“The PR industry as a whole is struggling to transition to online PR models while journalists spend far too much of their time struggling with information overload,” said Influencing founder and CEO Phil Sim.

“Influencing brings both communities onto the same platform, so they can find each other, understand each other and communicate and work with each other in a far more effective  and productive fashion.”

Influencing combines a social network engine with a suite of specialist applications for both journalists and PR professionals.

“You could think of Influencing as Facebook meets Salesforce.com but designed specifically for media and PR professionals,” Sim said.

The social networking platform allows users to map their “professional graph” and then use those relationships to power its application suite which includes a personalised home page, RSS reader, contact management capabilities and online messaging. Journalists have access to tools which let them define the information they’re after, request information and easily and manage all of the leads and stories they’re working on. Meanwhile, PR users have tools to help them build media lists, distribute press releases, manage their online newsrooms and analyse their media coverage.

Used together, the two platforms interconnect to map out an integrated workflow between the two communities that will be far more efficient than traditional communication models.

“Influencing can be used to automate and improve every interaction between an influencers and a PR professional including helping both communities to find each other and track movements, automating the pitching process, managing leads all the way through to a PR person analysing their coverage and relationships,” Sim said.

Influencing is the result of eight-years of experience in building an media relations website called MediaConnect, which is used ubiquitously by media and communicators in the Australian IT industry. “MediaConnect changed the way IT media and PR professionals communicate in Australia and we believe that our new Influencing platform will have the same impact on the media and PR industries globally.”

The Influencing platform has been designed to be “white-labelled” by other media intelligence content providers but can also be accessed directly via Influencing.com.

“The media intelligence market is highly fragmented and we see Influencing as a way to consolidate both the media and PR communities on a single platform, which is why we hope to work with media intelligence providers from all over the world.”

“Our platform can be re-branded at the click of a button to enable media database, monitoring and content firms to offer their customers a full online PR applications suite”.

Influencing is accepting private beta registrations from public relations companies and professionals as well as journalists and bloggers as the platform is opened up to the public over the course of the year. Please email beta@influencing.com or apply for an account on the influencing.com login page.

Additional talking points
- Influencing will cost considerably less than competitive PR platforms and will initially launch in a free beta mode
- Influencing allows journalists and bloggers to manage their own profiles and content information
- Influencing is the first PR platform to integrate with social media applications like Twitter, Facebook and blogs

Contact Information
For more information please contact Influencing CEO Phil Sim at philip@mediaconnect.com.au or phone +61 2 9894 6277.

About Influencing
Influencing is an online PR platform connecting journalists, bloggers and other influencers with PR professionals. Combining a social networking engine with a suite of specialist on-demand applications, Influencing creates an integrated workflow that helps the media and PR communities find each other, understand each other and communicate and work with each other in a far more effective  and productive fashion.

Influencing can be found at http://www.influencing.com