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How To Select News Release Distribution Services

11/06/2013 By Jayme Soulati

News releases are distributed in a variety of ways:

One-to-one media relations from public relations professionals to media

A distribution via a media list developed via Cision, Vocus or other media databases

An online only news release distribution service e.g. PR Web

A traditional wire like PR Newswire, BusinessWire or Marketwired which also blend and distribute with online outlets

There are resellers of these services that may have a limited distribution or fewer bells and whistles. What’s often a feature for companies watching the bottom line of out-of-pocket expenses is price. Resellers come in less than the primary suppliers; which features are sacrificed for price? It’s hard to know.

In fact, it’s hard to know the best recommendation any more for clients and companies. Recently, I was asked my professional opinion on the difference between the online only news release distribution service compared to the more traditional wire.

I’m going to try to provide thoughts via an in-depth analysis of metrics from a very recent distribution for a client. Keep reading to hear my thoughts and do add yours, too?

Online News Release

Prior to Google switching up news release optimization and requiring no-follow links for online news dissemination, there was a creeping practice of “SEO PR” where some professionals were optimizing public relations content for search marketing benefit.

Back in the day about three years ago, results for online news releases were fabulously successful and companies realized high traffic to websites as a result. Today, times are a bit rougher; there are hundreds of news releases issued every single day from a variety of platforms and channels.

The suite of outlets picking up news releases via online only distribution is impressive, but when you look closely at the outlets, they may not be the best places for the news, especially if the news is a niche topic for a business-to-business audience.

Metrics for Online News Release Distribution via PRWeb (Actual)

57,489 impressions from a feed or web page
1,096 reads — number who loaded a full version
49 interactions — clicks, download, forward, website interaction
109 online pick up

When you examine the outlets that picked up the news from the traditional wire, they are more popular news sites with a slew of broadcast TV websites, daily papers and business journals.

Metrics for PR Newswire Distribution (Actual via eReleases reseller)

(eReleases report says it distributes news to 5,900 websites and traditional news rooms with 1.5 million views of news releases; PR Newswire says it distributes to 200,000 media and 8,000 websites.)

2371 Views

0 Downloads

When you look at the data only, the online distribution service wins by a long shot; but, are numbers always accurate? No, you need the interpretation, and that’s what we’re trying to do here; but, there’s a missing link.

Website Analytics Required

When a company is putting news on both the online only and traditional wire service (with some online outlets, too), the best idea is to do a split test with a link on one of the services or a different quote and a different link or quote on the other distribution service.

Also, understanding traffic to web pages via Google analytics or Clicky is helpful and rounds out the picture. Without incorporating these data into the full analysis, it would be hard to determine which distribution service is better.

Pricing

PRWeb has five levels of pricing from $99 to $499 depending on whether the news is a multi-media news release with images and video or merely an extremely basic version.

PR Newswire is a membership service and members receive pricing accordingly. This service, however, is the absolute top of the line with all the real and required services publicly traded global companies need…and more.

eReleases is a reseller of PR Newswire and they do a great job. They have tiered pricing, too, with a “personal publicist” service. I use them often for news distribution on the PR Newswire. The difference is you don’t get everything PRNewswire offers, and the price reflects that.

Marketwired phoned me yesterday to inform me more about its 10 vertical distributions with emphasis on the Associated Press

What Is The News

To make a determination about which service to use, professionals have to analyze the news. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Is the news national, breaking news?
Is there a time element to the news?
Is it specialty niche news that appeals to a specific segment?
Is it for trade media in vertical markets?
Is it business-to-business news or consumers with wide appeal?
Is it regional news to a smaller audience?
Does the news tie in with a seasonal event, current event, or trend?
Is it oriented to research supported by evidence, proof points or data?
Is the news investor related for a publicly traded company?
Is the company a startup, corporation or non-profit?
Is the news global? Should you launch simultaneously on several continents?

Knowing whether the news is important enough to warrant national distribution is the responsibility of the media relations professional. Media relations professionals will also know when to use online distribution only, wire service only, or both.

Best Analysis

So, with all of the above which doesn’t clearly or definitively point to one over the other, the best analysis is frequency. In order to understand which distribution service may provide best results, then consider this:

Get five news releases out the door using both services

Ensure the news is valuable and more hard hitting

Analyze results from reports and compare data side by side

Incorporate news content into that analysis, too

In My Professional Opinion…Taking into consideration all of the factors above, here is my professional opinion about which service provides better opportunity.

The answer is very lawyerly — it depends.

1. Look at the quality of the news
2. Determine who should get the news
3. What is the objective — traffic, views, clicks, earned media
4. Incorporate analytics from start to finish
5. Distribute five to seven news releases and do a comparative analysis
6. Review the metrics and conduct your analysis

B-to-B Firms Need Content Marketing

10/30/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Not everyone using device for notes! #convergesouth via soulati

You’re a business-to-business firm; perhaps a mid-sized business with no marketing team. You know you need marketing; however, beyond setting up a basic one-dimensional website you’re unsure what comes next.

