Welcome back to another Ask Me Anything, a weekly series where we talk to our friends, our viewers, and our community about all of their pressing needs, questions, wants, and desires.
Let’s take a look at the mailbag to see which questions are burning this week.
Dear all. This has probably been asked a thousand times, but do you think Muck Rack can make a life of a confused solo PR pro easier? This PR pro is trying to build in-house PR in a large chunk company and it’s no picnic. The goal is to focus on more media relations. Is Muck Rack something you’d recommend provided this PR pro literally has no team or anyone. Just a bunch of colleagues who went aren’t want our company to be in HBR and The New York Times…like, right now.
The Super Secret PR School for Entrepreneurs
That last line made me laugh out loud because I am telling you, I am convinced that the incubators that most tech entrepreneurs go to when they’re starting their firms have some school that they send them to where they are taught that if you just get an HBR or The New York Times or Wired or Fast Company or TechCrunch, and they do a feature on your company, every problem you ever have will be solved.
Customers will be lining up at the virtual door.
You will hit every sales goal and you can sit on the beach and just count your money.
People.
That’s not how it works.
Even if you get a profile in The New York Times, it is not going to generate revenue immediately.
You might be able to attribute customers from The New York Times profile down the line, but somebody is not going to read about you and call you and say, let me give you $200,000.
It’s just not how it works.
Anyway, that does not answer the question.
Will Muck Rack Make My Life Easier?
The question is, will my Muck Rack make my life easier?
The answer is yes.
And the reason that Muc Rack will make your life easier is not that they’re going to pitch for you or they’re going to get all these placements for you.
But it is going to make your life easier because instead of doing some Googling and reading and research to figure out who to pitch, you can just search that in Muck Rack and everything you need will be at your fingertips.
It cuts down your research time considerably.
The other thing it does is it tracks your conversations in the software so that you can go there.
Just like your sales team has a CRM and your marketing team has a CRM, it serves as your CRM.
In fact, they call it PRM—public relations management.
Everything is in there.
When you do add team members and they start pitching, or you hire an agency and they start pitching, everybody has access to it.
Everyone knows the conversations that have already been had, what’s been shared on social, if you’ve had conversations on social, and what’s been emailed back and forth.
The last thing it does is give you reporting in beautiful graphs and charts that would take you hours to create if you did them manually.
If your boss or client needs to know where things stand, you have all of the answers at the click of a button.
So yes, it will make your life considerably easier.
The one thing I will say is it’s a little expensive, but I always look at it from the perspective of a full-time person.
I can hire a junior PR professional and have them do all this work for $55-$70K per year and not have them learn anything more than research.
Or I can pay a fraction of that and have everything done automatically. And then hire the young professional and actually teach them how to pitch.
I really, really, really recommend it.
Muck Rack and Agility PR Solutions are my favorites. Meltwater is my least favorite. And everything else falls in between.
Regardless of what you use, any software is more efficient than going it alone.
Have a Question For Us?
What about you? Do you have a PRM favorite? Does it save you lots of time?
Let us know in the comments below.
And, if you have a question for a future AMA you can drop them below or join us in the (free) Spin Sucks Community.
You can also find us on social media, email us, or stop by my house with a bottle of wine for porch drinking.