Has anyone had any success with press releases ? I have been looking at this form of marketing lately.
I have read many of people in here having success going that route..I myself have not tried it yet but I will soon with my new site coming out. Also I think for it to work your site has to be unique, or a site that people can use... Good Luck Jason
If you distribute your press-release with the help of some well-known and authoritative services you will surely have a great success. Of course if your PR is interesting, really newsworthy and written well. So with it you will have targeted traffic (good PR services, like PRWeb, for example, distribute press-releases to a great number of media), you will get good links with the anchor you need and you may be noticed by journalists interested in your business Good like to your press-release
First of all, remember that press releases aren't "marketing," they're PR. They're not primarily designed to be a "hard sell" method leading to direct end results like sales and visitors. Instead, they're about exposure and disseminating a newsworthy message. That builds recognition and trust through coverage from decent media pickups, which then in turn leads to a better image, and more traffic and high quality backlinks over time. One release will do significantly less than doing what you really should be focused on... finding ways to continually make your company / site newsworthy (the more people are exposed to it, the more they'll think of it and help to spread the word). And in light of that, yes, lots of people get a lot of exposure from them which in the end leads to things like sales (think of a book release) to visitors (think of things like Myspace's early days through when they started getting massive exposure). On the other hand, if you send out crap releases for quick backlinks you risk more than you gain. First of all, those immediate backlinks usually aren't high quality (scraper sites, on the PR site itself and then buried in low-ranking archive pages, etc.). Also, if you repeatedly post news releases that aren't newsworthy, no one will take you seriously from a media standpoint later when you really do have something newsworthy to say. Anything you post publicly can hurt your reputation as much as it can help it. So make sure you're not using them in a way that makes you look like nothing but a wire spammer.
Jenn, I think that was a great post with some really good advice. Beside PR web and local media do you recommend any other places to send your press release? Jessica
If you're mostly worried about getting into news engines, go with things like PR.com, PRleap.com, or PRurgent.com. If you want it in front of journalists, go with wire distribution services if you can't do it yourself (PRnewswire, Businesswire, Marketwire, etc.).
It's not the site itself that necessarily has to be newsworthy. You can do something newsworthy, or tie the site to a larger news story, using a quote from the site owner on the larger issue as a leadin for citing the website. Give me a sample site, and I'll give you an example of something newsworthy about it, or something it could be tied to.