Sound familiar?

It should and does, most likely. There are many organizations, firms, companies and business units scrambling to piece blended marketing together in order to communicate and sell to business audiences.

While there’s research everywhere saying B-to-B marketing is blending and blurring with B-to-C marketing, there are still firms that will never market to mass audiences of consumers. There are still businesses that will remain steadfast with its services offering and sell to other businesses and never to consumers.

It’s this type of business, often with an entrepreneurial approach I’m thinking about in this article today.

In order to elevate the firm’s brand and earn exposure, there are a variety of program elements to recommend. There’s one approach, however, that is the strongest recommendation and that’s content marketing.

Power Up The Blog

The first best recommendation is to launch a firm blog. The blog is owned media; you control the message and frequency of the writing. It can become the traffic hub for all types of content creation, including:

• Educational information
• Q&A with a guest
• What Is…Series
• Themes explored and explained
• Guest profiles/features
• Breaking news
• Events announcement
• Recap of a presentation + SlideShare deck
• New product launches

Share on Google+ and LinkedIn

Every B-to-B firm should claim its brand identity on Google+ business page and LinkedIn company page. The owners of the firm need to develop personal profiles on each and begin building their networks on these social channels.
All the blog content being written should get shared on these channels alongside industry articles relevant to the firm’s services and interest.

Blend Digital With Content Marketing

When we suggest digital marketing, it means developing content to generate leads. This content can be free downloadable material like an e-book, white paper or research. It can also be a thought piece on a related issue or perhaps a tip sheet or news bulletin.

There are landing pages developed to encourage people to submit an email for the content, and your firm starts creating a list with which to engage in the future.

It’s not as simple as it sounds; however, when you imagine the vast number of users combing the web for information, your content marketing has to be highly useful. Instead of giving it away free, add an email capture form and consider how you’ll keep people interested with your informational content.

Consider a Message Map

When you’re unsure of how to present the firm to external audiences, there is a nifty tool called a Message Map that helps provide answers to all the 5Ws of the firm. A Message Map is helpful in extrapolating answers from executives and getting approval from leadership on how best to position a company going forward.

This book provides a step-by-step approach on how to Message Map. You can consider its purchase right here https://MessageMapping.co.

https://messagemapping.co

The Happy Friday Series: Positively Peggy

10/04/2013 By Jayme Soulati

When I launched this series on Jan. 11, 2013 quite by happenstance, I had no idea where it would go, what it would become, or how I would write on happiness every Friday. I instinctively invited the very happiest person I know online and with whom I’ve never spoken or met, to kick off the first official guest post for the series.

She accepted my invitation with relish, and did me and us justice; The Happy Friday Series was official and rolling.

Every Friday since January, I’ve been jazzed with a cadre of #RockHot guest authors. People who have shared their most personal thoughts and feelings, and people who have shared their passions about what puts smiles in their hearts. The series hasn’t been off the hook giggles; it’s been about life and the pursuit of happiness. Sometimes we find that happy in odd ways, with one little bit of graciousness and generosity.

As the series has continued and my invitations to many to author here have become more sparse and peoples’ time has become less to commit, I’m turning the tables to you.

This series is taking a turn; it’s my turn to thank each and every one of you for your generosity of sharing and caring right here.

And, so, today, I thank Peg Fitzpatrick for her spirit and generosity for kicking off this series right here.

Peg, Positively Peggy, writes a blog that is always generous. She’s a teacher extraordinaire, she shares happiness for real with her community, and if you don’t follow her, you’re truly lacking.

Peggy is one of those sincerely genuine nurturers and givers. She puts herself last, she puts her community first.

She’s a managing partner at 12Most.com, she manages the Google+ community for APE, The Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, she is on all social channels, and she’s writing her own book. If you link to that blog post of hers, you’ll get a positive sense of this woman’s creativity and how she teaches you with relentless giving.

May I say, she’s forever in smiles, too?

Please give Peggy a nod your way; she will imbue positivity and inspire creativity — promise.

Peg Fitzpatrick, thank your for your Happy Friday. You are #RockHot!

Who’s Monetizing Online?

09/23/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Every day another someone from a really cool company, blog, blogging community, organization, or other network asks me to write for them, speak to them, brainstorm about the exchange of content, consider paying a fee to join a network, or hawk a product pitched from the far reaches of Russia and India.

And, I rarely say no because who knows what doors may open as a result of that opportunity?

What’s happening is my stretch is thinning dangerously. The offers are ubiquitous, and as a starter, I’m jazzed about what’s new and next. They say a sucker is born every minute; perhaps you’re reading one right now.

But, I can’t think like that. What I’m doing by accommodating most everyone’s requests is building a brand that appears to be #RockHot solid, so I’m told. It feels that way to me, as well. And, here’s the elusive question:

Who’s Monetizing?

