Happy New Year! 

I was looking back at 2019 and the changes we made to PRtoolfinder and I realized “holy heck” I added a content marketing category and never told anyone!   I’ll start my year with an apology (now, sorry about that) and an announcement (at the end of this blog.)  

If you work in PR you know that the lines between paid, earned and owned media are blurring more and more.   Today, storytelling has a much bigger stage.  Bloggers, social media, new media, self publishing, the increase in online advertising & the decline of print advertising…. fewer and fewer editors – all combine to make pitching stories they way we used to an increasing challenge.  And while if you follow this blog you will know there are many new ways to pitch and find story opportunities, change continues and so does the technology to meet the challenges of those changes.

Enter content marketing.  Today companies are finding it expedient and effective to take their stories directly to their customers.  Of course there’s nothing like a high value media placement, but if you’re looking for more control and precision, you can take your storytelling to a new level with content marketing.

Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Tools are the software you can implement to DO content marketing.  But content marketing requires content – good content – and this represents a huge opportunity for PR professionals to take their storytelling expertise direct to their client’s potential customers.

In this category PRToolfinder lists some of the more high name recognition marketing solutions of varying degrees of complexity and a few, like SharpSpring that speficially target agencies with a software whitelisting opportunity making this an additional service PR pros can offer their clients.  It’s really just a more direct way of delivering your clients’ stories in an increasingly competitive media enviornment, but it does require you to master a tool skill.  But I personally think it’s easier to learn a tool than it is to learn to be a good storyteller.  So, check it out the content marketing category and if you think there are more that should be listed, do let me know!   

And now for the announcement.  It’s going to be easier than ever to keep up with PR Tool changes because PRToolfinder is launching a monthly newsletter in January!  Yes, it’s true!  And you can subscribe to it here.