So much work, so little time, so few people to help. This could be the mantra for legions of PR pros around the world. It can be tough sometimes to keep up with the demands for impact and productivity, especially in an environment of tight PR budgets. But it’s the battle those of us in the PR trenches fight each day.

With all the productivity-enhancement apps populating iTunes and Google Play these days, one is hard-pressed to find apps that are designed specifically for PR folks like ourselves.

That’s where this post comes in: 5 PR apps I wish I could download today. 5 PR apps that could free up millions of hours of time among PR pros around the world, time that could be re-invested in high value-added activities such as creating new content and building new relationships with key stakeholders and audiences.

So here’s an open call for app developers around the world to help us PR professionals tackle our toughest productivity headaches:

1. WhipItUp — In the face of today’s explosion of digital information platforms, press releases may no longer be the primary way PR professionals communicate with journalists. But they remain an important one, nonetheless. Press releases are a shorthand for telling your message, a way to focus reporters’ attention on what’s essential. The formality of the tone and the structure also send a signal that this is information that your organization deems worthy of extra attention.

For PR pros, writing press releases can be a very time-intensive activity. That’s where the WhipItUp app comes into play. Upload your white paper, annual report, or other long-form content, upload a few sample press releases, enter the maximum word length, enter your company boilerplate and contact info, and the WhipItUp app generates a draft press release ready for senior management review.

2. SocialSnip — Every PR pro knows that sharing content on social media can be a high impact activity. But with the constellation of platforms out there, and the swelling waves of information flowing through them, crafting social media posts that get noticed can be very time-consuming. That’s where SocialSnip comes in. Just upload a report, article, blog post, or even multimedia items such as a podcast or Youtube video, and SocialSnip automatically generates Tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn shares, and other social content, all generated to the specifications of the different social platforms. And, critically, the content is aligned with the tone and positioning of your brand.

3. RateClip — Publishing content and placing messages in the media is one thing. Measuring the impact of those efforts is another. PR professionals are constantly collecting , sifting and analyzing how their messages are getting out there, which audiences are being exposed to them, and what impact they are having.

RateClip is an app that makes this job easier and more effective. Upload articles and the app does a comprehensive media analysis. This includes a tonality analysis that rates each article on a scale of 1 to 5 from positive to neutral. It also performs an impact analysis that rates each article, blog post or other piece of content on a scale from 1 to 5, which is calculated using a combination of metrics including such things as brand reputation, editorial quality and reach of the publication or social media platform; the accuracy of the messages delivered; and the social reach, as measured by number of shares, likes and comments.

4. QuidProQuo — I’ve met hundreds of journalists over the years. They tend to run a gamut from relationship-oriented, to very transaction-oriented. By relationship-oriented, I mean they value developing a long-term relationship with my firm, and often, me as well. While adhering to their own rigorous editorial policies and standards, they also are aware of and respect the different business objectives for which PR folks like myself are held accountable.

Those who tend to fall toward the transaction end of the spectrum, on the other hand, are just that: transactional. They aren’t interested in spending time on building a relationship, but they do want something, either a piece of information, or access to someone in our organization. They take an implicit “quid pro quo” approach to collaboration — give me something in return for something. Not to say that’s an entirely wrong way to work with PR folks. I’ve had many successful working collaborations with reporters who fall under this category. And of course, many reporters fall somewhere in-between the two extremes.

QuidProQuo is an app that can help PR people navigate the complicated personal dynamics that drive the PR-reporter relationship. The app is built around a massive database that culls information about reporters from the PR professionals and others who work with them. It crunches the data and ranks reporters along the QuidProQuo spectrum, from a highly-transaction-oriented 1, to a more relationship-driven 10. The level of accuracy of this app grows in proportion to the user base, and the amount of data that is fed into the database.

5. CorrectIt — Journalists understandably have a lot on their plate. They’re juggling deadline pressures, pressures to access credible information sources, pressures from their editors. I get it. But from time to time, they do make mistakes, and their mistakes can sometimes have an annoying set of repercussions. They spell names wrong, demote a senior executive to junior researcher, add a zero — or leave one off — on critical numbers, or altogether misinterpret what someone said during an interview.

The CorrectIt app hands some of the control back to the PR professional. Just enter the story and the URL, indicate which pieces of the story are inaccurate and why, enter the corrected version, and the app not only produces a corrected, updated version of the story, it uploads the correct version to the publisher’s content management system. Of course, this doesn’t help if the story has appeared in 150,000 print copies yesterday morning, but it does help set the online record straight.