5 replies to this topic

[-=seth=-]

has anybody used and had any success with any of the PR submission sites, theres lots out there prnewswire.com, prleap.com, pr.com etc
They all claim to help with seo, however by looking at them it seems little more that article submission, and in that regards most article submissions site are free so i'm not sure if thats much of a benefit.

As for getting press coverage has anybody had any success, do journalist actually read them, they do appear to be chocked full of spam. An online marketing site i was looking at recommended prweb.com, it cost $80 for their basic service which makes me wonder even if a journalist ever reads what i submit as its in $ its clearly directed to an american market, so does that mean i have no chance of any european journalists reading my PR.

$80 dollars isnt going to break the bank, but putting press releases together is time consuming, is it worth it, will i see any benefit, if i publish the cure for cancer will it be lost and buried under a deluge of spam?

thanks

[Randy]

As for getting press coverage has anybody had any success

Yes. When it's a real press release that has real information in it. Journalists have pretty good bs filters too.

I had one site featured on NBC's nationally broadcast Today show a couple of years ago. The NBC folks said they found it from a press release we'd put out. I have no reason to doubt them.

[Hyperformance]

Hey Seth -

Like Randy I have had success with a good press release based on a great (real) topic... it seemed to get to many of the right people/businesses - and as a gravy add-on we experienced a number of times to receive excellent and related incoming links which alone was worth the small investment in their particular industry.

Also like Randy, a few of them also came up with huge strides in awareness, branding, and even joint ventures on and offline. Since those successes, we have always used the same pr firm too - that may matter... as there are many more now then there used to be.

- Scott

(Didn't want to break any rules, so just pm me if interested in who we continue to use)

[-=seth=-]

thanks Scott i would be very interested in hearing your recommendation

[casieg]

Hey Seth,

I'd also like to add in that using PR sites can have a nice search benefit as well. Think Google/Yahoo news, universal search and of course the word of mouth and link benefit (good topic necessary ) as Scott mentioned. If it is a good story it may be worth the cost. Many of the PR services are now offering 'SEO friendly' press releases which allow you to embed links, choose tags, etc. Most of them will also allow you to choose a region if you are concerned with specific geographic targets.

Anyway, hope that helped!

- Casie

[Default_Character]

I think the earlier posters in this thread have taken most of the wind out of my sails, but I'll add my .02 anyway.

While it is very difficult to relate actual sales to the press release, it gets our company name out there on the web on all the sites that picked it up. All of our older press releases can still be found on these sites, even after 4 years when we first stared doing this.

The press release service we use shows about 200k hits for each of those old press releases. Now they've added a lot of fancy things you can do to your release (such as a podcast, etc.), but I would be careful of using these because they are very costly and am not sure if it is worth it. It is interesting to see how the pricing has risen up quite a bit from the first time we did this -- now you have to spend a lot more to get the same features. I decided to only use the upgraded and more expensive features for major releases. I just put up a press release last week and used the least expensive pricing because I was basically just announcing that our company moved to another location.

I always put copies of each press release onto our web site, and I think that lends credibility to our product and company in general. Yes, it is very time-consuming to do this... but we feel that even if we only get one sale as a result of the press release, it was worth it.