Press Releses

The power of the press? How much benefit can you expect to get from press releases . I see some guy promoting stuff for friday with a picture of him in swim trunks. How serious is this stuff anyway?

Depending on where the press release is published - they can be very powerful. I use to photograph employees of different companies just for the press releases, and they are effective. However, if I saw a press release with someone in swim trunks - the credibilty would be tossed out the window.

Didn't you already write/issue a release? http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=27784Check the results for that and you'll probably have your answer.

lol...omg to funny not a cheap arse and then gives 10 bucks...lmbo...


OMG! YoU craCk mE Up.

A press release is only as effective as to the information it contains (how news worthy), how well writen it is and if you get it in front of the right people. (meaning more $)

Otherwise, its worth a few back links. Problem with issuing more than one, is the same people will pick it up and then you'll just end up with maybe double the back links from the same eventual sites. The goal is to get in the news. ;)

The main problem right now with Press Releases is quality. Most people don't even know how to properly format one and they are submitting them merely for the link, not the conversion.

We recently took on a PR company that produced extremely professional releases. Were they cheap, no but the amount of business they brought and the image they portrayed paid for them within days.

If you are producing Press Releases merely for the SEO benefit and ignoring content (paying $10 to get a Press Release indicates that) you may be doing your site more harm then good. What good is a link if the rushed and improperly formated Press Release makes your company look bad?

That's the key.

Similarly a client recently got introduced to the power of the Dr. Phil Show. They did a "My house is a Living Hell"... and had contractors come in and fix the "do-it-yourselfer kick@ss I don't know what I F' I'm doing problems... [the client was a contractor referral company]

That sent 10K visitors a day to his website for a week slowly dropping off after 2 weeks.

The wasn't even a "live link".

If you are "news" and you pitch it the right way - and professionally developed - it's a gold mine.

Giving this thread the thumbs up. Good stuff here. I need to get off of my *** and start working up some news releases.

Good solid press releases, through my 35+ years of marketing, in all media have almost always yielded much better returns than print and broadcast ad campaigns. Does the community here believe that Internet press releases are as effective?

I will add a bit more to this. Recognize your weakness! I can write good unique content all day long but sit me down and ask me to write a short, to the point Press Release the way newspapers/magazines et all like them and I am lost. I can write a paragraph about the product or service but it somehow never gets to the level it needs to be.

If you are actually going to submit it to specialist magazines and newspapers, its worth doing the research to see how much it would be to have them written AND distributed by a third party. You can then distribute it yourself online in addition to the other places.

The distribution part is a big one. You can have a perfectly well written Press Release but in my experience it can go right to the bottom of the pile if it wasn't delivered by someone that magazine or newspaper knows or has frequent trusted submissions from. Contacts when it comes to Press Releases are paramount and the prices of the various PR firms take that into account.

My best piece of advice if you are taking on a firm is to be geographically aware (especially in Europe). We now have 3 PR firms to handle three geographical areas because each one is a specialist in their country/region for the subject matter. This justifies the cost for us as it would be way more expensive for us to research and build contacts in these regions so its a real bargain IMHO.

Sorry to bring the thread slightly off topic as I realize it is about online Press Releases but this month this has been our major focus.

Jason... I have always depended upon the print media for PR exposure. You are absolutely correct... a good PR firm can get you placed well. Off topic also: what is amazing is that sometimes even negative press is a positive thing.

I agree to a point although managing bad PR is infinitely harder in my opinion. Its not one for a beginner and if you don't handle it right it can bring your site/company to its knees.

I have seen relatively few examples of people pulling it off compared to good PR and it seems to depend greatly on industry. It is truly an art if done correctly.

Just attended an internet/Press Release forum. One point of interest is that typically the PR firms only keep the press release live on their server for a relatively short term. These guys said they kept the Press release live for 6 months. Never knew that.


To me this is sort of like linking into an article to drive it higher in rankings for its keyword phrase. Otherwise articles tend to diminish in visability over time.

Dave

I'm brand new to the idea of writing a release for PR websites, thinking releases were the eminent domain of print media. The two things that helped me most in writing good releases was when I was with my wife at one of her corporate functions, and I stole a copy of their media kit, and when I bought the book Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. Our visibility has continued to grow from the steps we've taken because of what we learned from those two things.


SEO_AM, I'm with you. We've benefitted greatly from our work with print media. Personal contact seems to be part of that equation, where the web seems like strictly content crunching and automated whizbangs. But ad campaigns topping press releases when measuring bottom line, I'm not certain. For some areas of business, yes. For others, not. We've seen both sides.

And Jasontnyc is on the mark with knowing your weaknesses, PR or otherwise. He mentions being geographically aware - I think this is pertinent. In addition, when dealing with a language that has many dialects from country to country, when creating content, pick a dialect and stick to it. In a previous life I spent the better part of a short-lived position trying to knock heads together to get an answer on which dialect of a language was the 'correct' one, so we could create all documents and marketing pieces in that dialect. I just about went postal.

My experience has shown that a well written Press Release can actually hurt your optimization efforts. I've made two press releases for my site so far, and some of the places which published my release ended up outranking my site for keywords in the article. The problem was easily fixed with some on-site optimization, but overall the press release did more harm than good when it came to SEO.