and most usefully – a neat way of showing lists so you can track different groups of commentators (eg I have lists for journos, politicians and medics). Tweet deck does something similar. – Matt Worrall, Senior Account Director at Hanover Communications

Which online tools do you like to use?

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this piece.