Using Press Release For Promotion (PRWEB)?

[Keith-Eneix]

I'm coming up on our year renewal for PRWEB and wanted to start a discussion with the MOZ Community on this one. I've used PR extensively over the past year and found it to be really hit and miss depending upon which category I used it for. I've combed the internet for help on this topic but have not really found anything pertaining specifically to PRWEB. Here's my situation. Right now we have a setup to be able to push out 4 highest level press releases every day. Currently they sort of work pretty well for the financial industry but I've not seen too much of a benefit in other industries. I also have a moral dilemma with the PR's, we have to put out a press release every day to have really any big impact on our own financial affiliate websites. This practice is not falling in line with "best practices" our business runs with for our clients and I feel like we just need to just cut the system and focus more on social promotion.

So, What's your thoughts on PRWEB? Should I cut it? If not why? If so, what types of social promotion do you use that are really effective?

[Keith-Eneix]

I know PRWEB is nofollow now. If you're using some of the free resources for PR, some of these are still dofollow. The problem is that some of these PR sites link systems don't allow you to use the nofollow tag (no HTML manipulation). So, it's probably best to just disavow these. I would love to dive deeper into a discussion about how Google is treating the nofollow tag now... it appears from my research that much more citation and trust is being passed now? Anyway.. different topic : ).

[jesse-landry]

Well the "best practice" now states to nofollow any paid links, PR or otherwise. How much that's being enforced by the Cutts team is up for debate..

[jesse-landry]

Wow that's a helluva return! Impressive. I had no idea people actually respond to PRWeb articles. That's fantastic. Obviously less now, but still... Thanks for this thread.

[Keith-Eneix]

Great quesetion CFSSEO. We had to go back and look at all the links PR gave to our clients. Some were decent and some were just really spammy. The problem with the whole PR industry is that I'm not seeing a lot of highly trusted websites with PR back-links to them anymore which leads me to believe a disavow may not be a bad choice. I would like to hear more from other Mozzers too?

[CFSSEO]

I'm interested in answers to this as well since we've used PRWeb for about 8 months this year submitting press releases for the websites we build.  We had keyword links to the sites we built in the press releases though, and I'm wondering if I should disavow all those press releases now.

[Keith-Eneix]

Thanks for the insight Tom, really helpful!

[Keith-Eneix]

Have you used HARO much when going direct?

[Keith-Eneix]

We tested with 1 PR per day for a couple of months. Basically, we  just reverse engineered a funnel within Google analytics to our form thank you page which told us how many conversions actually came from PRWEB. In April of 2013 we made almost 20k off of Press release distribution efforts in the financial sector... however, the PR results we've gotten in other areas areas barely worked at all for form conversion or call conversions (i.e. we use call rail and wufoo for phone and form tracking).

Now, press release results have taken a sharp drop since April. We still make money but it's a fraction of what we were making when we first bought the program a year ago.

I really like your question because it's exactly what I'm asking... despite the fact that PR made some money... right now there's really no lasting results aside from the fact some spammy links had to be disavowed : ). If we had made an effort to invest our time in paid search avenues I'm sure we may have had more lasting results.

We achieved very little solid back-links. Comparing PR to a viral article or infographic... there's just no comparison from a link-bait perspective. Basically, PRweb has just been a good way to drive traffic for a short amount of time on a specific topic... no real lasting results.

[SErOb]

The usefulness of PRWeb seems to depend on the market/industry.

PR Newswire is a good general one. But I've found better results with going directly to market-specific journals and news sources. Some offer pretty decent packages with good syndication/distribution.

Check the services that show up on Google Alerts, TalkWalker, etc.

But like you said, there are better ways to spend your time than churning out PR's just for the sake of it.

[jesse-landry]

Interesting. I've never seen PRWeb work well for anything post "GET ME A LINK NAO!" era. Can you elaborate on how the 4 PRs per day in the financial sector get good results? What benefit do you gain from them and how do you  measure the results of press release distribution? Reposts, conversions, etc?

Thanks.

[TomRayner]

Probably not the answer you're hoping for Keith, but this really will vary from industry to industry.  I've seen it work great for promotional stuff (again in the financial verticals), while it's just not worth the effort for other industries.

The only way to really get a definitive answer is to test and gather some quantitative data.  As the sub is coming up for renewal, PRWeb are going to want to keep your business.  This gives you a bit of bargaining power.  Try to negotiate a short, 4-6 week contract with them where you can test response (Vocus, the people who own/run PRWeb, are pretty reasonable and will want to satisfy a long-term subscriber, so you've got a good chance with this).

Now, when sending out your PRs for this period, try and capture the people in your conversion funnel that come from PRWeb.  Either send them to a particular landing page, give a specific cookie for a PRWeb referrer, or even have a trigger CTA in your press release (eg: search for "blue widgets" online) - anything that allows you to say "this visitor/converter came from PRWeb".

After that period and with a bit more data, you should be able to see if it is a cost effective strategy.

It has to be said that this is a response marketing outlook - we're looking at people who've visited and/or converted on your site via these PRs.  Some may argue that this negates or overlooks the branding effect that press releases have.  In my opinion, there are far better ways, both in cost and reach, to establish brand, tone of voice and share of voice than press releases.  PRs just don't cut it for me when we're talking about establishing brand and so on.  Social media can be much more effective, as you allude to, as can display advertisement buys, whether through an exchange network or direct buys with websites.  Not only that, but those purchases are often a lot more tangible in their data - you'll get impression rates, click rates and so on a lot easier with display ads.

That's how I'd approach it.  Call me a sceptic, but I think the online press release game's days are numbered.