Press Release Distribution: to Pay or Not to Pay?

Press release is the basic way of informing the
audience about a person, founder, company, product or service. Successful and
efficient press release can be received by the right person, in the right time
and with the right information. The real professionalism is not only in writing
correct and comprehensive press release, but also in delivering it to the
person who will be interested in publishing it. The international freelance
platform for specialists if linguistic area 2Polyglot shares its experience of
usage of online press release distribution system.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to guarantee any interesting press release will be published. It
is obligatory to understand that journalists receive huge amount of press
releases: some of them get the delivery of several thousand units every week.
It seems like many PR specialists suppose that journalists really read every
press release they receive. But this is physically impossible. A lot of
journalists delete all electronic press releases without even checking it.

Anyway, they are still important. The most frequent reason of the failures is trying to
make everybody like it.

This is not a secret anymore that the usage of a press release has become a popular
SEO tool. But it’s not just it. Press release has much more power than it is
only possible to imagine. Its content helps reach influencers, journalists, consumers
and even investors. Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator said, “In
2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much. Online
press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over
the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining”.

So what is the situation in 2015?

Due to Google’s system of link analysis called Google Penguin, link building is
slowly disappearing from SEO’s “jurisdiction” and striving for becoming a part
of PR. Google obviously discourages the practice of generating inbound links instead
of direct reach of target audience. There appear more and more stricter
requirements for links and this is qualitative content that becomes the first in
the race of search results. Paid backlinks can make things even worse. Trying
to deceive Google is like playing with the fate: one way or another, eventually
your website will get a filter on.

So nowadays, a press release has nothing to do with SEO and link building. The
actual value press release distribution provides is reaching target audience,
not links. Generating unique reads, increasing brand recognition and social
shares are true goals of press release distribution. So interested visitors,
not a place in the list of search results. If you thought about another option,
which is still available – key words in text, than (I hurry to disappoint you)
you will be disappointed that Google has another tool for it too. Google Panda
is aimed to recognize unfair content supersaturated with key words. That is why
there is no difference anymore between content for people and content for search
engines, now there is only Content. So playing with Google is not a good idea.

To purchase or not to purchase paid
press release distribution?

Theory is always only theory. Discussion can last for eternity, but real examples can
show more value of all said above. It is always better to learn from others’
mistakes, than trying to improve the situation after consequences have already happened.
Therefore, the experience of international freelance platform for linguists 2Polyglot will clarify an issue and help
everyone make one’s own decision.

Several press release distribution services were considered for usage:

•   PR Newswire
•  eReleases
•  PR.com
• B2Blogger
• PRNews

In the end, eReleases platform was chosen for distribution. The choice was made on
a base of information it has serious partners, wide database of relevant
resources and many positive feedbacks about this platform from users on the
Internet. eReleases also cooperates with more than 100 thousand journalists and
press releases are being published by Google,
USA TODAY, The New York Times, Yahoo and LYCOS.

Publication conditions

• eReleases
  offers  four different  packages. The cheapest one costs $249 and the
  most expensive one is $499. 2Polyglot
  team has chosen middle package called Buzz Builder:
•  Press
  release (400 words). It should be mentioned that written press release does not
  give the right for any discount.
•  Posting
  press release on 75 related resources.
• Promotion
  with SEO tools (no explanations were provided).

In total

2Polyglot’s press release was published on 70 different resources (not 75 as it was
promised). That was noticed that chosen resources were not the most
authoritative due to low traffic and irregular content update. For the period
of 21 days only 100 visitors clicked the link in press release from all 70
websites. Linguistic freelance platform recognized such result unsatisfied and
defined this promotion method as inefficient.

Furthermore, many other distribution resources cannot warrant publication on authoritative websites
and do not usually provide with any short list (4-7) of guaranteed sites where
press release will be published. They often feed with quantity of guaranteed
publications, but do not say what they are. It means those resources may be
small enough that anyone could post a press release there by oneself for free.
Anyway, the conditions were accomplished, so you had done it at your own risk.

Successful and efficient press release reaches the
right place, in the right time and with the right information. The real
professionalism is not only in writing correct and comprehensive press release,
but also in delivering it to the person who will be interested in publishing
it.

These words explain why distribution campaign occurred to be unsuccessful for
2Polyglot. In fact, the most efficient way of press release distribution is
individual direct negotiation with target resources offering interesting
content, which will attract necessary audience. This method will save money and
provides increasing amount of visits from interested people.