Comments on: PRWeb.com results disappoint

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:59:14 +0000

Great comments Julia. Thanks for all the detail!

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:23:30 +0000

Hi Daniel,
There were a number of things that you didn’t do that professional PR people would have done. I do tech PR for B2B ERP software vendors, so I have no vested interest in my comments for myself or PRweb.com. I have used PRweb.com, and they’ve given my clients great backlinks, that have — as you do and more releases — and I’ve had up to 800 readers for one well timed release: 9 am, has a header that is topical and news worthy, and is professionally written. PRweb.com is great for backlinks, boosting google rankings and seo. You seem to think that having spent $80 was a lot for a press release. News alert: It’s easy to spend $800 on businesswire.com for a press release. PRweb.com has to have someone on their staff physically review your press release and post it…that’s why there was a + 24 hour delay. They even state that there will be that kind of delay on their website.

You are building a business. You will need to think long term and you will need to consider that you may need to call producers and learn to pitch your product in 10-20 seconds ONLY. You will need to call magazine and newspaper writers and pitch them – 20-30 second message ONLY. And reading one book is not going to give you the experience you may necessarily need to understand what some people spend 2-3 years in college to do and others have been doing for 1 to 35 years or more. You are competing against every single other person out there who wants to get the press’ attention.

You should have started your campaign — not release — campaign, in mid-November, so that you could get the writers interested, confirmed for an article, do an actual interview, and then give them MORE than enough time to do their piece….well AHEAD of their own holidays. Even writers often take time off and to be with their families at Hanuka, Christmas, New Years and Christian Orthodox Christmas. TV stations’ producers do not call you, unless they are Oprah, and you are are already the hottest thing since sliced bread and have done about 200 interviews.

I wish you luck and hope you’ve gotten some better advice since last yaer. Most of the TV producers, writers and bloggers I know are so overworked. You must help them by getting your story to them by more than just an online wire service. Good luck!

By: Rich Milton

Rich Milton — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:48:32 +0000

Hi Daniel, Personally, I think your timing was perfect for the press release. As you know fitness clubs get the most new members in January. IMO you're much better off targeting fitness media sources directly than using costly services such as PRWeb. I'm an editor for a Manufacturing News Portal which covers the manufacturing community. Although not related to your niche (unless you manufacture fitness goods or food supplements) it's an example that "media targeting" is the best way to go. Find editors of fitness magazines and blogs and send them your press release.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:16:22 +0000

Hi Doug,

Since you asked I just logged in and looked at what PRWeb says. Based on their numbers it’s gotten a lot of impressions and several hundred page reads. In my particular case it never really provided much benefit.

As far as the free press releases, I did get some search engine positioning with them for my target keywords, but I’ve since neglected them and lost any gains.

By: Doug McLaulin

Doug McLaulin — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Now that you are months after the fact are you seeing any benefits from the initial PRweb release? Also, what benefits, if any, did you find from using the free press release distribution? I enjoyed the post and look forward to hearing what you have done with PRweb since this post.

Thanks,

Doug

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:58:54 +0000

Frank,

Thanks for pitching in. I’m sure those links will be very helpful for people that read this post. I think you’re right that I was lacking in strategy. Hopefully my post points that out.

By: Frank Strong

Frank Strong — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:45:22 +0000

Hi Daniel — thanks for a very thoughtful post — clearly you’ve put some time into this. There are, as you point out, a variety of factors that can impact your results, targeting, timing, content, newsworthiness and appropriate search terms among others. One thing we at PRWeb try to encourage is to get clients thinking about a strategy, rather than just issuing one off releases. There are also a wealth of useful tips on PRWeb.com that might be helpful. In addition, I’d offer up these case studies for consideration. http://bit.ly/83sUkn and http://bit.ly/53pOtZ.

For disclosure purposes, I am the director of PR for Vocus and PRWeb.

By: Creepy Google Stalker – interest based advertising | Daniel Watrous

Creepy Google Stalker – interest based advertising | Daniel Watrous — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:20:51 +0000

[...] PRWeb.com results disappoint [...]

By: Jenny Franklin

Jenny Franklin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:41:20 +0000

In my limited experience with PRWeb, I didn’t see significant traffic right away, but now 19 months after I did a release through them, I still pick up a few visitors to one of my sites from the PRWeb ‘archives’ or other outlets picking up the old release.

While you might look at it as a fiasco, much as I originally did, but I found that my releases with PRWeb create backlinks long term, and still get picked up, used and seen by prospective visitors many months after the release. Even when it is a time related release.

One release I know of was released when my cousin was running for Congress in 2004. It’s STILL being picked up from time to time (Last pickup we’ve seen was December 2009), and when it gets picked up somewhere, there’s usually a little traffic to his old campaign site. Even though he chose not to run again since then.

Hopefully this helps put it into perspective.