PR Tech Vendors Pitch Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft Integrations and Podcast Monitoring [PR Tech Sum]

The top news in PR tech this month includes: Artificial Intelligence updates for PR, Microsoft integrations for internal comms; podcast monitoring grows

This is your monthly summary of all the news out of the PR technology community. The PR Tech Sum typically runs on the first Tuesday of every month.

For reference, here’s a list of PR technology companies I’m watching. Vendors that are interested in getting involved should read this page.

And now on with this month’s PR Tech Sum…

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1) Signal AI boosts artificial intelligence for media monitoring

Signal AI announced the launch of AIQ, the AI technology behind the company’s media monitoring platform. The company says the new code will allow it to address several public relations challenges. The first challenge the company says it is solving centers on surfacing the most important mentions in the news amid a deluge of sources, which it calls “Briefings.”

PR teams want to share “market insights” but the volume of news is so high it’s hard to identify what is truly insightful. The company says AIQ will “cluster and rank the content in high volume news scenarios and create a briefing email consisting of a manageable number of stories that help colleagues stay on top of current events within and across industries.”

“Nothing matters more than getting every piece of content about their own brand, as soon as it is published,” wrote Miguel Martinez, PhD., the co-founder and chief data scientist at Signal AI, in a separate, but a clearly related, blog post.

“Unless AI is used extensively to achieve this, I believe there will not be any spare time to focus on more strategic work. The current volume, speed and diversity of data is just too big and complex for monitoring to be handled manually.”

2) SocialChorus has new integrations to Microsoft for internal comms

SocialChorus announced “deepening integrations” into Microsoft Office 365 and new integration with Microsoft Teams. The integration means internal communicators can publish content in the SocialChorus Studio, while employees can receive that information wherever they prefer: in Outlook, SharePoint or Teams.

“The central point of publishing allows targeting and re-targeting across the employee endpoints as well as unified insights and analytics,” according to the announcement.

The company also cites a customer, BJ Moore the CIO at Providence St. Joseph Health, who sums up the announcement nicely in the press release:

“The combination of SocialChorus with Office 365 allows our comms team and functional leaders to publish, target and streamline delivery of content and information to all caregivers – across our Microsoft endpoints. The unified analytics give us the ability to show how communications are driving our strategic initiatives, including our digital transformation.”

3) Meltwater and Cision add podcasts to its monitoring service through TVEyes

Meltwater announced it has added podcasts to its monitoring service, “giving customers the ability to monitor 25,000 podcasts.” A company representative confirmed the capability is being provided through an integration with TVEyes.

Cision too said it has expanded its partnership with TVEyes to allow its customers to monitor for mentions of their brand in more than 25,000 podcasts. The feature enabled by TVEyes is available in the Broadcast Monitoring module of Cision.

The addition of Meltwater and Cision marks the third partnership I’ve observed in 2020 for TVEyes. Last month, Burrelles announced it too had partnered with TVEyes for its monitoring tech. Burrelles integrated the TVEyes capabilities for capturing TV, radio and podcast mentions into its platform.

TVEyes has traditionally focused on television broadcast monitoring, as its brand name suggests. However, the company has added other formats over the years, and last November rolled out the podcast monitoring service.

At the time, TVEyes had said its new offering would enable “partners to build podcast content search and alert applications through an API that provides a ‘firehose’ of podcast content.”

4) [rant] HARO needs to update its rules for podcasts

It’s good to see Cision recognize the value of podcasts as noted above. That should prompt the company to consider updating its podcast rules for HARO, which Cision also owns.

For example, rule number four states:

“Podcasters may use HelpaReporter.com to source interviews for their podcast only if the podcast is hosted on their own website, with an Alexa ranking of one million or less.”

Alexa was useful when Peter Shankman built and grew HARO. It was also a necessary means to provide a standard. But that was 10 years ago! The media landscape has changed, as Cision often urgently notes in the State of the Media reports.

