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I had a similar
experience as described in the article you have posted on your blog. I
also used PRWeb, and that is the one I would recommend others in the
workshop use for our purposes. There are others, but PRWeb works quite
well, and gets great distribution. For one thing, I have alerts set
with Google and Yahoo for specific phrases for RSS content. Alerts
from content published by PRWeb are very common, so that was one of
the first ones I went to when I wanted to see about doing this. I can
offer some additional information over what the article you have
presents.
History of Press Releases
Historically the
press release system has been the mechanism for companies,
organizations, etc. to make public statements to the general press
(news papers, magazines, periodicals, radio, TV, etc.). There were
special subscription services that members of the media subscribed to
that would give them access to these announcements. The media would
both have access to the announcements as they were released, and they
would be available for some time for research purposes. Each release
would be categorized to help members of the media find releases that
fit within categories of interest. In many cases, a company or
organization would submit press releases announcements at the
recommendation and guidance of public relation consulting firms.
In-house marketing departments with knowledge of the press release
system might also use this resource to help their marketing efforts.
For the most
part, the general public did not have access to these releases because
they did not have subscriptions. Also, small businesses did not use
this resource unless they were getting outside public relation
consulting. This has changed with the Internet. Now the press release
system is Internet based. We all have access to the press release
announcements for free. The media also have subscriptions which gives
them additional services. With RSS, and alerts, we don't really have
to put a lot of effort in looking for many of the announcements that
are of interest to us. Also, submitting press release announcements
has gotten very easy and in-expensive. It is now well within the reach
of even a small mom-n-pop business.
The official
intended audience of the press release system is still the media, and
this offers some potential benefits to us. As an example, a friend of
mine has a business that also sells natural handmade soaps,
moisturizer creams, bath salts, etc. At the recommendation, and with
guidance from a friend that knew more about marketing, she issued a
press release announcement for her business. Shortly thereafter, a
reporter from a local paper contacted her for a story that they wanted
to do for the Health and Family Living section of the local paper
about homemade bath and beauty products. The whole article (with
pictures) was better than any advertising that she could have bought.
After the story appeared in the local paper, she experienced a large
jump in local business. So, anyone from the workshop should craft a
press release announcement with the idea of making it newsworthy for
the media. It is also important to commit to a geographical region
because your information might be of particular interest to someone
doing research for your area. We should not assume that because we are
Internet based that committing to a region will reduce the value of
the release.
Impact on Marketing
The other benefit
to doing this is that it offers some very desirable side effects for
Internet Marketing. One is that the press release information is now
syndicated through RSS. For one thing, not only does the PR website
have your announcement with a link to your website, every website out
there that is aggregating PR RSS feeds also is posting information
about you with a link to your website. These can be valuable links.
Also, I am surprised how often people are conducting searches for my
company name. My theory is that at least some of them are
contemplating placing an order, but are checking to see if they can
find good or bad information that people have posted regarding my
company. Since I published my first press release, it is common that
with my business name as the search criteria, not only does my website
typically rank #1, the copies of the press release claim as much as
half of the remainder of the results on the first page. I believe this
helps give your website additional credibility, which can increase
your likelihood of getting revenue translations.
About PRWeb
PRWeb seemed to
be more accessible than many of the others I checked out. They do let
you post a release statement for free, but I would recommend at least
paying $30 for the release. That is the lowest amount you can pay that
will get your release included in the RSS feed to Yahoo, Google, and
some others. You can pay a lot more to get it on the welcome page on
www.prweb.com, but for our purposes, it should probably be reserved
for announcements that truly do have significant broad interest
newsworthy value. PRWeb also offers a free online "webinar" which is
an orientation to posting press releases on PRWeb. I would recommend
going through it before posting the first press release. To "attend"
the webinar, you log into the WebEx website, join the session, and
then you see an MS PowerPoint slide show. You also call into a
conference line so that you hear the presenter, and you can actually
ask questions. At the end of the formal presentation, there is Q&A
time and general discussion. I found it very helpful.
Evaluating your Performance
After you post
your press release, you can get the following statistics to give you
an idea of how much exposure you are getting.
|
Statistic Count
Description (Sample) |
| Reads
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29,240
|
This
number tells you how many times your press release was
accessed from our site and other distribution points
where we have the ability to measure a click through.
This number does not include the number of journalists
who have received your release through email. In
addition there are online distribution points that we
currently have no ability to track. |
|
Estimated Pickup |
1535 |
This number estimates the number of times your press
release was picked up by a media outlet. This does not
tell you how many times your story appears in the media.
It simply attempts to estimate media interest of your
release. |
| Prints
|
125
|
This is
the number of times that someone has printed your press
release. We measure this by the number of times that the
"printer friendly version" link is pressed. In reality,
only a small percentage of users actually click this
link before printing a release. |
| Forwards
|
56
|
This is
the number of times that someone has forwarded your
press release to a third party using the link on your
press release. |
| PDF
Downloads |
0
|
The
number of times your release was downloaded as a PDF
document. PDF Downloads may be reflected in "Reads" and
"Estimated Pickup" statistics. |
| |
|
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Additional Comments
Another couple of
points that should be made... To really start getting value from this,
it would be best to plan to issue press releases periodically. It
should not be done just once. Once a month would be a good frequency.
So far I have only done my first one. I plan to do more. The next is
that according to the presenter in the orientation webinar I attended,
out press release announcements are kept on them their system
"indefinitely". If that is true, it is a good thing for us.
D.P.
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