Online PR - Get the web talking about you
Online PR is not only a great strategy for driving more qualified traffic to your website. Placing press releases and articles on the web also helps increase visibility and search engine rankings by forming high-quality inbound links to your website.
There are many online press release hubs. The leader in online news and press release distribution is PRWeb.com, and others include free-press-release.com, prlog.org, marketwire.com and webwire.com.
The trick to a successful online press release is making the release newsworthy. Although some newswire services are automated, most are picked up by real people so you need to make sure that you are providing the media with
something genuinely interesting about your organisation, product or service.
Remember: It’s got to be something that interests them – not you! Beware of telling them something that produces a “so what?” reaction.
Make sure you have a grabbing headline that hooks the reader by outlining the story and make them want to read on. Try to keep headlines under 80 characters as it will be displayed as the title tag in a search engine and if it’s too long it won’t be effective.
The first paragraph must contain the most important information, told in as exciting or intriguing a way as possible. People’s time is short, and if you can’t capture their interest in the first 15 to 20 words they will move to another page.
So if you’ve got a good point to make, start with it!
“XYZ have just partnered with ABC, resulting in twice as many opportunities for you to make extra money.”
“XYZ’s fantastic new online service has seen a 300 per cent increase in revenue in just three months.”
“Consumers have hit the XYZ website in record numbers because of a new Adwords campaign.”
You get the idea? No one wants to hear about what you do or how wonderful you are, it just isn’t news. Make it personal and try to relate it to a real life story.
Once the first paragraph is as sharp as it can be, the next part of the press release should give the facts. Journalists are naturally sceptical people, so making wild claims and making your story sound too good to be true - even if it is true - is likely to get your article a fast track to the trash folder. Try to avoid exclamation marks – if something is outstanding, let it speak for itself.
See what is topical in the news and find a way to make your article associate with it – what journalists call the peg to hang it on. Make your verbs strong, your adjectives positive, and your sentences short and to the point. Try to engage the reader by being human, not a robot.
Keep away from technical words and acronyms. Remember that not all readers will be up to speed on your industry jargon. If I started throwing terms in like SEO, SMO, PPC, Meta Information, CTR or CPC the article will loose attention quickly. Keep your article understandable.
Once you have written the article go back and remove all the unnecessary words. By writing less, you will say more. The more concise the message, the more likely it is to be understood and remembered.
Press releases should be no longer than 300 words. If you’ve done a good job in whetting a journalist’s appetite for more you’ll soon get an email or a phone call from them.
Make sure at the end you include all possible means by which they can contact you: office or home phone, mobile, email, website. And at the end you can also include details about the company or person who the press release is about.
My 10 top tips
1. Make it newsworthy
2. Make the headline grabbing and under 80 characters
3. Make the first paragraph have your key information
4. Don’t just make it about you or your company, tell a real life story
5. Keep it factual
6. Don’t get too technical
7. Keep the press release to about 300 words
8. Keep it concise
9. Use engaging and active words
10. Remember your contact details at the end
To see how a professional does it, here is an example of a press release I wrote and below that how it looked after it had been rewritten by one of the UK’s top Journalists, the former Executive Editor of The Sun, Chris Roycroft-Davis:
It's not all about bidding the most that's wins at Pay Per Click as AGI proves
Avanta Management Ltd, a fast growing International Serviced Office Company has recently discovered that Google adwords is not just about bidding the highest price, after two years of managed campaigns by top UK internet marketing companies they turned to AGI and achieve an 80% increase in traffic for just 30% of there usual spend.
Anna Haslam, Marketing Manager for Avanta says, “we have worked with Damon Segal for years and he has always cast his expert eye over our internet marketing. After the last campaign Damon wanted to get his hands on our adwords campaign as he thought there was a different approach that would be more effective. After just a week we can see why. We have now have a more targeted campaign that has resulted in an 80% increase in traffic for just 30% of the cost. The net result of this was an increase of 60% in enquires! After spending a day with Damon on his Pay Per Click workshop “Google Adwords - Click, Click, Buy” we are now going to run this campaign in house with AGI taking an occasional look to make sure we are getting the best results. This alone will save us £10,000 in management fees.”
Damon Segal - Managing Director of AGI says “we have been working on the Googles Adword system since it’s inception in 2003. There really is so much you can do with Googles PPC that we find most campaigns barely scratch the surface. We are very pleased with the Avanta result and feel by being more strategic with the approach taken to setting up a campaign the better the results will be. In this economic downturn we understand how important every penny is to even the largest companies this is why we take a very targeted approach to make sure marketing budgets are spent carefully resulting in a maximum return. It’s not a case of cutting marketing budgets, it’s just a case of making sure that the spend is reaching the right people for the right cost.”
