Hello, I have earlier success in playing with press releases and those helped me to gain real fast page-rank for the targeted domain, which after sometime i sold for good cash. This time, i have been working for some long period to put online a new unique business model that does not exist anywhere else on the internet. And i am of course planning to submit a press release. I am here to ask people with some experience to guide me with this. Are there any special recommendations to get better results? Is there any sequence of steps and/or procedure that a submitter shall be following in order to gain better exposure and more media inclusion? What is the amount of money i shall invest in the PR? If possible, please post some screenshots, stats, etc.. Now let's go a little off-topic I do not want to claim inventing the a new myspace.com or some other google here, no i am not. But never the less, and with all the research i have been doing, i have cute estimations which show that the service will start having like 500-1000 new users daily within 45 days of release date. And will hit the Alexa's top 1000 within 90-180 days. So, with such a big thing being made ready. Are there any pre-cautions i shall be aware of? I am asking this because reading the story of Myspace.com for example, show that the creators had no idea that they would be so famoues, and not even 1% prediction that their website will even put yahoo.com far behind if talking traffic terms. Well, just tell me whatever you have in mind.. what would you do if yo are planning to put online something that is reeeeal big? Thanks in advance, Ruslan
I have several articles on www.allinfoaboutmarketing.com with a press release template, an article on how to write each section, tips for writing and online distribution, etc. Check them out as a starting point. I run a small public relations firm, and it's my area of expertise, so you can feel free to ask me any specific questions. I also write a lot of releases for people right here on DP, and have a special at $25 for writing going only until the end of August, so if you choose not to write it yourself, again, just contact me. Feel free to PM me or post here if you need something more specific than the articles there. (btw, they're grouped in one of the main page posts, so they should be easy to find). Jenn
I recently wrote and submitted a Press Release about a new website thru PRWeb. I only paid $40 for the Release and I was reasonably happy with the results. As you are obviously planning now to write and do the release, I will share with you what I did this time around. I decided on a date to do the release about 3 weeks away. Then, I wrote my initial release and came back to it 3 or 4 days later and did some edits on it, after asking a few friends to review what I had written. Then, I submitted it to PRWeb and waited until it got an editorial score. While I was waiting, I sought out people who may be able to help me write a better PR if I got a low Score. The PR I wrote got a score of 4 so I did not need any 3rd party to re-write it. Finally, I decided on the payment amount and settled for $40 for this particular PR. On the date of the PR, I monitored it via PRWeb control panel and over the following week monitored the SERPS ( I used a keyword in the release that was not showing in any serps - just for this purpose ) The Pr generated some traffic and within 3 weeks the search engines returned over 300 results for the keyword. Now, it sounds like your site is going to be much bigger than the one I was launching and would do plenty of research on the places you could do the PR - and hit everything at once. Good luck with your site and I hope this helps you!
OK. Now this is where I have to step in as a PR professional and say "DON'T WRITE YOUR PRESS RELEASES FOR SEARCH ENGINES!!!" A press release is about news; nothing else. It shouldn't need to be written weeks in advance. A real and effective release will be time-sensitive and need to go out asap, b/c that's how real news works by nature. It's pretty rare that you'll have that much notice (unless it's a scheduled event or something for instance). Also, I barely consider a $40 release worth it with PRweb. Here's why: 1. It's not going to get you into the top 30 placements (vital for the best coverage... much better if you're in the top 10). 2. Yes, you'll get live links, and PRweb will submit you to Google news that way. But www.pr.com and www.prleap.com will submit you using their free services, so no reason to pay. Besides, if your story is really that newsworthy, AP will pick it up for free (a real newswire) and give you likely more coverage than you could hope for from prweb. Don't get me wrong. If you're going to upgrade, do it through PRweb. But do it for placement... not just to get the bare minimums. It's not going to help you that much. And keep in mind... the number they list as "pickups" is just their estimate. It has no bearing on how many media outlets actually picked up your story. Don't submit your PR to everywhere under the sun. Go with a good mix of 5 or 6 places at most. Anything else will take you more time for the submission than it'll be worth for the slight added benefit. If you really want to sink time in, do it right and manually submit to relevant media outlets to the appropriate contact people rather than relying on newswires or pay services. Most importantly though, remember that a press release is a "media relations" tool, not an seo tool. If you use them appropriately, and only when you have something truly newsworthy to say, and if you learn how to effectively write for the media, you can realize a much larger benefit from one or two great stories being picked up in large outlets than you'll ever get from search engines. You need to worry about learning how to persuade journalists with your writing. They're not bots. They don't "crawl" your release. If you focus on writing for a machine, you'll never get the best results. And that's my rant for the evening. Jenn
Jenn: It is always a pleasure to read your posts and articles. I just finished writing a press release for my blog using your templates and tips and I am so happy with the result. Thank you so much for your help.
BYTW Jenn, sorry for the double post but do you believe there is a minimum number of word a press release must possess? Thank you
I recently used prweb for a press release. It was my first one so not quite sure whether the stats are good or bad. I upgraded to the $200 release. Jenn, maybe you could shed some light on the figures. I was led to believe that 50-75k was a good number of reads. What do you think?
The reads aren't bad at all for the payment level. The pickups really doesn't mean much imho. It's just their "estimate" and has no bearing on how many bloggers and media outlets actually picked up the story. There are two ways to find out... 1. Hire a clipping service (expensive). or 2. Wait a few weeks and query the title in Google (free, but if they didn't use the exact title or release, it won't show up). Those are actually more pdf downloads than I usually see... usually just a small handful if any. Jenn
cool. And the links stay "live" on the PDF download right? As in, if the click on the link from there PC it will go to my website?
I'm not sure. Just go to PRweb, look for one that's obviously been upgraded (near the top on the main page), and download it to check. So few people, in the situations where I check them, actually download them that it's not worth worrying about. And if you still think it is, read my rant above about worrying too much about links and SEs. Jenn
Those stats were eye opening. I have never used a service like this, but I am going to consider it for sure...