PR Tech Tool of the Week: TechNews and EventTrak
Media lists. Did you just shudder? I don’t blame you. They aren’t the most awe inspiring task to undertake, but they are undoubtedly necessary to a successful outreach campaign. News monitoring? I’m sure you shuddered a bit less that time. Reading about technology (or whatever industry) is pretty fun and also necessary to stay on top of what’s happening across your client’s industries. One more — speaking and awards research — the shudders might be back. I’m here to tell you that two tools by the venerated ITDatabase will make all of the above painless and simple: TechNews and EventTrak
TechNews
TechNews provides a simple platform to search the world of tech news (the name says it all) by topic, author and publication (among a few other options). Plenty of tools out there accomplish this but few do it as simply as TechNews.
For example, given the key words “mobile collaboration” you are able to see which authors write about this topic most frequently through a numerical count of articles — the same goes for publications and even companies mentioned in the articles.
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The main dashboard of TechNews after a keyword search[/caption]
Furthermore, it gives a nice breakdown of the relevant articles, going as far as to star top reporters. You can search within specific date ranges and even sort by the reach of a given publication.
EventTrak (formerly known as TechCalendar)
EventTrak provides a lot of the same functionality as TechNews but is aimed at technology events, speaking opportunities and awards.
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The main dashboard of EventTrak after a keyword search[/caption]
Once again a search for “mobile collaboration” brings up some great event opportunities. Clicking on an event will provide you with all the relevant information including related topics, other events by the same organizer and even the ever elusive speaking submission deadlines (hallelujah).
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All the information about an event you normally open five tabs to figure out in one place[/caption]
On the far right of the first picture you’ll see some other events which are saved. This represents one EventTraks’s best features: the ability to have separate profiles for different clients and save specific events to them for safe keeping. From there you can export your saved events to an excel file which will include all the key information including conference website, date, speaking submission deadlines, etc.
TechNews and EventTrak don’t come cheap at $3,000 a piece for unlimited users, searches and projects but those costs, in this PR-person’s opinion, more than pay for themselves over the course of a year of using both services. If you’re not sure, a free trial is an option.
