PRWEB recently launched several changes to the press release submission process to make it easier for the novice as well as the power users to submit their release for distribution.

Earlier we needed to have the final draft of the press release and all attachments ready before we could submit the release. The submission screen had a single option (Save) which would send the release to an editor for approval. If you add something later or make a change, it needed a verification again. Now we can save the release in draft mode and this is sent to the editor only after we explicitly indicate the release is ready from our side.

Not only this change saves them unnecessary work, we can dynamically build our release. Thus we can enter the draft release and see how it will look (preview) without bothering about the file attachments and the news image etc.

The submission screens also show the various steps involved in the submission so that we can judge how far we have progressed.

We can also add alt-tags to the images for getting a little push in making sure our images found in the image search engines more easily.

All these changes are definitely going to make your submission process smoother.

Steve Mullen recently interviewed Jiyan Wei of PRweb and got him to answer some very thought provoking questions about various issues related to online news distibution. The Do’s and Dont’s carry some useful tips that can get more mileage for every release that you come out with with strategic optimization.

You may change your target audience after you hear it

Would you like to get a nice one-way incoming link to your press release without much of an effort or obligation? Here is a simple way to do that…

Visit this site on press releases and near the bottom of the page, you will find a section where you can submit your press release. Once you do that (takes about 15 seconds), you will have a one-way link from a fairly popular page, sending you some traffic as well help for quicker spidering of your release.

How’s that for a free lunch?

We are offering for sale a very interesting domain name, PublicRelationAgency.com – you can pick it up real cheap if you are an agency offering publc relation services yourself or want to setup a directory of such agencies. Check it out before the domain flies off your reach

Do you use online press releases for your marketing promotion or to send out a word about your latest product announcements? We have some great news for you…

We are going to announce a cool contest for online press releases that will be very simple to participate in. Just tell us about a recent press release of yours and why you think it should be selected as a winner.

We are planning to offer 10 prizes worth $200 each. So stay tuned and watch this space. You can subscribe to the update notification list (right column form) and be the first to learn about the details of the contest when these are released.

Happy promotion!

PRWEB recently introduced a new facility, called BlogThis facilitating users to blog about the press releases issued through it. This will increase the social media exposure of the releases by encouraging people to blog about the releases they are interested in. However the implementation is quite simple and you need to know a few things before you jump in.

To test this, I tried to blog about the release announcing this facility itself. However the first thing I noticed is that you can blog about a release only if you have a PRWEB account. This will severely limit the number of people who will blog about your releases.

I really wanted to take this through its paces, so I logged in my account, went to the release again and clicked on the BlogThis link in the right column. This brought up a dialog box asking me for the type of my blog (Blogger, Wordpress and a few other types are supported as of now) and then asked me the log in details for the blog software. So far, so good.

Now the editing box that came up was very elementary with no auto-save and when I tried to move the box away so that I could refer to the original release for quotes, I could not move it out of the screen (the box seems to have been done with DHTML or something similar). At this point, I clicked on something and lost my half-done post

I commend the PRWEB team on a nice initiative but I am more comfortable with my feature-rich visual editor with auto-save. That’s how I drafted this post. However if you have a blog and a PRweb account, you should definitely try to make a blog post about one of the press releases and check this out.

Vocus, owners of the leading direct to consumer press release distribution service (PRWEB) has added direct to media distribution by signing up a deal with The Associated Press, to distribute press releases directly to leading media outlets within the AP network via the AP Datafeatures service.

PRWEb lets you publish online press releases for added exposure to your news through quick inclusion in the Google news, Yahoo news and several other prominent locations. Now you can look forward to getting your press releases to major media outlets in the top 100 markets, through this arrangement.

Lee Odden has written an interesting post about using press releases for marketing your wares. I have been using press releases regularly for creating a buzz, announcing new products or services and getting strong incoming links to improve the organic search rankings. The article by Lee talks about improving your results by applying some specific techniques. Good read!

PRWeb.com has recently revamped its user interface (for those who submit news releases through them) and has switched to a much cleaner look in contrast to the bright and bold look, it had earlier.

At the same time, they also added a podcast streaming player to the public page (available to the general Internet audience), so you don’t have to download and then play the podcasts.
PRweb has also introduced a full service option for those who feel intimated by the release submission process. This costs $100 extra over the regular package and should come in handy for business owners who want to take advantage of this potent medium but do not, because they avoid getting their feet wet.

While appreciating the move overall, I do feel that the changes were done hurriedly without undergoing a good user testing cycle.

Take the landing page that appears just after login, for example.

• There were a large number of options in multiple lines and places that have been fairly well consolidated. However there is no easy way to reach the management console that lists all the releases I have issued. The Consoles drop-down at the top is missing the most important one, the PRweb Console.
• The bulk of the content area on the page is taken up by announcements and notices section. I vote for being able to see my earlier releases just after I login, so that I can quickly check their stats without any further keypresses and clicks.
• I feel that a line like “Hello Arun Agrawal” at the top comes in very handy to the people who manage multiple accounts, as a quick reminder of the account that they are logged in.
• The logo at the top-left takes me to the public PRWeb site – while logged in, I will like this to take me to the home page of the console section. There was a “Home” button earlier that would take me to the ‘console home’; it is gone.

Overall the cleaner look should make the users happy. I am sure more improvements and enhancements are on the way from the ever-active development team.

A smart company likes to stay in news and it is not quite difficult to do that. One of the ways is to issue press releases when there are notable developments in the company.

Windowstyle, the manufacturing arm of Style Group UK recently upgraded its facilities by investing a large sum of money and announced this to the world with this press release -
£500,000 Revamp Secures 130 More Jobs For Windowstyle.

Similarly Safestyle UK, which appointed Leeds United chairman, Ken Bates, for the multi-million pound 2007 marketing campaigns, they announced this through a press release – Ken Bates Signs Up For 2007 Safestyle TV Campaign.

Regular announcements like this keep the company in the news and when the customers need the products they manufacture / market, this company’s name will be the first they will recall.

What is a recent big development in your company that you can announce to the world?