BuzzStream works for anyone that is working in the SEO field! It has literally saved me hours of time and is my go-to tool for all link building needs. The speed that I'm able to research a site, save the key information and launch a pre-crafted email is head spinning (In a good way)! This is one of the SEO tools that I can't live without--it makes link building and link tracking a whole lot easier. BuzzStream likely wouldn't be a good fit for anyone that isn't particularly working in the SEO field. I can't imagine this would replace a dedicated email tracking system or be used to send email drips.
Muck Rack has been well suited for me when reporting and providing value add and ROI reporting to clients who are investing in publications. Not only has it been great creating media lists, drafting, sending out, and tracking pitches, but the ability to track coverage and export a report that showcases the reach, impact, and media value has been so beneficial for me. So, if you are working with clients in an external communications capacity, then the Muck Rack tools are very flexible and can fit your needs very well.
Communication Organization: It provides a simple communication format for even the most novice of users to understand. All messages are kept in nice order, even placed in folders if needed, to alleviate the pain of losing messages in normal email.
Locating Contact Information: I love that BuzzStream aids in finding additional contact information for people. From social accounts to other emails, we can make sure we reach out to people via the correct channels.
Building a Consistent Voice: BuzzStream allows you to save templates that have worked or failed when conducting outreach. These templates can have autofill parameters added to them and are accessible to all users.
Muck Rack offers a robust and highly targeted media research tool that allows you to build a customized media list to launch a media relations campaign.
Muck Rack's customer support team is quite good and is very responsive.
Muck Rack's sales team does a great job of explaining how their solution will effectively address the needs of the organization.
The search function needs to be more accurate in returning results when searching for existing prospects the platform only display exact match results - www.websitename.com vs websitename.com. In reality, the two websites are the same prospects.
Customer service assistance needs to be more instantaneous when seeking out help a response can take up to 24 hours.
Importing large CSV files of websites takes time as well.
Creating coverage reports is time-consuming and it is difficult to filter out unrelated coverage with the Boolean operator-driven functionality
Muck Rack does not integrate with our other monitoring and reporting tools, so for sharing reports everything needs to be manually exported and added to our reporting software.
Muck Rack does not include broadcast coverage monitoring in its normal package, and the functionality of the added broadcast tool is limited compared to other coverage monitoring tools.
It's the best tool we've found for this type of product. It is not 100% critical to our daily responsibilities, but as a corporate tool made available to us, it is something we leverage on a weekly basis.
Buzzstream is great to help identify sites to get links from, and it makes this process so efficient, easy and personal to all, the ones who are using it and the ones that are receiving. Flawless navigation, good outlook, 10/10!
Little training was required to leverage the tool. It is a very intuitive platform. The only troublesome aspect of the tool has been the email integration features, but that may be more of a security/IT issue with our corporate requirements than a Much Rack problem. Overall, it is a tool that anyone can leverage without much effort.
Support is one of the best aspects of BuzzStream. I know their support team is small and somehow they are able to get back to us right away in a super helpful, friendly fashion. I've had many questions - sometimes they release a new feature, sometimes a feature isn't working correctly and they are quick to answer but also help explain it in a way that makes sense.
I'm sure it's fine. I have never used their customer support, not even when a list does not save. I just figured there isn't much they can do since it was a search. They do have live chat to get answers quickly but most of the time I'm working on lists after hours (since it's a lot of admin and I can do it front of the TV) and no one is available.
BuzzStream stacks up quite well compared to its competitors. In particular, Hootsuite and HubSpot. BuzzStream has many of the same capabilities that its competitors do, at a fraction of the cost. We selected BuzzStream because it had a fairly flexible contract, and it was sufficient for our needs. It was a good intermediate-level tool.
Cision Media Contact Database. Honestly, it has been a long time since I used it, but I do remember being unhappy with the service. I thought its UI/UE was clunky at the time, but I didn't complain because I had free access to it.
It's had a positive impact in keeping our entire agency organized. Especially when employees leave, all of their communication is in one place, so it's pretty easy to have someone take over the process.
You can test different messaging for prospects and then determine the most successful.
It's hard to measure ROI but I can say this: I have discovered and build relationships with media I may have had a hard time locating before. MuckRack has probably increased my efficiency by 50 percent and doubled my effectiveness.
I haven't looked a media databases in about 2 years but it is a much more cost effective media database than the big, traditional ones that everyone else has.
