Just came across pr-toolbar.de, a free PR Toolbar created by a German agency. The download offering for German PR professionals includes 380 PR links, a PR glossary, RSS feeds with PR news as well as gadgets like cookie cleaner, unified email notification and a chat function. I haven’t downloaded it but it looks like it also includes a couple features that are supposed to generate leads for this agency.
I am not a huge toolbar fan in general because it further diminishes the little screen space I have on my laptop and the new IE7 Beta browser (just like Firefox) has an integrated search box anyway. But it is still a nice marketing and community-building idea.
pr-toolbar.de was developed based on a free toolbar creation service from Conduit, so it would probably be easy to create a Canadian PR toolbar.
Not sure if anybody would be interested. But, just for the sake of an exercise, here’s a quick brainstorm of what could be included.
- Sean over at Buzz Canuck has just created “The Power 50“, a list of Canadian marketing bloggers. Not all of them are PR blogs but it would be a good starting point for community links and/or RSS news. And why not cross over into other marketing territory for some of the links?
- Third Tuesday, Third Monday and CaseCamp and other PR events
- Inside PR for podcasting
- Since it is not just about blogging but about PR in general, we should throw in links to CPRS and IABC for good measure
- prmeasurement.ca on the resources side of things, of course, and links to vendor partners like CNW, CCN Matthews, NewsCanada, Bacons, Vocus etc.
- And I am sure for additional resource links we could also take a look south of 49
Yes, there’s plenty more to be found in Canada. But it’s time for dinner. Other ideas anyone?
martinhofmann.net is the personal blog and web playground of Martin Hofmann. I live in Toronto and work 
Not that I’m stopped in PR but how ’bout an easy shorthand search tool of the 20 Canadian dailies and top 1000 blogs with tagged articles from the last day about your client’s brands
cheers, sean
Good idea! Thanks Sean. I didn’t even think of that because we use PR software to track our client coverage. But it would be convenient to also have the most important articles at your fingertips through the toolbar.
I like this idea a lot. It would be a great tool to customize for clients as well. Provide them with a toolbar of relevant things to scan on a daily basis…maybe even link to a technorati and news search on their company and relevant key words. We could even set up a del.icio.us page that they could have a link to as well
Great point, David. I had approached it more as a tool for the Canadian PR community. But it could be a valuable tool for selected clients, too. Thanks!
great idea martin – and one i’ll be trying to steal very soon!
Such a great idea Martin. It sounds like a very cool mashup project.
Hey Martin, I love this idea. More ammunition in PR’s bid to own social media. Onwards…
Thanks for your feedback, Ed, Leoan and Terry! I am hoping to find some time on one of the next weekends to explore the options with Conduit’s free toolbar creation service. Stay tuned.