It seems there is so much to do and not enough time to do all of it.  There’s the Twitter feeds to monitor, the Facebook Fan page to update, the traditional PR and media relations, and the endless demands to finish one project and move on to the other. It seems journalists are feeling the heat too. Pink Magazine posted this lament the other day:

With all the cutbacks, overworked journalists in need of sources for their stories (including PINK) often turn to these handy sites to find leads. Sign up for a “source” account and get their queries e-mailed to you. – Pink Magazine, June 29, 2009.

This post reminded me to talk about a few publicity tools that offer public relations and journalists a bit of help. A quid pro quo approach to getting the word out that not only saves time, but builds relationships. I’ve talked about the early days of ProfNet, when I was on the advisory committee that formed the service, and our goal to link sources with reporters and producers needing a fast source. Well, there are a few others out there also helping link journalists with sources, and they are worth mentioning again.

HelpAReporterOut.com, which sends sources three rundowns each day of journalists looking for sources. Journalists ask for a source, and HARA provides.

Profnet is still out there, but unlike HARO, costs sources to access its daily list of source requests. (I fought this model in the early 90s, but lost that fight. PR Newsire now runs ProfNet and it has become a profit center). ProfNet still links up sources with journalists and does succeed in getting folks national publicity. Darla and I ended up on Oprah because of a ProfNet query.

Pink Magazine, also points to another service calledPitchRate.com. I haven’t tried that one yet, and will soon.

Any others? I’d be interested in hearing about other Free Publicity Tools that benefit PR and journalists.