Blog Outreach Pro

I’ve been diligently testing new products and services to get my communications department up to speed for PR 2.0 and social media campaigns.  I know that in several of my posts I’ve discussed how important it is to make sure that the PR team is equipped with great resources to build relationships with influencers, manage campaign efforts, and track program progress and measure results.

There are some fantastic tools out there and I’ve named and commented on many from HARO and PitchEngine to Vocus and Radian6.  But, the other day I had a huge ‘AHAAAA’ moment when I saw a demonstration of Blog Outreach Pro.  Now, I had already been to the company’s website to learn about the platform and I read the one pager on all of the benefits the product provides. But, when you see the platform in action (I saw how it dealt with numerous campaigns simultaneously), watch how you can manage bloggers and digital influencers, get them involved in the platform and how they can connect with your clients, it becomes a must have product.

Blog Outreach Pro is exactly as it sounds, it’s a “Blog Outreach and Social Media Marketing toolkit for public relations firms and social media agencies – allowing them to consolidate resources, manage campaigns and provide real-time client reporting.  Blog Outreach Pro has been specifically designed to address the challenges and streamline the process of your social media marketing efforts.”

I especially liked how the platform provided three different views: The agency, client and blogger views.  Focusing on the agency view, some strong features and benefits include how you can:

• Customize the platform for any product, service or industry (I saw a demo on PR for musicians)
• Provides the outreach to your existing blogger contacts and tracks the communication
• Organizes your contacts which allows you to search and match them to client efforts
• Create a central location (a newsroom) with media assets, product information, and links to sharable social media
• Observe the behavior, likes and dislikes of bloggers as they interact on the platform with your client
• Allow your clients to view the activity: they can log into the platform and see which bloggers and digital media are being contacted and pinpoint who has shown interest, requested an interview or who has left an endorsement.
• See the PR team’s daily activities and see how progress is made each and every day on a campaign

These are only a few of the highlights.  There is also the ability to track and view over time the number of bloggers contacted, how many viewed assets in the newsroom or downloaded media and/or client information, watch the blogger’s behavior within the platform and the result of the interactions (in the form of an interview, comments, rating or an endorsement).

I will be beta testing Blog Outreach Pro over the next 60 days and I will continue to keep you posted on the features and capabilities of this platform.

Here are a few screen shots to help you visualize the product.  But remember, it’s the demo and the ability to see the platform in action that brings the product to life.

Newsroom can be customized with media assets:

Upload and search contacts:

Ratings and comments left by bloggers and digital media

Product profiles that are easy for bloggers to find: