Press Releases

Hello everyone, I had a few questions about press releases.

What are they exactly? What do they accomplish by having them done?

I've seen some people selling them for 100 - 200 dollars and people buying them, so they must do something that helps your sites. If so, what?

I know those are some pretty general questions, but because I know absolutly nothing about press realeases it just seemed like the best thing to ask

 

If you have something newsworthy to say then you write a press release about it and send it round to all the news sites. Use prweb to send it.

The best thing is to find the press centre at a major site in your niche and sign up to receive their press releases. For example I am on the list for Nokia and they email the press release to me at the same time as they email it to thousands of other places. Once you know what you should put in a press release then you can write your own.

 

Okay, but what is the point of doing a press release...how does it help you?

 

The simple answer is that press releases bring traffic and users to your site. Sine you syndicate or submit your press release to different news sites, you can get links and users to your site.

 

See
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=129173

 

Definitely look at the thread adamovic linked to.

And the "simple" answer is NOT that press releases bring traffic and users to your site. The simple answer is that press releases are a media relations tool that allow you to communicate your news to journalists, in hopes of getting them to write or broadcast a story about you.

Your press release isn't likely to be seen by most of your target audience. The trick is getting the media to put out something that will reach them in generally a broader way than you could using most other marketing techniques. They're popular in business in general, because if you really have legitimate news, they can bring you massive exposure, improve or solidify your image, help you improve public confidence after a crisis, etc... all for minimal cost per person that you'd reach.

People pay those rates because they work. While anyone can follow a template (I have one you can play with in the link in my sig even), not everyone knows how to write "for the media." That's where professionals come in. Rates can go up to as much as $5000, although most I see from other independent PR professionals fall in the $199-500 range.

On top of the writing, there's distribution. The best way is generally manual distribution or the major newswires (AP, Reuters, etc.), but most people here turn to PRweb. It's not really a newswire, but a distribution site that attempts to reach the same end (and I believe they have their own newswire attached to them, although not one of the big ones). To get the best results from a site like PRweb, things are handled in a bidding style. Top placement on the site goes to the person who made the top contribution that day. The higher you are on that list on the home page (assuming you distributed on an OK news day - meaning try to avoid things like weekends which are slow and Mondays which can put you up against more competition), the better your chances someone browsing the site (whether a journalist, blogger, etc.) will see your news (and hopefully like it and write about it). The best results my own clients have had with PRweb involved contributions in the high $1XX - low $2XX range in PRweb's upgrades.

As a side effect, distribution sites provide backlinks (if you upgrade enough to meet their requirement for them), and can lead some readers to your site if it's picked up in google news, yahoo! news, etc... but most of the direct readers will be media or bloggers.

Jenn