From the days of clip books and phone pitches to spreadsheets and email pitches–PR tech stayed frozen at its tipping point for the better half of a decade. Five years ago, we created Memo to push the media and comms ecosystem forward. Fast forward to today, we see some of the world’s most powerful brands using tech to fuel everything they do.
The industry is trading scissors and glue for pivot tables and AI. We talked to countless comms teams to see how their tech stacks evolved in the last few years and what they consider essential in today’s landscape.
Here are the three core tools large brands use today:
- Readership – Knowing how many people are reading about a topic and/or your brand helps you understand what’s clearly working and what’s not from a comms perspective. Our customers use it to justify resources, demonstrate value and success, backup media strategy, and make decisions in times of crisis. Also, if this isn’t the first one on the list, this wouldn’t be the Memo blog, and I would be bad at my job.
- Analytics – We see some of our larger customers use tools like Airtable as an additional analytics tool to slice and dice data from multiple inputs and give their team more insights to work with. The more accurate data in your dashboard, the better your decision making.
- Social Listening – while less than 10% of article traffic comes from social media, it’s still a valuable tool for building a community around a brand. It should absolutely not be the #1 indicator of PR success or failure (or of a crisis for that matter), but social listening tools can be effective measurement tools insular to your social team and strategy.
Who is to say that this won’t change in the next 6 months, year, 5 years, 10 years. In fact, I hope it does. AI will undoubtedly shift the ways we process data and gather insights. It’s already changing the way we surface insights at Memo (how Memo uses AI). Data will challenge us all to rethink decision making. But all in all, accurate data helps us all make smarter decisions. Comms and PR are no exception. Full stop.
Memo is the only platform that reports readership, direct from publishers. Learn more.