# Ethan's PR Problems 1. **Each tool we use in the content lifecycle is disconnected** from the other. 2. **It's hard to enforce content standards,** naming conventions, workflow rules, and other standards 3. **Content templates are difficult to find and use;** Templates (articles, press releases, pitches) need to be copied and then pasted, deleted, and then filled in; they are difficult to manage, use, and store. 4. **Much manual input** and re-input between the different software's; Things can get lost easily; 5. **Poor search means contractors are less productive**; much of our job is managing many moving parts; it can get confusing, so they give up (that's how things get lost), or those who gave the assignment are repeating themselves to catch others up. 6. centralizing placements 7. **Reporting to clients is time-consuming and painful; infrequent insights.**which type of content is performing 8. **Search and insights are cumbersome;** Let's say we have a piece of content, an article our team is working on, and pitching to the media for placement. I have a to-do item in Asana, the article is on Google Docs, and there's a link to the Google Docs on Monday; It's probably been talked about on Slack and Email, and if it's placed, it's tracked by Cision and added to CoverageBook. So, there exists a single entry on each platform for the same piece of content, but the title for each varies widely (namely because it touches so many people in the process), which negatively affects search. 9. **Our tools are expensive;** as an agency of 8 with $75k/mo revenue, we spend ~$3k/mo. Rspr spends $1,200 on PRophet (we only use it to generate lists) and $1,400 on Cision. Monday is around $200. Miscellaneous other software probably adds $100-200. 10. **Cision doesn’t prevent or reduce bounce emails**, which hurt domain reputation and increase the odds of getting into spam; there are many other UI problems with that app: - No built-in naming convention for anything (lists, email campaigns, coverage, etc.) - no email open-rate optimization tools 2. Email templates are designed poorly 3. Emails hint that it’s a mass email (”**Ethan Young [via](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en&authuser=1) [prnewswire.com](http://prnewswire.com)”)** —which is not all bad? mass emails without this might be blocked by Gmail? 4. Data groups are difficult to use: transfer lists, templates, etc., are a pain. 5. List building is unintelligent; you have to match the exact keyword in your search. No interest analysis per contact. Results can really be really bad, hurting your reputation if you send an email to someone you shouldn't. 6. import of lists is not flexible, which can render whole datasets worthless unless you can program a solution. Fixing this problem would make it easier to switch from an old platform to a new one. 7. UVPM and other metrics on the placements are often missing or outdated. 8. No SEO optimization (this only matters for content marketers). There are no integrations with SEMRUSH, MOZ, etc. 9. ZERO integrations with Slack, Monday, Coverage Book, etc. 10. “Coverage Value” is a scam and a vanity metric. 11. Sentiment analysis of placements is unintelligent: “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative.” 12. “Potential Audience” is the best metric they have; it would be better to be able to track if the company website got a boost in traffic after a placement (”Traffic Generated”); the infrastructure is just not there. Best case, we could track “Revenue Generated.” 13. Cision provides more tailored brand research for reputation management, but it seems to be more of an agency-style offering. 14. No TikTok or Instagram insights. 15. Media placement monitoring cannot be customized (no logic). 16. [Other Cision Problems by Gregory](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HfsiVP7KQ_H_oNOrpK75ajnojvfTfjgKWsz-Y8DwhWM/edit?usp=sharing) 11. **Acquiring contacts, filtering, pitching is tedious:** I can't track who received what and how to respond to different people depending on their interests. 12. People are losing trust in the media in general, and in public relations professionals who have a reputation for being disorganized and money hungry (for consultants) because there's so much media. **It seems, in the future, professionals must seek quality over quantity.** 13. PR is dumb because it's not needed. You don't need a consultant or in-house professional to tell you (unless your horrible at your job) what your customer wants. Do people only hire PR pros when they don't understand their target customer? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HfsiVP7KQ_H_oNOrpK75ajnojvfTfjgKWsz-Y8DwhWM/edit?usp=sharing