Most podcasters put their effort into building an audio channel, rather than a text-based website that can be indexed by Alexa. So, HARO will turn away a ranking podcaster – and an opportunity for their customers – merely because they haven’t figure out a modern method to evaluate this medium.

Maybe they could put that new podcasting monitoring service to work here.

5) OnePitch adds new features for reporters

OnePitch has rolled out new features for reporters seeking sources. One of the services it has provided is an inquiry service. If you are seeking sources for a story, you can submit an inquiry to OnePitch that will review the inquiry and send the request to publicists registered with its service.

This could take a little time. As the company’s FAQs note, “Once the inquiry is approved, you will receive an email with the send date along with a final preview of your pitch.”

The company announced in an email to users, it has added an “Inquiry+” service that sends out an inquiry immediately upon approval. It’s also adding a service where the OnePitch team will write an inquiry for a reporter and it has added “location filtering for pitches.”

OnePitch is a PR tech startup with a service that began by aggregating pitches from publicists and sending them out in a single email. Journalists and bloggers can subscribe to the types of pitches they are interested in receiving and, they’ll get one email with a list of pitches that were reviewed and approved by OnePitch.

6) Quick hits in PR technology

Onclusive says the shutdown of Jumpshot by Avast does not affect its media monitoring product. The company “never had any relationship with Jumpshot” and “there is no impact to Onclusive attribution metrics,” the company wrote in a blog post. Similarly, a representative from Cision said in response to an email inquiry “the Cision Communications Cloud does not rely on data from Avast or Jumpshot.”

Burrelles announced a partnership with Agility PR Solutions to add Agility’s media database and social listening tools to its platform. The company announced a rebrand late in 2019 and the Agility partnership is the second of its kind this year, with the TVEyes partnership noted above.

7) Picks from the PR trades and vendor blogs

a) 6 tips to make buying comms tech a little less complicated via PRWeek and Natasha Bach

A range of views that includes three PR tech vendors.

b) Getting on the same page about storytelling via MuckRack and Michelle Garrett

“Are we throwing this term around too loosely? And what are we actually talking about when we use the word ‘storytelling?’”

c) Instagram Video Posts Receive Twice the Engagement of Other Post Types via Matt Southern, Search Engine Journal, HubSpot and Mention.

“A study on Instagram engagement discovered that video posts receive 2x engagement of other post types…Data was compiled by HubSpot and Mention after analyzing 48,065,694 Instagram posts from 306,278 top users.”

d) Marketing and Investor Relations: Working Together to Achieve Success via Allyce Maclaren and Q4, Inc.

“…regular alignment between the two teams can help to strengthen a company’s message while increasing visibility, driving valuation, and expanding sales opportunities.”

e) The Best Time & Day to Send a Press Release [Updated for 2020] via Prowly and Rafal Salak

“We analyzed over 55470 press releases sent in 2018 & 2019 by our users using Prowly and checked when respondents opened them…The best day to send a press release is on Thursday when the average open rate jumps to over 26%.”

Note: Prowly is based in Europe, so I’d imagine this is largely European data. Last month, I wrote about a study by Onclusive and Business Wire, which analyzed 15,000 press releases and concluded, “…the best days to put out news releases to generate coverage articles are Tuesdays and Fridays.”

f) Measuring Kevin Akeroyd’s legacy at Cision via PRWeek and Sean Czarnecki

“The fact that Cision not only acquired Trendkite at an eye-popping revenue multiple of 8.8-times but repopulated some of its key roles with its Trendkiters speaks to how much faith Cision’s former owner, GTCR, placed in the upstart.”

g) Here’s How PR Pros Are Using Social Listening via Marketing Charts and Talkwalker

“PR professionals have a wider variety of responsibilities these days, going beyond just pitching to journalists. In a survey of 3,700 global marcomm professionals, a new report from Talkwalker finds that the majority of respondents consider content marketing (77%), influencer marketing (67%) and link building for SEO (56%) to be within their purview.”