New Public Relations, Social Media, Web Content — Free Press Release Directories Help Your News Gain Traction

Social Media and Content Fundamentals with Laurie Dunlop

Distribute your news

A press release is a great way to present newsworthy content for your readers. However, the cost can be prohibitive for a small business or association to subscribe to the big press release distribution sites. Before you shell out $350 or more to get your news noticed, you might consider registering for a few of the free directory websites. While the free sites do not normally contain links, video embeds, or graphic images, they do receive notice via Twitter, blogs, and search engines.

Before you launch into submitting your press release to any directory, ensure it is well written and targeted directly to your key online audience. David Meerman Scott writes extensively about online press release value. Here is a link to his blog post, the new rules for press releases.

Once you write your release targeted to your key audience, using your keywords, you can use hubspot’s press release grader to determine whether you have some revising to do.

If your social media budget is tight, register for free press release directories to share your content online.

www.24-7pressrelease.com
www.i-newswire.com
www.pr.com
www.pressbox.co.uk
www.przoom.com
www.free-press-release-center.info
www.clickpress.com
www.prlog.org

If you use a free press release directory and would like to share its domain, please add to the list!

Next we’ll take a look at distribution for high value “big news” announcements.

twit6


Technology Blogs - Blog Rankings

Bookmark and Share

By Laurie Dunlop

December 23rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm

Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 Comments

  1. Jennifer January 21st, 2010 at 11:03 am | #

    Hi Laurie! Thank you so much for the post. I was wondering what is the best method to figure out what the dollar amount value would be for a press release that is published. I work for a non-profit and am trying to report on what the media value would be if we had paid for ad space. Any recommendations you have to figure this out would be great. Thanks!

    Jenn

  2. Laurie Dunlop January 25th, 2010 at 12:20 pm | #

    Jenn,

    Great question! You can use the same theory used for traditional PR. For instance, if your press release was used in a trade publication you would calculate the column inches of the article and estimate the equivalent cost in advertising space that publication would bill. If your press release is picked up by an online publication, you could calculate the space and compare it to their charges for a banner ad.

    The calculation would be trickier if your press release was picked up by a blogger. In that instance, I recommend you determine the blogger’s value to your non profit. If blogger A has a high following and strong influence in your niche market you would assign a greater value to his discussion on your work than you would to blogger B with few followers and little influence.

    If you want to discuss this further, feel free to contact me! Thank you for reading our blog.

Leave a Comment

(John Smith)
(jsmith@netstrategies.com)
(www.netstrategies.com)