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August 07, 2018

The news distribution industry is very familiar to those folks involved in digital marketing. News distribution is a commonly-used tool in their marketing toolbox. Although anyone can write and distribute a press release, the more experience and knowledge you have the more successful your campaign is likely to be.

We can help you by increasing your knowledge. Here are some results from individuals within the industry who write and distribute press releases for a living.

How often should I send a press release? This really can boil down to your strategy and what you are trying to accomplish. The majority of our respondents said they send out news on a weekly basis, with a few less saying they submit a press release once a month.

Surprisingly, 20% of our respondents advised they do not even use a press release as a part of their marketing strategy. As we have mentioned in the past, sending out a press release when you have newsworthy information to share makes sense. The key word here is "newsworthy." The information should be newsworthy and useful to journalists or your general audience. It is important to note that when you send out insignificant news on a regular basis, it will only alienate yourself and company from journalists. And just like the "boy who cried wolf," people will not pay attention when they find that your news is usually trivial, exaggerated or misleading--you must be credible.

What is your typical preferred reach? In the pre-Internet world, unless you were a big national company, the news you wanted to announce would more than likely have been either local or hyperlocal news. Times have changed, and the Internet has opened opportunities for businesses to have clients reaching them from around the globe. In our survey, the majority of businesses distributing a news release on a newswire service selected 'national' as their choice of reach. The next most popular distribution choices were 'multiple cities,' 'state wide' and 'mainly an online audience.'

The main goal for distributing a press release was to garner the attention of journalists who would write a story covering the news. About 20% of businesses using 24-7 Press Release stated that their goal in distributing a press release was to 'increase their search engine rankings.'

Recently, one of our reps was asked by a client if they could add 'back links' and if those back links were 'do follow.' We advised the client that the reason for submitting a press release should be to garner the interest of a journalist and not to increase search engine rankings.

An excellent question that many would like the answer to is 'What is the most popular day to send out a press release?' Our winner, by a landslide is Tuesday! Yes - the reason for Tuesday is this: On Fridays, many people check out early-mentally and physically. Do you want a great start to the weekend? Start it early! The weekends are just naturally not a business news type of time. By the time Monday rolls around, many people are cleaning up from Friday and preparing for the week ahead, which leaves Tuesday as the best option for having your news released. That being said, a good percentage of clients still believe in Monday and kicking of the week with a press release.

The actual time of day when the press release is distributed does not seem as important to press release distributors as it once did. Until not too long ago, many people would love to have their press release scheduled for a 'set time' early in the morning. Interestingly, a majority of respondents advised that a particular set time is no longer a big deal to them, as long as it is early in the morning of the day of their release. For smaller companies, we typically don't recommend 9 a.m. Eastern time, as this can conflict with a lot of 'big company' publicly traded company news. A significant number of our clients tend to prefer 7-8 a.m. Eastern as their premium distribution time.

Do you have your own personal media lists? If you do, then you are with the majority of PR professionals who send their press releases through a press distribution service and also use their own lists to target journalists they know, according to a majority of our respondents.

Newsrooms are a technology on the marketing horizon. Why? Because done properly, they can be an excellent research resource for journalists to access everything from high resolution images, media contact information and more. Online newsrooms are an important emerging technology, so it was not surprising to learn that the large majority of respondents still do not have a public facing newsroom. We expect that will change in the near future.

Although our survey was brief, and we did not garner the attention of respondents we had ideally hoped for, the number we did receive (under 1,000) was sufficient to help us learn a little more about the current state of the press release distribution industry.

24-7 Press Release Newswire has been in the news distribution industry for nearly 15 years and stays on top of what is happening in the industry. Through tools like our Knowledge Base, we try to keep our clients and industry educated on what is going on. There is no cost to access the knowledge base at: https://www.24-7pressrelease.com/kb_articles

By applying a few points we have mentioned, we hope that this will increase the success of your next press release.