For additional information on Internet Marketing, contact Alison Segal or visit www.designerlondon.co.uk/page/blog.
About Action Graphic International Ltd. (AGI):
AGI is a Full Service Brand Agency with Damon Segal personally specialising in Internet Marketing. He is on the advisory council for Global Marketing Network, a fast growing competitor to the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Damon is also a fresh face on the Professional Speaker circuit and after nearly 15 years working on Internet Marketing enjoys sharing his knowledge on how to be successful online. To contact damon directly email Damon@agi.co.uk or look at his personal website http://www.damonsegal.co.uk
Contact:
Damon Segal
AGI, Kingsbridge House, Pinner, HA5 5LX
020 8385 5050
http://www.designerlondon.co.uk
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AS YOU CAN SEE THE ARTICLE BELOW IS PUNCHIER RIGHT FROM THE HEADLINE
80 PER CENT MORE GOOGLE CLICKS FOR 30 PER CENT OF THE COST
Proven success by internet marketing experts at AGI
COMPANIES can boost their Google Adwords traffic by 80 per cent for just 30 per cent of their normal spend, one of the UK’s leading internet marketing experts has proved.
Damon Segal, managing director of brand agency AGI, says most businesses just scratch the surface with their internet campaigns.
To make his point that Google Adwords is not just about bidding the highest price, Segal reworked a campaign being run by Avanta Management, a fast-growing international serviced office company.
Now they’re growing even faster - because Segal has increased the traffic to their website by 80 per cent in a week. And he has cut the cost of their campaign to 30 per cent of what they used to spend.
Avanta marketing manager Anna Haslam says:
“Damon has always cast his expert eye over our internet marketing. After the last campaign he wanted to get his hands on our Adwords because he was convinced there was a different approach that would be more effective. “
“After just a week we can see why. We have now have a more targeted campaign that has resulted in an 80 per cent increase in traffic for just 30 per cent of the cost.”
“The bottom line for us is that we’ve seen a 60 per cent increase in inquiries about our services.”
“After spending a day with Damon on his pay per click workshop ‘Google Adwords - Click, Click, Buy’ we’re now going to run this campaign in-house, with AGI taking an occasional look to make sure we are getting the best results. This alone will save us £10,000 in management fees.”
Segal has been working on the Google Adwords system since its inception in 2003. He says: “There really is so much you can do with Google Pay Per Click but I find most campaigns barely scratch the surface.
“Everyone at AGI is very pleased with the Avanta result because it proves that a more strategic approach when setting up a campaign will produce hugely better results.”
“In this economic downturn we understand how important every penny is to even the largest companies, so we take a very targeted approach to make sure marketing budgets are spent carefully - resulting in a maximum return.”
“It’s not about cutting marketing budgets, it’s about making sure the campaign is reaching the right people for the right cost.”
For additional information on internet marketing, contact Damon Segal or visit www.designerlondon.co.uk/page/blog
About Action Graphic International Ltd (AGI):
AGI is a full service brand agency with Damon Segal personally specialising in internet marketing. He is on the advisory council for Global Marketing Network, a fast growing competitor to the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Damon is also a fresh face on the professional speaker circuit and after nearly 15 years working on internet marketing enjoys sharing his knowledge on how to be successful online. To contact Damon directly email Damon@agi.co.uk or look at his personal website http://www.damonsegal.co.uk
Contact:
Damon Segal
AGI, Kingsbridge House, Pinner, HA5 5LX
020 8385 5050
http://www.designerlondon.co.uk
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Results of the PR Release
The press release went up to appearing on 50 links in Google in the first 2 days and after a week dropped to 32.
The release on www.free-press-release.com got the highest ranking in the results but was not picked up by any other new source, it also only got 11 views in the week.
Prlog.org managed a staggering 5 hits! That’s what you get for free. The only source that performed was PRweb and I have to say the reporting facility on PRweb is excellent. This is just a snippet of the information you can get.
Details of Full Reads
Access Method Volume %
Release was Read 631 65.7%
eBook Download 320 33.3%
Printer Friendly Version 9 0.9%
Total 960 100%
Details of Headline Impressions
Displayed thru RSS,
XML or other syndication 41856 68.8%
Displayed on a PRWeb Site 17136 28.2%
Requested by Pheedo Network 1536 2.5%
Displayed on 3rd party site v Javascript 202 0.3%
Requested by Topix Network 56 0.1%
Total 60799 100%
Summary:
Over 400 full page reads where achieved in the first day. Changes I would have made to this release would be to feature my company name in the headline as well as a better keyword phrase. As you can see the headline was shown over 60,000 times! So plainly you get what you pay for, this article was read for a cost to AGI of about 12p per read. Pretty good for proactive marketing on the web. Another PR hub worth looking at is marketwire.com.
