I was wondering if any of you ever tried to promote your directory through press releases and if so what did you achieved? Personally this is the first time when I'm trying and it seems pretty promising. I've had a release in PR.com http://www.pr.com/press-release/61487 and it has been picked up by Google News so now I rank third for the term "directory" http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=directory&btnG=Search+News and first for "web directory" http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=web+directory&btnG=Search I still have no idea how important is this and how it will influence the directory in terms of traffic but if you did that before you may want to share your experience or opinions. Thanks
Well. Some people will definitely find your web site from press releases. When you manage a general directory anyone would find a category to submit website or to find a web site. But press releases have a very different purpose from site promotion. They say you are producing service, products, content and et.
its a great result well done maybe you could report back in a week or two see what improvements it makes to your traffic and submissions
I will do I just wanted to know if someone else did this before and what response did he get in terms of traffic...
PR's are very very effective but the key is in the text layout for the PR and we always use a professional writer right here on DP jhmattern http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=22753 Maybe she will post on this thread because her work is really professional and great value She has so much experience and for sure the upside is you got a very positive ROI by using her
I didn't wrote the press release by myself...someone else did it and also took care of the distribution. For my first release I'm more than happy that it has been picked up by Google News and I was on the top spots for a few hours. I'm just curious how will this benefit to my traffic
Thanks Pete. Yes, I've done a lot of press releases for webmasters, including directory owners - for Aviva, Alive, Romow, BigWebLinks, and several others in the past year or two. Really, the success of a press release will depend on three things: 1. Whether or not you have any real news value. 2. Whether or not you have the release written professionally (not meaning by a professional necessarily, but a well-written, properly-formatted release). 3. Whether or not you choose the correct distribution option for reaching your target audience. News Value In this case, your angle itself is OK (if it's not being done by many, if any, other directories yet). That's going to be the hardest thing for most directory owners to do... come up with something actually newsworthy. Simply launching a general Web directory at this point no longer is - you have to do something different, and it looks like you're trying to do that. Release Quality You probably could have gotten better results with a somewhat better release. In this one there are a few issues I can see just from looking it over quickly: Grammatical errors - For example, every time the word "Web" appears by itself, it should be capitalized when talking about the World Wide Web, you have some punctuation issues towards the end, and the last quote isn't formatted very well. If you're looking for any kind of real coverage, journalists are going to notice those things. Where's the "Why?" - Your first body paragraph shouldn't just say what you're doing, but why you're doing it? Why did you decide to include the promotional video feature? Why can't webmasters just do that themselves? Why should they leave their promotion in your hands in any way? Basically, why should anyone care? I'm not saying it's not newsworthy; only that you're not saying why it is where you should be. Summary - Your summary is supposed to be a very brief introduction to the news angle. Yours sounds slightly cocky and self-promotional. It also completely neglects to even mention your actual news. Headline - What exactly is a "twist" in Web directories anyway? Your headline again doesn't tell anyone what the news is. Unless your site / company name is already known, you generally don't need to include it in the headline - focus on keywords and the news itself. If you really want it there, you're better off listing it by name and not with the .com attached. A lot of people won't even click on the headline if they don't know what you're going to tell them about already. Even fewer would read past your summary. Readers that actually go past the first paragraph are usually even far fewer than that. You need to grab their attention, and you need to keep that. Your headline and summary would probably lose the majority before they even get to the "meat" of anything. Boilerplate - Ummm, where is it? You didn't even bother to add one. To find out what it is, take a look at my article on how to write a press release. Background - Your release really doesn't give any background at all about these videos, how you create them, what webmasters have to provide for you to be able to do that, whether they get to approve them or not before you publish them with their name, logos, etc., whether or not they'll be able to track any video stats or not if it's submitted under your account, or whether they can even choose to opt out if they want to. Your release is short as it is, so there was definitely room to do that. If anything, some of the quote material could have been cut to expand more on the background of the actual news. Distribution I tend to like PR.com, and would recommend them in many cases over other distribution sites. In this case though, you're running a link directory, and therefore should understand the value of direct links, and you should have upgraded to get them. Online distribution sites are a fine starting place when your target audience is webmasters (as with many Web directories). Just don't neglect other options as well (like tech sites, magazines, your local paper, tech editors at other papers, related blogs, etc.), all of which you can submit to manually to improve your chances of targeted coverage and quality backlinks (and the traffic and exposure coming with that). Being ranked first in Google News usually won't last very long, due to the nature of news and constant additions being indexed there. So if you didn't get a surge of traffic by now, you might not. If you have, then hope other news on the topic doesn't come out too quickly. Getting listed there also doesn't constitute "success" for a press release. Whether that helps to lead to more significant coverage is what matters (from related media outlets, blogs, etc. with unique stories being far preferable to simple reprints of the release). Remember too: a press release is not a PR campaign. Press releases are most effective when they're a tool used continually whenever you have real news to share (so keep doing things to make your site newsworthy, and don't submit them when you don't have news). The idea is that they help to build awareness, and maintain exposure to keep you fresh on the minds of members of your target audience.
Well...hmm..what can I say...it seems that my guy screwed up this time Thank you so much for the useful comments, I really appreciate you took time to write all these. Now I need to come up with another unique idea in order to launch a proper press release campaign I will bookmark your username for future press releases. Thank you again for your time
jhmattern Thanks for sharing. Something to be learned from you experience in the field. I have tossed you a little rep and added you to my buddy list for the future.
No live backlink? Where is the live link to your directory? Few people will take the time to visit your directory if no live link is provided. What are the prices? I could not find how much would it cost to make a pr, thanks for the info.