Social media and PR would seem to be natural allies. So why do corporate PR and social media efforts so often appear disconnected and out of sync? To be sure, some agencies and companies get it, and do an effective job integrating social media and PR efforts. For SEO and traffic purposes, the press release and social media release link back to the company’s website/blog.

The explosion of social media has led to a corresponding need for more sophisticated monitoring tools that can crawl the hundreds of social networking and bookmarking sites and millions of blogs across the globe. You can find a list of more than 150 social media monitoring tools here or close to 200 here , but—that can seem overwhelming. Another excellent free tool for finding relevant influencers across the social media sphere, Social Mention is a real-time social search engine that also provides alerts and a cool buzz-monitoring widget you can add to your website or blog.