Press release versus news release

The traditional term “press release” implies the target group, namely the print and online media. The editor or publisher has the final say of what is published. However, the term press release is more and more being replaced by the term news release. Why?

According to PRWeb, with online news releases companies don’t have to send releases only when something significant has happened or will happen, and only to journalists. They can appeal directly to the end user and the buyers. This means that news releases can be used as a marketing tool.

This is a big commercial opportunity for the generic wire services and online PR distribution companies.

News that editors usually would classify as inappropriate for publishing can now easily produce hits in the Internet. Thousands of websites will publish such releases verbatim – thanks to news syndication. The monitoring reports show every place the release has run, including top news sites – excellent for showing to clients! If people are searching the Web for your exact subject, they’ll probably find the release. That’s the theory.

But this is not always the case. Searching the Web for specific keywords mentioned in a press release (and with keywords I don’t mean the company name) will produce many results but rarely the news release.

So every company has to decide for themselves if the B2C distribution model via syndication is useful for their business.

In the next post:
How can all this help me increase media impact?