We are all aware that the world of media is constantly changing and that it can sometimes be challenging to keep up with the latest innovative tools and resources available to us as PR professionals. We continue to work at lightning speed to not only meet our clients’ objectives but also the accelerated deadlines with which our media contacts are faced. To help us get our work done faster, more efficiently and achieve the best possible results for our clients, we often rely upon the tried and true industry tools such as Cision, BusinessWire and HARO.

However, a number of other new tools and resources exist that enable us to uncover editorial opportunities, build relationships with reporters and develop social media releases. We have shared a few of these tools in a previous post, but there is one in particular that I have been hearing a lot of buzz about from other industry professionals and that I wanted to try.

PitchEngine is a publishing platform that enables users to create social and search optimized content that is consumer-facing. Its website states that it’s “Co-op SEO” would provide “exceptional indexing in major search engines” and since they offer a free 30-day account, I recently leveraged the platform to compliment my outreach efforts to introduce Bookbyte’s latest eBook, Words of the Presidents: Speeches and Letters from 1776 to 2011 to journalists and bloggers.

PitchEngine makes it easy to incorporate PR assets like video, audio and images directly into your press release and share it with your media contacts via e-mail or post it directly to Twitter and Facebook. For Bookbyte’s announcement, the platform allowed for me to create a social media newsroom complete with the company’s logo and visuals from the eBook in addition to adding keyword tags to enhance search engine optimization.

As we have shared before on our blog, SEO rankings are critical to help drive more traffic and business as customers often become familiar with a company through a search on the Internet. According to data from analyst firm iProspect, “62 percent of search engine users click on results within the first page of search results and 36 percent believe that companies whose websites appear at the top of the search results are leaders in their field.”

Within the first week, the announcement received more than 100 views and it only continues to climb. Unfortunately, PitchEngine’s free account doesn’t provide an analysis of who has viewed the release unlike BusinessWire and other wire release services, which are paid services that we often use. However, I was impressed that when searching with keywords “Bookbyte,” “eBook” and “Presidents,” the social media newsroom on PitchEngine was found on the first page of Google and on the second page of Yahoo! and Bing search.

In addition to using PitchEngine, I had also targeted a specific group of media outlets and bloggers to share the news of Bookbyte’s latest eBook including Dianna Dilworth, editor of Mediabistro.com’s eBookNewser, who featured the news twice. This particular media placement appears as the first result across all three search engines proving that nothing will usurp the power of knowing the right media targets and contacts for your client’s announcement.

To be successful, it is important that we continue to learn, adapt and utilize the latest tools that are made available to us. While each may vary in their purpose and functionality, every PR professional should consider utilizing a few to test how they can efficiently and effectively add value to your PR campaigns and initiatives.