The answer is…few.

My friend Tim Bonner, a UK stay-at-home dad, informed me recently he made $300 on his niche site. Not sure what he’s hawking, but I informed him in a tweet I was envious. I’ve also watched his meteoric rise from being a sometime daddy blogger to a snappy smart tech geek blogger who experiments with Google do-not-follow links and writes about it. Awesome.

I know my friend Jon Buscall, CEO of Jontus Media in Sweden, is an extraordinarily busy podcaster and dad to a gazillion Basset hounds. He has earned cash recommending podcasting equipment and selling it via an Amazon affiliate program.

In that same program, I made about $10 once, and I also was pitched to run a blog post on another blog for $75. My first book, Writing with Verve on the Blogging Journey (you can buy it on Kindle for $3.95), is a collection of blog posts about my favorite topic of blogging brought in $85 from the publisher (who took a cut after Amazon took a cut). That’s truly the extent of my monetization.

I know that SpinSucks Pro requires membership, and really good content is sold to folks on SpinSucks. People can register or buy into a webinar for $50 to hear professional speakers on professional topics. Good on them.

But, I want to know who’s truly monetizing huge?

All of the peeps above come from the content/traditional marketing and PR realm. The ability to monetize takes knowledge of API and back ends, building and programming of websites, addition of shopping carts and management of digital marketing calls to action, forms and landing pages.

Do you have all that knowledge under your hat?

Nope, didn’t think so.

The Conundrum of Monetization

That’s the conundrum of late. We who can develop the substance and slap a price tag on it need the techies to join the team and figure out the platform on which to sell the products. Recall I said Tim Bonner earned money on his “niche” site.

What that means is Tim found a specialty topic or product, developed a new site oriented to that product and began to sell. His earning potential is in its earliest stages; however, he’s found the methodology and hopefully the product to keep on with residual income.

Digital Marketing Is An Answer

I see many of these passive income bloggers who started way early building an email list. Their lists are massive of trusting individuals who came to their site for some reason or another. When another product is hawked, that list of trustworthy and hopefully loyal community members are more inclined to make a second purchase. All of a sudden, that network of thousands is buying everything hawked by that trusted figurehead.

To make this happen, you need knowledge of digital marketing; inbound marketing as HubSpot calls it. I’ve been in HubSpot school all year. As a solopreneur, the ability to do it all is daunting; the time and knowledge and effort it takes to learn new things is terribly exciting, however extremely fatal to making a living the traditional way – with a handshake and results-driven pure work on behalf of a client.

Monetization Requires A Team

I’ve come to realize I don’t have what it takes to monetize alone. I need to build a team with a tech pro who can help program a site (a simple WordPress site is all we need), a digital marketer who can manage and nurture the list, design the calls to action and add them as widgets in the sidebar of the site, write the landing pages, and consult on that back-end of the site.

The most critical part of the team is one who builds the products and content to bring in the cash. That’s me. If I could free myself up to truly concentrate on product development and trust my team was standing by to facilitate their ends of the triangle, we’d be golden.

So, who’s on board?

Use EverPost To Influence Klout

08/19/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Via a LinkedIn group, a pitch came from someone I didn’t know asking for a review of EverPost.co. I let it sit and slide to the bottom of the priority list until a better time to find time.

About EverPost

To my utter delight, EverPost is the simplest tool I’ve come across for content shares of others’ material.

You register free with Twitter or Facebook.

Choose which channels you want to share on — either LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Select five categories of topics you’d like to follow.

Voila! A board appears with content from a variety of sites in the categories of topics you want to peruse.

Click share or auto-schedule, and your share is on its way to the channels you selected.

It’s so simple, and there’s a plethora of content at your fingertips to push out to the Interwebz.

Why I Love EverPost

Did I say it’s simple?
There is zero learning curve; sign up and go.
I do want to share good content without strings attached; this enables that.
I get to share a wide range of topics from one dashboard. If I get tired of posting content in one category, then I go back to the drop-down menu and select another after deleting one of my chosen five.
There are no comments from the dashboard; however, you can go to the blog and read the entire post before sharing (ahem, as you’re supposed to).
The tweets show up with the author’s Twitter ID; they can see that a new person is sharing their material.

Klout Is About Influence

Triberr, my fave blogger sharing platform (please ask to join my tribe!), is getting into the influence game. That means influence scoring is going to be more about the Klout number, too.

If you’re at all concerned about lots of shares to keep the Klout score high, then you need to use EverPost.

In about 10 minutes, you can share 20 blog posts. Yes, you can scan the post and vet it prior to sending, too.

I find it always a challenge to concern myself with keeping my Klout score high. I don’t have the ability to sit around on the Interwebz and share content all day. Were I to be able to, my influence score would be higher than it is now.

Perhaps I’m going to use EverPost every day this week to see if I can sustain a higher Klout score just so those numbers prove I’m really an influencer. LOL.