What is the best way to get your store's news heard?
Press release have always been a key best practice for small business owners, but today, there are so many options available for spreading the word about your products, services or store news. Electronic press releases, either syndicated through email or posted online, can be a great source of traffic for your website, plus, they can be an instant SEO booster as some syndication networks allow for your release to be indexed by search engines. Lost on where to begin? Not sure of the differences between manually sending releases and using a wire service? Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.
The Basics
Let’s start out at the beginning. A press release is designed to be a news flash that can be picked up by reporters and then republished or redistributed through different media channels. Today, a single press release has the potential to be shared online through social media, radio, video, blogs, online news organizations and a variety of other media outlets.
The key to getting any release shared is by ensuring that it’s high quality and interesting. Countless press releases cross the inboxes or fax machines of reporters, editors, and bloggers. You have to be able to stick out from the crowd and really make an impression.
So what should you do when you have a well-written, engaging press release? Syndicate and distribute! But which method is best? Should you send individually written pitches manually through email? Or should you use a wire service to do it for you? Let’s take a closer look.
The Manual Send
For those who lack the budget to hire a PR pro to handle distribution of a press release, manually sending press releases to reporters, bloggers, and editors can be the best option. While an incredibly time consuming task (just think, gathering the contact info, writing each email, hitting send 1,000 times, etc.), it has some advantages.
Taking the time to send your release manually allows for much more customization of your message, which can sometimes earn you better coverage. One way you can customize your press release pitch is by commenting on the reporter/blogger/editor’s recent coverage of a certain topic. Another is by noting your relationship to the publication. Are you a huge fan? Do you connect with the reporter or paper on Twitter or Facebook? Sharing these kinds of details can personalize your release and increase your chances of building a solid relationship with a media outlet, which can definitely pay off in the future.
On the other hand, it can take hours upon hours to craft individual pitches and send them off to the right inboxes. If you find yourself with little time to get work done, let alone send pitches, then you may want to take a look at press release wire services.
The Wire Service
A press release wire service is just that: a service. This quick and easy press release distribution tool allows for you to send your release to hundreds if not thousands of different media outlets based upon your industry or targeted audience. In addition, many wire services allow for your press release to be published online, which means that it has the potential to be crawled and indexed by search engines and of course, you know what that means: more potential for more traffic. Finally, press release wire services often include some kind of reporting so that you can get a better idea of how your release is doing out there. Some wire services allow you to look at metrics like how many times the release was opened, read, or interacted with (links clicked within).
However, there is a downside to the wire service and the main disadvantage is that of cost. For a single release, you may end up paying a few hundred dollars just to syndicate it at a basic level. If you can make the investment, great! If not, then you may want to look at alternatives. Also, on the downside, with a wire service, you lose that personal touch often provided through a customized, manually sent release. That personal touch can make or break your press release’s acceptance, especially since a wire service doesn’t allow for you to craft individual greetings, salutations, or comments for all of your press release destinations.
The Bottom Line
If you have the time but not the money and you value the personal touch, then go for manual sending. However, bear in mind that it’ll extremely difficult to cover as many news outlets as a wire service. If you lack the time but have the money to do so, use a wire service to ensure that you get the most coverage possible as well as some nifty reporting metrics which can help you determine your success. However, remember that you lose that personal touch when you use a wire service to distribute a release, which can make building media relationships much more challenging.
