Date: 30 Oct 2010 Comments: 0

I’ve discovered a great resource and want to share it with you – consider it a “rock on” better, cheaper and faster in 2011 gift from me.

(Full disclosure – I’m not getting paid by ITDatabase to post this – just good karma)

I’ve switched to ITDatabase from Vocus, here’s why:

– Fresh contact data – search for media contacts is based on the content of articles they’ve written today, this week, this month – not on the profile they submitted a year ago
– Includes all the tech publications and all the tech BLOGs
– Media contact accuracy is the top priority
– Focus on just the IT industry
– Subscription includes: media database, editorial calendars, media events/speaking opps, and awards
–Updates are made the same day – they are grateful to know there is new info and act on it right away
–Very easy export to Excel. I love this.

Doesn’t have (right now):

–Briefing notes
–Press release distribution function, but I’ve stopped using that in Vocus anyway, after two years of NEVER having a reply to a mailing through them. I send emails directly from my Mac.}

I considered the trade offs and what I care about is accurate contact data, accurate keyword search, good Blog info, timely updates and great service – easy decision, I’ve moved to ITDatabase. (Oh, and it’s truly SO easy, I didn’t need hours of training on how to use it.)

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Here’s the pitch from ITDatabase themselves:

The IT industry has anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 new articles and blog posts written on a given day. ITDatabase (www.itdatabase.com) is the only research tool that carefully indexes that content in a way that’s specifically useful to everyday tech PR research / pitching use cases. It’s as easy to use as Google News, but it’s 100% specific to tech, and the data is displayed in a way that’s much more compatible with the answers you’re looking for prior to your pitching.

If you’ve been using Cision or Vocus for any period of time and run tech industry keyword / competitor name searches in ITDatabase, you will see that our data is infinitely fresher, more comprehensive and more reliable than those research tools that focus merely on stale author bios. Key advantages in ITDatabase:

* immediate discovery of ALL the tech authors / bloggers that write about a given tech topic (even very granular, specific topics … i.e., “NoSQL” or “identity management” OR “gigabit ethernet”, etc.)
* ability to search within a specific publication or blog to immediately discover who, exactly writes about whatever topics are related to your client / company
* tech author / blogger contact info, including contact data for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
* the most efficient possible tool for building target lists and researching tech authors / bloggers before outreach efforts

(unlike Cision and Vocus, we also give you unfettered trial access to take our tool for a test drive and draw your own conclusions, so you can contact us if you’d like a few days to kick the tires and decide if this is a tool that belongs in your PR arsenal)

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ITDabase costs $3000. Not sure if that’s one seat or many – but they’ll tell you.

Contact is Travis@ITDatabase.com — he’s up in San Francisco and a great guy.

All the best,

Frances