Why Free PR Distribution Services Don’t Work

Free press release distribution services rely on search engine visibility. Search engine visibility is surely important for consumer news, but I doubt that it is for B2B news. Reaching let’s say 1,000 ‘cold’ web surfers that result in no feedback, media pickup or sales is not the same as obtaining targeted media coverage where readership can easily total tens of thousands or more. A visitor who stumbles across a news headline in Google is a cold lead. Someone who reads an actual article about your company and seeks out your website is a warm lead. I would take one warm lead over one hundred cold leads any day of the week. In the end, it’s about ROI (return on investment).

Most free and low-cost PR services never address distribution of your press release to the media. They only generate cold leads. Don’t get me wrong, free press releases serve a purpose: You can see your competitor’s pay-per-click advertisement on your press release Brilliant! At least for the pay-per-click company and for the free press release site!

No influence on your search engine ranking. The backlinks to your website from the free press release provider’s website rarely yields anything more than anecdotal impact on your search engine rankings. The press release provider’s website usually gets the improved search engine rankings from backlinks to your press release on its site, which you don’t own or control. It’s a great business model — for the press release provider. You provide the content, but the press release website benefits most from any traffic and from the ad revenue and/or search engine ranking.

The sad reality is that many companies will never try press releases again after playing the free press release game, having decided that press releases just don’t work.

 

Does News Syndication Increase Website Visibility?

Do you believe that news syndication is an ideal backlink generator? Search engines view backlinks as a “vote” for your site from another and the more backlinks the higher the visibility of your website.

Let me tell you this:

• Syndicated content is usually not stored in an archive. After a couple of days or weeks, your news (and possible backlink) has vanished.

• A syndicated press release is often located on a deep-linked page (not the homepage) which is cluttered with ads. Such pages have a low PageRank and the backlinks are of low value.

Most syndicated websites are anything but biotech-related. Traffic from irrelevant websites will not generate leads or sales. Only a few biotech websites post syndicated news and could produce high value backlinks, provided:

• The embedded links have not been stripped by the posting process (which is often the case) and

• The news was really stored in an archive (which is not often the case).

One of the big generic wires charges around US$250 for the lifetime hosting of press release that includes (permanent) backlinks to your website. If news syndication (a syndication network can easily include 500+ websites)  were really such a reliable backlink generator, a single PR distribution would be worth more than US$50,000 according to this pricing model!

The Value of Free PR Tracking Reports

Does your wire service provide a free report with links to the ‘published’ release? What are these reports worth?

Many PR practitioners do not understand the difference between a (free) tracking report and a (costly) clipping report. The tracking report is based on news syndication and gives you the instant gratification of seeing your press release go live. A clipping report monitors your media coverage to find what’s being said about your organization, competitors or industry. For such a service you have to pay an extra fee that can easily exceed 1,000 USD per month.

What generic wire services say about their free reports

It ‘delivers links to your press release where it appears on third party web sites. The service samples a fixed set of web sites and provides immediate evidence of your press release’s online visibility.’

You receive ‘tracking over [our] proprietary global network of websites [to which] your release was distributed.’

Has an editor really seen the press release? — Who knows? Who cares (except you)?

One generic wire service even admits that syndication is suitable for people who are ‘not interested in reaching journalists and media directly.’

PR Metrics
For companies who cannot afford expensive clipping tools, the only true metric is whether you get media pickup (check Google!) and feedback from your network and customers as a result of a press release. News tracking reports are nothing more than a proof of distribution.

Syndication: A PR Distribution Mechanism

Syndication is a form of licensing news content to a network of websites. Some media websites embrace syndication because it lets them provide authoritative content on their sites without developing it themselves. In times of low budgets, this is a resource-saving idea. But does it benefit the company issuing a press release as well?

Syndication does not target media directly
Syndication is suitable for people who are ‘not interested in reaching journalists and media directly.’ This is at least what a big generic wire service writes. This means that syndication does not automatically have your press release reviewed by an editor. If a generic wire service has 500 websites in its syndication network and every website posts (syndicated) press releases, then – theoretically- your news has a high reach. But in truth, syndication is of limited use only as 1) most syndicating websites are irrelevant to the biotech industry and 2) people preferably rely on newsletters, feeds or apps for news. This is why it is so important to target the editors of the trade media!

Syndication reports can be misleading
If you are a client of one of the generic wire services you often receive a free news tracking or release monitoring report that contains links to the published press release. A closer look reveals that many links do not originate from the media websites. For example, links that contain financialcontent.com, studio-5.financialcontent.com, or even the domain of the generic wire service in the URL. In those cases the news is not really published on the media website. It just appears to be so, and anyone who believes that this link is a clipping has been fooled.

Syndication is an easy and cheap way of news distribution
News distribution through syndication can be easily automated. Automation leads to the reduction of staff that was once needed to create a data base of editors, news preferences, etc. with the aim of building and maintaining media lists. This does not necessarily mean that generic wires do not employ people to do this kind of work anymore. But I have the impression that the process of news distribution through syndication is prevailing more and more. The more traditional, one-to-one news delivery via e-mail is much more labor intensive, but it is also much more effective and that’s why we adhere to it.

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?