No Pun In The News

Today was a good day.

I just completed a major hurdle I have been struggling with for a while. I have always been convinced that one of the most major aspects to marketing your own business is through press releases. But ever since the first time I was told I should try it I have been intimidated.

I am an artist a designer a graphic designer extraordinaire, not a journalist nor a copy writer. I am so bad at writing I often misspelled graphite as a kid. I chuck it up to my attention is solely devoted to the aesthetics of what I am doing instead of what it is I am doing.

Since the recession hit the studio and my workload was diminished to nothing I realized that I needed to do for my business what all my past clients did for theirs. Ie:

Website "check"

Google Ads "check"

Eblast Campaign "check"

Blogging and Social Media "check"

Press Release Now I am proud to say "check"

Once I get momentum back again I will then move into

Banner Ads

Print Ads

TV spots

Tradeshows

But I have to admit this press release concept was the most difficult to struggle with.

I can't say I have it in the bag, but I have at least an idea of how I can try and start it and keep up with it.

I created a "In The News" section to the website where all the articles will be published first.

Then I submit the articles to five online pr publication

Free

http://www.articlemaniac.com

http://www.theopenpress.com

http://www.pr-inside.com

Was free for the first time but don't know about future ones

http://www.newswiretoday.com

$6

http://www.onlineprnews.com/

The good once I will use prnewswire.com

What I found interesting is that as I was building this section and trying to finalize my first press release I kept thinking oh I need to design this better or I need to incorporate that to make this better, so much that I was beginning to get overwhelmed and was seeing that I was stopping myself from pushing through.

I don't even think that the first release I did was all that "hot" I have tons of more ideas of more that I think could be better, in fact I think this one could be done even better, But I realized I was suffering from analysis paralysis. SO I just put my blinders on and pushed through.

I realized now after doing it that once you submit a release you have to wait until it gets "approved" and I am not sure if my release will get approved, But I hope I will learn what it will take to get them approved in the process.

The key lesson learned through this process, is to be diligent with writing the releases then submitting them. It needs to be apart of my everyday operations and I hope now that I have journeyed through the process from concept to completion the hard part is over and it will all be down hill from here...

If you would like to see my in the news section and or the first article please visit

http://www.nopun.com/news/

--

Viola just like that pr-inside has included my release

1 hours, 24 minutes and 20 seconds.. form the moment it was submitted

http://www.pr-inside.com/no-pun-intended-a-website-design-studio-helps-small-organizations-achieve-a-large-scale-look-r1500053.htm

and just 20 minutes later it was added to Online PR Newswire which was the $6 one

http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/7292-1254072936-no-pun-intended-a-website-design-studio-helps-small-organizations-achieve-a-large-scale-look.html

I did a search for "website design" which is my most desired key phrase for my company, and at this moment of about 2 hours after submitting my posting is 4th from the top on the google "news" results page complete with my companies logo and link to the article wo hoo!

I took the plunge!

I rewrote my press release to a much better level, a level I believe was good enough to put some money into.

So I submitted my article through PR newswire for Around $500.

Pr Newswire service was able to distribute my release to every "physical" newsroom and magazine in the NY metro area, and about 40 something specific people I was able to target based on demographic information and types of publications they where. with in minutes I am beginning to see the article show up in google alerts from online publications that appear to get their news feeds directly from PR newswire, So I am beginning to see this coverage immediately without the need of approval. Now I am keeping my fingers crossed to be contacted by a major publication or to be published by a major publication. My fingers are crossed but I am not holding my breathe.

In addition, I am told that PR newswire will give me some cool visibility reports which I can't wait to see.

Also I just got a "pitch list" of the contact information and publications for all the people that where in my "custom" list so I can follow up in a day or two to see if they would be interested in having me as an expert they could quote for a future article.

cool

I hope that the benefits of this service prove to be worth the money to do again...

--

3 days after the release was published with PR newswire.

I got the report on how many places the release was published, which was a lot, over 200 online publications published it.

The only thing I noticed which was weird was the locations of these articles I paid for the NY metro area and not one of them where from the NY Metro Area, they where nationally and mostly small towns.

I did get traffic from these releases. about 40 a day. which is about average for my site, so no real improvement there, I didn't receive any leads or calls based in the release. Which in this economy I guess there is no real surprise there...

One thing I did notice that was a great improvement was my "Alexa" rating I went from a rating of 1,370,415 to 1,364,339 which has been the most dramatic increase and change I have ever seen.

I have a google alert email sent for the search term website design and never one saw this release come up through this alert, which was personally frustrating, because I really wanted to see that happen.

But the search term for website design in Googles News section, the article stayed at the top for 2 days and now on the 3rd day is starting to fall in rankings.

So unless I get a lead that brings in enough to cover this cost I don't think I will be doing the PR newswire approach again. But at least now I know. The other concept of writing the releases and submitting to the cheap 5 will be the better route. That route is easier on the budget and packs almost as much SEO and traffic building as this $500 solution has.

--

4 or 5 days after pr newswire launch

I keep checking the positioning on a google search in the news section and I feel to the 6 position but I have now gone back up to the 4th position.

Which is interesting I was suspecting I would have fallen off the first page by now.

Still no leads or increase in web traffic though...

Like always I encourage you to share your experiences and comments to this post...

Thanks for reading.