Online Marketing Blog

Our public relations firm consistently uses the PRWeb Podcast service for our clients, but I’ve not taken advantage of the service very often for our own PR efforts with TopRank.

Yesterday for the second time ever, I personally used PRWeb’s Podcast service that’s available when you select a $200 or higher option for press release distribution. As with the first time, I was totally impressed.

The process is pretty simple. You order a press release to be distributed and pick the $200 level. As you go through the process of enabling or activating the various options for the release, you’ll have the option of scheduling a PRWeb Podcast. Pick a date and time that works for you and you’ll get an email with the phone number and access code.

After announcing that PRWeb was going to discontinue their free press release distribution service, there was quite a bit of buzz in the search marketing and PR blogosphere. Some people considered it as suspiciously financially motivated and too soon after the acquisition by Vocus. However most people, myself included, believe this is an excellent move for PRWeb.

Too many companies were abusing the free wire service to send out less than credible announcements. I’ve always believed that the credibility of the newswire is almost entirely dependent upon the quality of news releases that they distribute.

Big news from PRWeb’s David McInnis to all PRWeb account holders last night.¬† Free press release distribution will cease as of Oct 23rd.¬†¬† The new packages are as follows:

David McInnis of PRWeb dropped me a quick note this a.m. about a new strategic partnership between PRWeb parent, Vocus Communications and Business Wire that includes the licensing of a private label version of PRWeb for use by Business Wire clients.

“Vocus will create and host for Business Wire a co-branded version of the PRWeb direct-to-consumer and SEO service. Business Wire members may disseminate press releases so they will be indexed by major search engines, distributed to thousands of news sites, including Google News and Yahoo News, and delivered through more than 20,000 RSS feeds that collectively reach tens of millions of consumers and thousands of journalists daily.”

PRWeb is best known for being in the news distribution business. With the acquisition by public relations software firm Vocus last week, PRWeb has bumped up it’s own presence in the news. During the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose last week, I had the opportunity to talk to PRWeb CEO, David McInnis about the Vocus acquisition and what lies ahead for PRWeb.
What prompted the acquisition?

A big day for PRWeb! It’s been difficult keeping this under wraps, but Vocus, a public relations software company, has acquired press release distribution service, PRWeb in a deal worth $28 million.

“The internet has led to a dramatic increase in the number and types of media outlets and other website destinations from which consumers and journalists get their news,” said Rick Rudman, President and CEO of Vocus, Inc. “PRWeb has fully developed the technologies, features and pricing model to enable organizations of all sizes to maximize their online visibility and to exploit the potential of this new communication channel.”

PRWeb announced today that they are now offering a service that will allow their press release distribution clients the ability to map the company domain name to the RSS feed of the release hosted by PRWeb.

When you submit a press release through PRWeb and associate that press release with a RSS Group in the PRWeb control panel, the release is then published as part of an RSS feed. This feed url can be pinged to the RSS search engines and also used in an auto discovery tag for RSS feeds in the company web site. That way RSS enabled browsers and feed readers can automatically detect the company press release RSS feed and subscribe to it, even if they do not have a blog.

PR Newswire recently tipped me off to a test press release service that promises SEO benefit:

“Off-peak press release with SEO via PR Newswire Reach news sites, portals, search engines, media”.

Apparently it is to be a 5 day listing on the home page of PR Newswire. There are 10 releases to start and they are being auctioned off over at eBay. If my bid wins, I’ll post about the process:

“Winner of this auction may distribute one news release of 400 words or less via PR Newswire’s US1 Newsline. Distribution timing will be at PR Newswire’s discretion, Friday through Sunday.”

PRWeb is at it again with a new announcement on the addition of Technorati and PRWeb tags to the PRWeb news wire and press release distribution service. The press release, “Holy SHIFT! PRWeb Plays Tag with Social Media” comments that the new features will make it easy to add Technorati and PRWeb specific tags to your press releases.

The SHIFT Communications’ social media release was in part a motivator for the new services as the release from PRWeb states:

PRWeb has announced today the launch of their SEO Wizard toolset to help users create and distribute optimized press releases.

“The SEO Wizard will guide members in structuring their press releases in a way that will give them optimal results within news and search engines. The idea of search engine optimization, or increasing a company’s value in search engines by using specific keywords, has gained popularity in recent years. PRWeb’s SEO Wizard quantifies keyword traffic, so users can focus on the keywords that are popular search terms and valuable to their PR and marketing campaigns.”

PRWeb has announced a viral, direct to consumer powered press release that offers $1000 to bloggers that find all 10 of the new features PRWeb has added recently. Rather than offering a single or multiple press releases announcing all the features, PRWeb is experimenting with having bloggers blog about the features, then have them trackback the press release. It’s a clever way to get attention and links I think. Here are the details:

To participate, bloggers must:
1. Successfully identify all of the new enhancements made to the PRWeb platform since June 10, 2006.
2. Create a blog post that identifies these enhancements and discusses their impact.
3. Post a TrackBack/PingBack into this press release.

PRWeb has announced the launch of their Evangelist affiliate program. Currently in beta, the program is available to a limited number of participants to start. The program offers a comission on services ordered from PRWeb via affiliate links and ads.

“Evangelists and power-users of PRWeb can now receive an agency-level referral fee for their word-of- mouth efforts.”