I’ve been hearing tons of great things about Raven internet marketing tools the last few months, so I finally decided to run their free trial and see why everyone was so crazy about it. So first, what do these tools do?

Raven tools let you research, gather, organize, manage, track, report, and analyze most of the internet marketing tasks you probably already implement (or should implement). Some examples include:

• Research and manage keywords
• Gather, analyze, and manage competitive analysis
• Link building research and management
• Manage SEO and social media campaigns
• Content and blog management
• Monitor social media engagement
• Check organic search engine rankings
• Report on site analytics and performance

So, after running the tools through their paces for about a week, I’ve decided that it’s well worth the fee as long as you’re committed to actually using the information. See, that’s the thing about tools. No matter how great they may be, at some point, it’s up to you to take action on what you discover. If you’re just itching to have information at your fingertips that will help you determine what your next step should be to market your site, then Raven tools is a fantastic choice. It gives you tons of information and makes daily tasks easy to organize and manage.

There’s no doubt in my mind that any marketing agency should check these tools out. It’s ideal for agency work. It may be a bit of overkill for many bloggers or site owners who only manage a couple of their own sites, but even for that group of folks, it’s worth at least checking out the free trial. At only $19/month for the Basic plan (which lets you manage 3 sites), it’s affordable for many bloggers. (Yes, there was certainly a time when $19/month would have been too much for me to handle, so I know not EVERYONE can afford even that).

So, the bottom line is, if you can pay an affordable fee, or you’re an agency that handles clients, you should at least give the freet trial a run, to see if it will help you or not.

Instead of listing all the benefits of the tools, I think it’s best to just have you check out a couple of videos that explain it really well, in a short time frame. Then, I’ll tell you about the one thing that really bugged me about the tools.

The Benefits

The Issues

The biggest issue I had with the tools was trying to figure out how to create reports. Yes, the tools comes with a Report Wizard, so how hard could it be? Well, it’s not hard, but it’s not all that obvious either. See, if you don’t know what kind of reports you CAN create, you don’t know where to start. For instance, pretty much the first thing you see when you go to create a new report is a form field wanting you to name this report. Um…ok…um… I got stuck right there. I was wishing for a dropdown or multiple choice selection of some recommended basic reports. Since I had no idea what types of reports I *could* create, I had no idea what to name the report.

The solution of course is to RTFM. Once I read the manual (which is 101 pages long), and watched a video on creating reports, I had a better idea where to start. I’m *still* not 100% sure that I know everything that might be possible with reports though, so I think this is an area that could use some improvement. I should note that I did attempt to use the contextual help for this, but it didn’t do me any good – for this particular issue. The contextual help is great to have though for most of the other tasks.

As you can see from the screenshots below, there’s a little HELP icon next to the menus, and depending upon which section of the tools you’re currently using, clicking that icon will reveal help notes for the very task you’re working on. Unfortunately, that contextual help didn’t solve my “What Reports Should I Make?” dilemma, so perhaps that’s a good place to throw in some extra help for reports. Sure, the contextual help for reports “existed”, but it didn’t give me any additional clues as to the types of reports I might be able to create.

Other than that one issue I had with sitting there with a dazed look on my face and saying, “ummmm…” to the Report Name question, I can certainly see huge amounts of value in using these tools. But again, I have to reiterate…you need to be willing to take action on the things you discover. Merely running reports and gathering information won’t do a darned thing for your site. Acting upon the information is vital. Seems obvious, I know, but it’s an important point that I think a lot of people tend to ignore when using tools. Anyway, there’s nothing lost by giving the free trial a run, and since you’ve made it all the way through this review, I have a surprise for you.

The Surprise

I’m giving I’ve given away a 6 months free trial for Raven tools. The normal free trial is only for 30 days, but if you tweet about this post, I’ll enter you in a drawing. One winner, on October 15, 2010, will receive received a 6 month free trial. Here are the rules:

UPDATE: Lea de Groot won this giveaway. It’s over now, so please don’t enter.

1. Tweet a link to this post and use the hashtag #DDraven. So a tweet like “@DonnaFontenot is giving away one (1) 6-month free trial for Raven Tools. Get in on it! http://bit.ly/ddraven #DDraven”

2. Come back here to this post, and comment. Put a link to your tweet in the comment, making sure that you supply a real email address in the comment form where it asks for that. (Don’t put your email address in the comment itself). On Friday, I’ll draw a name from those who tweeted, and that person will win. I’ll email you with instructions to get your special 6 month trial.

For those of you that are wondering, that link at the beginning of the post is NOT an affiliate link. I do, however, have an affiliate link, if you prefer to let me get some credit for referring you over. [big grin] So, the link in the first sentence of this post is NOT an affiliate link. The link in the second-to-last sentence of this post IS an affiliate link this is my aff link. Use whichever one you prefer.