Your Press Release Wants to Be Free
December 16, 2008 by Michael Alexander · Leave a Comment 
So you’ve written a great press release, properly formatted it and packed it with all the newsworthiness you could muster. Now what? It’s time to set your news release free.
I’ve written some about using email to spread your news and that’s a topic I plan to elaborate on sooner or later. You can usually count on getting terrific results by tailoring your email press message to specific journalists, much in the same way a highly tuned email sent to your customers who have opted into your online newsletter can work for you. If you have time and you’re looking for the biggest bang, compile a media list with the email address of all the people you believe would be interested in your news.
If you haven’t compiled a media list that you can use to target your news, or you think using a scatter-gun to blast your message to everyone in your sights is more effective, then a press release distribution service is the way to go.
There are two options: paid and free. Here’s where the old adage, “You get what you pay for” really applies.
The paid name-brand sites are widely read by journalists, have the highest traffic and provide a variety of additional services and tool kits to help you craft and optimize your press releases for search engines.
A significant difference between paid and free services is the paid services actually push releases to journalists, rather than merely stockpiling them with the expectation that Google’s and other searchbots will find them
When I was a working journalist, I regularly visited BusinessWire and PRNewswire, which are the best paid sites I know. Both receive 1000s of press releases each day and that alone makes those sites more visible to searchbots.
Both are similar in the services they provide businesses and they have a variety of packages for everything from startups to major corporations. Both also cater to journalists with RSS feeds, easy access to multimedia, customizable page layouts and provide lists of experts willing to be interviewed for articles.
Other paid PR distribution sites include:
The cost of distributing a press release varies widely and is priced according to distribution by geography, industry, with or without multimedia, with or without SEO and several other variables.
Distributing a press release through one of the paid services starts somewhere around $50 and goes into the $20,000-plus range with a complete package that includes video. The typical range seems to be between $350 and $700 for a press release distributed nationwide but don’t take my word for it. I’ve only used those sites as a journalist. Remember, you are most likely looking for local work, so you’re probable going to be in the $50 dollar neighborhood.
Using a paid service may not seem inexpensive to a small business owner, but it’s cheaper and usually more effective than pay-per-click advertising over the long term.
Shop around, compare Web sites and make some calls.You can also check each site’s metrics to see how much traffic it gets, number of pageviews, Website ranking and other measures. According to Alexa.com, PRNewswire has twice the traffic of BusinessWire. Like I said, you get what you pay for.
It’s free, so what’s not to like?
Free sites, as you expect, reach a fraction of journalists compared to the paid sites and provide fewer business services. Although you won’t get the same quality of tools as paid sites such as the ability to track the effectiveness of your press release campaign, it’s free, so what’s the harm? I wouldn’t rely on them exclusively, however, if I could afford it.
Some free sites I’ve come across include:
There are many, many more of these services. Go to Yahoo!’s Directory to pull up a list of paid and free sites.
I’m not endorsing any site–paid or unpaid. I’ve used some of the free distribution services sites for clients, but I really can’t vouch for any of them because of my limited experience with them.
