Exam time kills my blogging mojo... Apologies I will return in full force very soon!

Cool Tool- HubSpot's Press Release Grader

I know my fellow PR peers are going to love this one.

How it Works:

You enter the content of your press release into HubSpot's Press Release Grader, tell them the name of your company and the company website. The tool then evaluates the press release based upon various important factors identified by "public relations experts" such as the language level of the content and how well the press release performs for SEO. Much like the company's other very useful (and free) tool,  Website Grader, the Press Release Grader generates a nicely formatted report of the release's evaluation.

As PR people we should be absolutely rejoicing at the discovery of such a tool. I mean come on PR peeps we have been willing to kill to get access to metrics like this! Especially for all the PR interns out there, start using this tool for the releases you have created through coursework and intern experience and add these reports to the ol' portfolio. Nothing beats a tool that clearly shows off the value of your work.

Steve Jobs Tweet of the Day

@ceoSteveJobs: "Once you go Mac, you can't go back."

Meet Seth Priebatsch- Creator of SCVNGR & One of the Coolest 21 Year Olds Around

If you don't already know, Seth Priebatsch is quite possibly one of the most successful 21 year olds Boston has to offer. In a town filled with college bars and frat parties, Seth runs one of the most highly anticipated new social networking platforms to date- SCVNGR. Before this success however, Seth took a "leave-of-absence" a.k.a. dropped out of Princeton to pursue his dream of creating "a game layer on top of the world." Now backed by Google venture capitol, SCVNGR continues to pick up momentum amongst users and cliental. Check out this video of Seth as he explains the uses of his "game layer" innovation.

What's Your Internet Klout?

Klout is a fairly new tool that  uses its own specially-designed algorithm to provide you with a "measurement of your overall online influence." While it is still being highly debated whether Klout's score provides a real value beyond just bragging rights, the tool could be used to potentially identify thought leaders on the Internet a.k.a. really good stuff for companies.

While I am sure many of you seasoned social media veterans are exclaiming "But there already are many of those types of tools you dummy!" try to hear me out for now at least. The Klout algorithm relies on 35 different variables extracted from Facebook and Twitter in order to measure a person's True Reach, Amplification Probability and Network Score. An individual's Klout score is based on a scale of 0-100 and is "highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets" related to the content they produce.

What is interesting about the Klout algorithm is that it is intuitive enough to deduce how many "active" followers and friends a person actually has, rather than merely calulating the often baseless numbers that appear on a person's profile. If a person has 500 Twitter followers but only actively engages with 200 of them, this is taken into account. This element which seems to imperative for an accurate score is a unique function in this type of measuring tool.

My advice is to keep your eye on Klout as the debate about its value continues on. But in the mean time why not check out what your Klout score would be and get a fun badge just for kicks.