Two new tools I love

I've recently stumbled across two new tools that I love that I thought were worth sharing.

image source: http://teachers.thelanguagemenu.com/TeachersTools

Note: I'm not advertising for these companies/products - and there may be better tools out there that accomplish these tasks (if you know of any, please share them in the comments section) - I'm just excited about them and wanted to pass them along in case others find them useful as well:

1. Press Release Grader:
A simple web-based tool that checks your release for both basic PR mistakes (missing contact details, etc) and generates a word cloud that shows you how your word use appears to search engines - a critical piece of data for Search Engine Optimization. It also gives your release a numeric grade out of 100, and confirms its overall readability. It's an incredibly quick and helpful tool to help you refine your release before you send it out into the world.

2. Pitch Engine:
An elegantly designed web-based tool that allows you to easily convert your standard/traditional press release into a blog and social-media friendly SMR. It's free to use (you incur costs if you want to archive materials or group them into "newsrooms" - both of which are worth paying for if you ask me) and actually turns your press release into something useful, i.e., something that can be shared online.

Enjoy!

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Update 1/14 - PRN has a press release optimizer as well here. Any other tools out there that deserve to be shared?

Free Technology

For non-profits that need to keep track of donor data, behavior and solicitation frequency, the Salesforce.com Foundation is offering 10 free licenses to Salesforce which essentially allows any non-profit to use their CRM services for free.

For non-profits that need spreadsheet, word-processing, calendaring and email applications, Google is offering its enterprise edition application package to non-profits for free as well.


For organizations that are strapped for resources (and I have yet to meet one that isn't), these free tools open up worlds of possibilities without costing a penny.

PR Grants Available for Non-Profit Organizations

I received the following information to share with my readers.

PR Grants Available for Non-Profit Organizations
Application Deadline December 31; CyberAlert to Award $25,000

Stratford, CT — 11/26/2007 — CyberAlert, Inc., the online media monitoring and measurement service, today announced that the company will award a minimum of 12 public relations grants to not-for-profit organizations. Each grant consists of one full year of free news monitoring / press clipping services, ranging in value from $2,700 to $3,900. The aggregate value of the grants is expected to total at least $25,000.

All not-for-profit, educational and charitable organizations in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for the grants, except previous grant recipients. CyberAlert is accepting grant applications until December 31 and will announce the grant recipients in January. A simple and secure grant application is available online at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html.

Since starting the PR Grants program in 2004, CyberAlert has awarded a total of 74 grants with a retail value of more than $125,000.

In January 2007, CyberAlert awarded PR grants to 24 organizations in the U.S. and Canada with a total value of $65,000. The award-winners included 100 Black Men of America, Inc.; ALS Society of Canada; C3: Colorectal Cancer Coalition; Center for Constitutional Rights; Environmental Defence (Canada); Family Literacy Foundation; Guttmacher Institute; Keep America Beautiful; Lance Armstrong Foundation; The Medicare Rights Foundation; and National Philanthropic Trust.

The 16 CyberAlert PR Grant award-winners in 2006 included included the Alliance for Consumer Education, Canada’s National History Society, FishAmerica Foundation, Global Fund for Women, JA Worldwide (Junior Achievement), Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), National Rural Health Association (NRHA), Oklahoma City National Memorial, Partnership Against Domestic Violence, and Relief International.

In 2005, CyberAlert awarded PR grants to 16 not-for-profit organizations including the American Jewish World Service, Common Cause Education Fund, Islamic Society of North America, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Canada), National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and National Network to End Domestic Violence. In 2004, PR grant winners included Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, American Association of Poison Control Centers, Earthwatch Institute, La Leche League, Lutheran World Relief, and RespectED program of the Canadian Red Cross.

“The PR grant program is one way for CyberAlert to assist not-for-profit organizations and to give back to the public relations profession that has helped our business grow and expand successfully over the past seven years,” stated William J. Comcowich, CEO of CyberAlert.

Founded in 1999, CyberAlert (http://www.cyberalert.com/) is a worldwide press clipping, media monitoring, broadcast monitoring and media measurement service. Its CyberAlert® 4.0 worldwide news monitoring service monitors over 25,000 online news sources each day in 25+ languages. The company’s TV broadcast monitoring service monitors the closed caption text of over 2,100 news programs on over 500 TV stations in the Top 100 markets in the United States. To monitor consumer discussion (online word-of-mouth), its NetPinions™ service monitors over 100,000 Web message boards and UseNet news groups for consumer insight about companies, products, key issues and trends and its BlogSquirrel™ service monitors over 5 million blog postings each day from a total of 25+ million blogs worldwide. CyberAlert EdCals is an editorial calendars service covering over 3,000 publications with over 300,000 editorial opportunities.

Additional information about CyberAlert services is available at http://www.cyberalert.com