Publishing Press Releases
The launch of MySLP, a new SaaS version of Store Locator Plus, requires marketing and promotion to ensure we get enough traffic to recoup my investment in that project. Just sitting back and waiting for people to find the service or hoping users of the WordPress “buy it and own it” plugin is not a good marketing method. As we start to learn the marketing and promotion world we’re going to need to learn some things. My starting point? Press releases.
This article is my collection of notes on publishing a technical Press Release. What services we find out there. Direct contact information and, eventually, what is working and what is not.
As a point of reference our “limited traffic” Store Locator Plus site gets 35,000 unique visitors per month. Any “news” site with less than 250,000 unique visitors / engaged subscribers is not going to get much traction.
We’ll update this article via content or comments or back-link to it from related articles as we expand our research into promoting press releases.
Overview
A quick summary of services in this article.
- PRLOG – free , $249, $349 (Newswire)
- EIN Presswire – free, $49, $249, $399, $999 (Google News, Topix)
- PRWEB – $99, $159, $249 (Street Insider, International Business Times)
- Newswire – $254
- eReleases – $399 (Associated Press)
- NPR – free (self: MM subscribers)
- Street Insider – $149 (self : 1M subscribers)
- International Business Times – $undisclosed (self: 55M subscribers)
Free Press Release Services
PRLOG
Unique Visitors per month: undisclosed
Email Subscribers: undisclosed
Basic Posting : Free (ad supported)
No distribution. They gather press releases and post them online as content in hopes of increasing readers and ad revenue.
Premium : $249
Premium Plus : $349
Includes Newswire submission a higher-level service listed in this article.
Summary
This is one of the first services we posted our press release to. They put the article online fairly quickly after filling out a handful of forms. They also got EIN Presswire , noted in this article, to start hitting us up to try their service within minutes.
EIN Presswire
Unique Visitors per month: undisclosed
Email Subscribers: undisclosed
First Release: Free
Same as the basic service for a one-time trial.
Basic : $49
A single release that they host on their website. That site shows up on search engines and in Google News and Topix.
Pro : $249
Five releases. They email their members. No report on how many people that is or click-through reporting. They also put it on their Twitter and Facebook sites.
Pro Plus : $399
Ten releases. Add scheduling to the release of press releases. Other than that it looks the same as Pro.
Corporate: $999
Fifty releases. Same as above.
Summary
EIN Presswire was the second service we tried. They give you a “free trial” for your first press release. Like PRLOG we filled out a couple of forms and within an hour they approved our press release and posted it online. They hit us up fairly quickly to purchase a premium upgrade.
They claim to promote your press release but after 24 hours it appears they have only managed to post our own press release on the Linked In account we attached to the service when signing up. That’s OK, but the JetPack service we enabled on our WordPress-based marketing site did the same thing. Though we did get a comment from a contact the day after signing up for EIN Presswire and having them post to Linked In which we did not receive after we published on our own through JetPack. Maybe they are posting the article somewhere different in Linked In.
Now that our free release is over we’ll see how it goes. It basically looks like a “we’ll post it on our website” service, like many of the others.
NPR
Unique Visitors per month: undisclosed
Email Subscribers: undisclosed
Summary
NPR is a well-known national news agency. The allow submissions of articles at no charge in several key categories. However the chances of their finding your article newsworthy and getting it broadcast on their network is slim. If you have something new, exciting, groundbreaking and proven you’ve got a shot.
Premium Press Release Services
Some other services we know about thus far that we’ve not delved into yet.
PRWeb.com
Basic : $99
Put the article on their website.
Standard : $159
Send article to “thousands of news outlets”.
Post to social media.
Advanced : $249
Optimized for “search visibility”.
Sent to premium news sites like “StreetInsider” and “International Business Times“.
Summary
Like most of the press release services it seems their premium offer is nothing more than feeding a release to a higher traffic site. For example, you can push to Street Insider directly for $149 (see below).
Newswire
Single Release : $254
Summary
They send your release to 4500+ news outlets and have a database of 430k media contacts. It is not clear whether they include the featured publication on Yahoo News, AOL, ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, CNN Money, and Bloomberg but not likely at this price. They also “allow you to find and pitch” using their database of 430k media contacts, which means they give you the list but you do the work by the sounds of it.
eReleases.com
Newsmaker : $399
Includes “Buzz Builder”, news via “Associated Press“, and 500 words to 2 industry targets.
Summary
They claim to have 347,000 journalists and bloggers in their database, 200,000 “media points” and 7,000 “syndicated sites”.
Street Insider
Claimed subscribers: 1M
SI Newswire Single Release : $149
Summary
Street Insider is one of the “higher level” business news websites fed by other submission services.
International Business Times
Unique Visitors per month: 55M global / 35MM usa
Summary
The company behind the recently re-released Newsweek magazine, Medial Daily, iDigital Times, and several other online brands.
Local News Outlets
These are places near either DevriX in Bulgaria or Charleston Software Associates in Charleston, SC USA. Local media often has more interest in reporting on companies doing work in the area than regional, national, or international news sources.
Moultrie News
Contact:
Mount Pleasant, SC USA
http://www.moultrienews.com/site/contact.html
Moultrie News is a hyper-local news service that caters to the region east of Charleston known as “East of The Cooper”. We submitted a press release here, no response and no action.
Post & Courier
Contact:
Thad Moore
Technology Reporter
Charleston, SC USA
tmoore@postandcourier.com
(843) 937-5703
The Post & Courier is the only major news service that caters to the Charleston South Carolina metro region. We submitted a press release here, no response and no action.