Handy Web Tools in the PR World

My internship has introduced me to a couple of web programs and apps that have made life as a PR person a little easier so I thought I would write a post about a couple of them to share them with you also in the hope that they might make your PR career a little easier too!

The first is MailChimp, for those of you who are familiar with MailChimp you will understand how helpful this program is. MailChimp is an email marketing service, it is based in the US and was founded in 2001. It has a range of functions but possibly the most useful is it's ability to create and send out newsletters to personally built databases that are saved within the program as mailing lists. It has an extremely user-friendly interface that allows you to create newsletters of varying types with integrations for social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It's great for PR departments who maintain a newsletter as it saves templates, databases and provides insights into recipient engagement. It offers free usage for mailing lists of less than 2,000 contacts, so great for start-ups and small businesses.

It allows users to produce a well designed and formatted newsletter without the need for on going graphics work. It basically allows for you to just plug in new information into the existing template. I have used MailChimp for a variety of different communications while undertaking my internship including the monthly newslettter, press releases, program releases, and emails to a range of different stakeholder groups. Being able to select a specific mailing list for each campaign you send out means that your communications are targeted to that group. MailChimp is a far superior method of communication to a large group of people than the tired old chain email. It allows for control, design and specificity.

Example of MailChimp newsletter insights------

The second web program that I am going to recommend as a result of use in my internship is Jotform. Jotform is the first web based WYSIWYG (an acronym for "what you see is what you get") form builder. Web based forms used to be a very complex and difficult task for web designers, Jotform now makes it very easy. Like MailChimp the user interface is very simple with "drag and drop". It has a range of different tools you can add into the forms like survey and payment tools. Jotform like MailChimp also offers a range of integrations and formatting options. The information taken in your online form can be fed into a google doc, paypal, google drive, dropbox and even MailChimp to name a few. You can also have each submission emailed direct to your inbox in a PDF format. Jotform can provide you with HTML coding to embed the form into your website. It has a folder with a range of templates you can use to create your own form and allows you to save your own forms. Through out my internship we used Jotform many times. We used it internally for graphic design requests and externally for things like newsletter signups, dog show competition entrants, and FRINGE WORLD applicants.

Examples of the templates available in Jotform.









These two web programs have really cut my workload in half. I would love to hear about any other programs students have used for PR communications during their internships or in their current workplaces, be sure to comment about them below.

That's all for now.